You may remember a couple of weeks ago I was invited to an event to learn more about chicken pox. I’m ashamed to say that I obviously didn’t learn anything as a week later Big Brother, you guessed it, caught chicken pox!
In hindsight he must have caught it at nursery when he attended his Monday session. When he woke up on Thursday the skin around his mouth was covered in spots but I thought nothing of it and packed him off to nursery. I picked him up as usual but when we went to hop on the bus home he had a melt down, most unusual for him. By the time we were home he was hot, flushed and obviously poorly. I gave him some Calpol and put him to bed but still hadn’t twigged what was wrong. I remember calling my husband as I was worried about him and knew it was more than teething pain.
He refused his dinner and lay on the sofa, snuggled under his blanket watching episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine. When daddy came home he snuggled up with him, still out of character for my little whirlwind who never sits down. We put him to bed and the next day he was worse, temperature of 39° and had a few more spots on his arms and legs. His temperature improved enough for us to go for a walk in the sunshine but he was still poorly. The spots around his mouth dried out and went crusty and then cleared up. I had a bit of a google which suggested it was impetigo or chicken pox.
By the weekend he was fine and definitely well enough to enjoy his birthday, open his presents and enjoy a trip to the RAF Museum. My husband suggested I get a Doctor’s appointment as his skin was spotty in places. You can probably guess that the Doctor took one look at him and said he had chicken pox. I was really surprised as I just hadn’t twigged at all. I thought chicken pox meant obvious spots all over the body which were itchy. His spots never bothered him and we didn’t give him anything other than a few doses of Calpol.
I was hoping Little Sis would catch it as it was quite mild but unfortunately she hasn’t. Fingers crossed I’ll know when she does get it!
4 Comments
Angela C
March 30, 2012 at 1:31 pmAlthough feeling poorly, it sounded like he had a better experience! I’m hoping mine won’t be itching all over!
jenny
March 30, 2012 at 5:03 pmThanks for your comment! I just feel like a bit of an idiot for not realising what it was 🙂
Ramblings Of A Suburban Mummy
April 2, 2012 at 9:13 amI hate to be the bearer of bad news but its up to 21days incubus for the virus so be careful. My son had them at the start of March, I got to 20days after and breathed a big sigh of relief that my daughter had avoided it, sure enough on day 21 she woke up with spots! I couldn’t believe it. She also had it 10 times worse than my son and really suffered bless her 🙁
BTW we sent my son loads of places at first because he had one spot on his head that looked like a bite, when the rest of the spots came they came so fast, from that 1 to about 25spots took about 2hrs!!
Hope your little one avoids it, or has a mild case too. x
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