On Chicken Pox....

A couple of weeks ago, Marc, as he frequently does when I'm out exercising, was putting Luke to bed. He noticed that Luke had quite a few mosquito bites on his back. He mentioned it to me. I wondered where and why he had so many. Mosquitoes haven't been that "thick" this year. And, Luke typically doesn't get "attacked" by mosquitoes.

The next morning, I looked at them. I thought it was a bit odd, but I proceeded with putting some anti-itch gel on them. Luke was complaining that they itched.

The next evening, I was, once again, out exercising. Marc put Luke to bed. When I got back home, Marc told me that he didn't think they were mosquitoes. They were starting to look a bit different. Marc looked them up online. The ONLY thing that matched the description was chicken pox (or varicella).

My response: "Luke's been vaccinated. He shouldn't be getting chicken pox." Marc proceeded to tell me that he thought that if anymore appeared, we should call the doctor.

The next morning, I noticed that a few more "spots" had appeared on his shoulder. I was still in a bit of disbelief that it could be chicken pox because of the vaccination. That afternoon, I called my mom to ask her opinion. Without actually seeing them, she obviously couldn't make too much of a judgement, but she too laughingly said they sounded like chicken pox. She suggested I call the doctor's office simply to see if they knew if they happened to be going around. Later that afternoon, I had my trusty neighbor, J, look at them -- J happens to be a retired nurse. She too thought they looked like chicken pox. She suggested we take him to the immediate care just to see -- simply because he would already be and continue to be contagious.

So, that evening, Marc and I (with Kate in tow) took Luke to our local immediate care. The doctor working that evening (who happens to be our family physician) took one look at them, laughed, and said, "Those most certainly do look like chicken pox. I haven't seen this in roughly 10 years -- since vaccinations for varicella have started. Let me look up what the latest 'protocol' is on this."

Obviously, there's nothing that can really be done for chicken pox. The doctor did go on ahead and put Luke on an anti-viral medication since we have a small infant in the house. It took him a bit to figure out the correct dosage. He said (again, laughingly), "I've never prescribed this for a kid. I usually am prescribing this for somebody older who has shingles." Later on, we did call our friend, Allen, a pharmacist, with a couple of questions about the medication.

SO, SORRY to those of you we may have exposed. Luke was definitely contagious before we knew anything. AND, I have absolutely NO idea where he picked the chicken pox up. Luke normally doesn't get sick. How his body couldn't find this off WITH a vaccine but his body fights so much else off, I don't know.

Therefore, all last week, I pretty much had to keep Luke quarantined. So, I spent time thinking about local places/things to do where Luke (or Kate) would not be around other kids to expose -- all in or around our little town. I came up with nature walks -- one on the campus of Bethel College (Sand Creek Trail) and the other one at the Kauffman Museum. (Both of these are in North Newton, KS) I also took him to a local church with a playground where, sadly, I never see kids playing at. But, in this case, the fact that there are never any kids there was an advantage.

I can say that we made it through our week of being quarantined. We're reasonably certain all of Luke's chicken pox are on the recovery and he's no longer contagious. We honestly looked closely at them to make sure. They were to all be scabbed over.

Our other concern was Kate. The doctor told us to keep Luke away from his sister. Marc and I laughed. First, by the time he said that to us, Luke was already contagious and had already kissed Kate and was most definitely in her face (as usual). Second, they live in the same household, breathing the same air. So, we did nothing really to protect Kate from Luke.

Fortunately, most of what I read about chicken pox and infants is that typically, infants under one year often either don't get chicken pox or get a very mild case of it. They're still living with a lot of immunity from their mother. We never noticed any spots on Kate. So apparently, she didn't get them.

Fortunately, Luke had a very mild case of the chicken pox. He probably only had about 40 bumps on his body (compared to the possibility of 200 or so). He NEVER ran a fever. He acted fine -- NEVER acted sick at all. (And the last four pics were taken at a park the afternoon he was diagnosed -- before we knew. Sorry if your child was exposed). Whooo....we made it through a chicken pox ordeal pretty easy. The worst part -- having to miss our church's 25th anniversary celebration. Marc and I really wanted to be there! But, we had a nice evening together as a family instead :)