can chicken pox really be this mild?

[bossykate]

hello everyone

dd has chicken pox at the moment. today is her third day (i.e. third day since spots erupted). she still has only about 15 spots in total and of these only a handful are nasties. she isn't even particularly sick. if she has a temperature it is only mildly elevated, and she is basically good humoured. she is still eating well, and her sleep hasn't been disturbed. she is 10m old.

when ds had it at the same age, by this stage his whole body was covered head to toe with hundreds of nasty looking pustules, he was really sick and miserable and didn't sleep much at all.

can chicken pox really be as mild as it seems to be for dd?

tia

SA I'm furious that we were never offered a vaccine for dd - she had a known immune deficiency at the time (and was on full strength antibiotics for over a year to keep infections under control) so it was bound to really hit her. It took her 4 months to recover from it.

ds (2.8) has just has maximum exposure to 2 children with chicken pox and yet has not developed it. He had a couple of disturbed nights plus go a blister type nappy rash, which with hindsight I believe was the pox. I then discoved that 5% of suffers get no spots, my conclusion is that he did get a very mild case (particularly as my mother had a similar experience with me).

hello everyone

The past 2 days has seen a significant deterioration in dd's condition. She now has lots more vesicles and is noticeably more ill. At least I'm sure now that she will get the immunity!

Re scars, as I mentioned below, ds had a rather bad case, and he was covered in pustules - however, he has only 3 miniscule scars which I doubt are noticeable to anyone else.

Don't think cp vaccination is approved yet in the uk. At least it wasn't a year or so ago. It's been available in us for 10 years I think.

I think it's approved, just not on the general vaccination list. I had it as an adult (but I don't know if the version I had is suitable for kids). Mind you, it's not all that - mine didn't work! I was exposed to chickenpox later when I was pregnant and they did an antibody test and found I STILL didn't have any chickenpox antibodies!

Oh, tip I had for reducing the scars is to put vit E on them. The best (purest) source being the vitamin capsules you can get from health food shops that you're supposed to eat. Just pierce them with a safety pin and squeeze over the crusted over spots each day. Is supposed to help them heal quicker and with less scarring. Can be used on older scars too apparently (although I don't know if that's as effective).