Well we’ve made it 7 1/2 years as parents and have never had to deal with chicken pox before (aside from when we had it as children of course). Ethan came to me after putting pajamas on a couple of weeks ago saying “Mom, I have a whole bunch of bug bites that weren’t there this morning. They happened while I was at school.” My first thought was WHY would a bug be crawling all over just YOU at school? So I asked him to show me. When I saw them I instantly thought “Chicken pox!” Now the last time that I had ANY exposure to chicken pox was more than 17 years ago, I’m no expert at what they look like or diagnosing it, but really that was the only way that I could explain so many spots appearing in such a short time. I called the after hours doctor, and spoke to a nurse. She told me that based on my description of the spots that they didn’t sound like chicken pox and there really wasn’t anything they could do about them. OK FINE!
The next morning, Saturday, I had Kyle inspect the spots as well and I insisted that Ethan go to the urgent care to have a doctor actually look at them and tell me what they are. Well they WERE chicken pox. Ethan has had both the chicken pox vaccine and the booster shot so his case was very mild. We missed stake conference, Sunday then he missed school Monday, but all of his spots had broken and were scabbed over by Tuesday morning so he was good to go back to school. Then life was good. Or so we thought…..
This past Saturday we were at Granny’s house, and while Kyle was holding Chloe, Granny pointed out a spot on the side of her head and said “oh she’s got a zit”. One spot no big deal, it could have been a zit, or a bug bite….
Sunday morning Kyle went to get Chloe out of bed and brought her into our room saying “I wonder why she’s breaking out.” She had more spots on her face, then he unzipped her jammies to change her diaper and there were other spots on the rest of her body too. Dang it! It’s gotta be chicken pox! Only thing though, is that Chloe has NOT had the vaccine! Her doctor was being lame and I decided not to go back there and I haven’t made an appointment with another doctor yet to take her in for her vaccines that she should have got at 12 months (Bad mommy! I know!). The varicella vaccine would have been one of those shots. Chloe has been coming up with new spots every day since. It makes me feel horrible to see her like this, knowing full well that had I actually just taken her in she wouldn’t have a full blown case of the chicken pox. 🙁
But in a way I guess it’s good that I got to see the difference between chicken pox with the vaccine and chicken pox with out….. Ethan only had a few patches on his belly, his back and neck, a few spots on his face and a few on his arms and legs. Chloe has them everywhere! All over her face and scalp, and all over her body and arms and legs and all over her bum. 🙁 SO SAD!
Washing her face and hands after a meal is so hard. Normally if there is a bump on her face it’s food that is stuck there and I get to pick it off. Right now I have to be careful about what I’m picking off her face.
At least I know that if any of the other kids get it, they’ve all had the vaccine so they won’t get it this bad. Thankfully.
Ohh! I can totally relate to you here… My little Sydney had the chicken pox when she was just over 6 months old. The first spot she had was on her little head, too. And when I called her doctor, they told me the same thing – that there wasn’t anything they could do and that I shouldn’t bring her in.