Dillards 40: Majoring in Grifting

[AnnEggBlandHer?]

5 hours ago, RosyDaisy said:

Pox parties...WTF? That is messed up on so many levels. Sorry, but it is.

Why do you think so? My mom tried to expose both me and my sister from the time we were 5-ish. When there was no vaccine on the horizon, I think it was smart for my mom to try to expose us at a young age since getting it later in life can be much more serious or even deadly, compared to one itchy miserable week as a child. Luckily the vaccine did become available in my teen years and I got just 3 itchy welts right around the injection site. 

[onekidanddone]

5 hours ago, RosyDaisy said:

Pox parties...WTF? That is messed up on so many levels. Sorry, but it is.

My husband  had a babysitter when he was about 5 who deliberately exposed him to chicken pox. He ended up with Guillain-Barré syndrome, paralyzed and in the hospital. While he recovered from the paralysis, he has had long term health issues to this day. 

[Four is Enough]

6 hours ago, RosyDaisy said:

I wish the chicken pox vaccine was available when I was a kid. My sister and I were very sick with it. My sister had her kids vaccinated.

Pox parties...WTF? That is messed up on so many levels. Sorry, but it is.

My mother and I had chicken pox at the same time. I was 4, and she was 29 and pregnant with my sister. I remember us spending a lot of time on the couch, me curved around her belly.. I still carry a few pox scars.

When my sister was of preschool age, our cousins lived up the street, and were also preschool. Another cousin got chicken pox, and my aunt invited all the kids to come to her house for a few days, so they could get the pox and "get it over with" before they started school.

Pretty common for the time when there was no vaccine.

[TuringMachine]

6 hours ago, RosyDaisy said:

I wish the chicken pox vaccine was available when I was a kid. My sister and I were very sick with it. My sister had her kids vaccinated.

Pox parties...WTF? That is messed up on so many levels. Sorry, but it is.

Definitely don't read up on what they used to do to try to save themselves from smallpox before the vaccine was invented tnen.

[kacarlton]

I'm still catching up on the thread so forgive me if it's moved on by now, but I got the chicken pox vaccine and still got chicken pox.  Fun times were not to be had  

 

I am one of 5 kids. When there were 4 of us, ranging in age from newborn to 8, my oldest brother caught chickenpox at school. As he recovered, my next oldest brother got it, then me, then the baby. My mother still talks about not being able to leave the house for two months. Lol

[SassyPants]

M y Kids and CPs:

#1 Kid- got them Thanksgiving week- we missed TG dinner.

#2 Kid- got them Christmas week- we missed Christmas events

[HarleyQuinn]

I got chicken pox because my mom had shingles, and at age 8 I was the last person in my class to get them. My kids are vaccinated for them, which I was surprised to get some shit for. A lot of people were like "Oh, it's JUST chicken pox."

Well 1) They're uncomfortable, why make my kids get them if they don't have to and 2) If all the children being born now get the chicken pox vaccination it could be eradicated in the U.S, so frankly I don't see the issue.

 

[candygirl200413]

Chicken Pox parties are a thing no longer because God forbid it could have some damaging effects on some kids who are first being exposed and now that there's a vaccine that has worked for years there's basically no reason to. Though it makes sense that you won't always be able to separate your kids when one has them, people just don't think it's worth it to invite the entire neighborhoods. Also I didn't know people used to use lollipops to spread it too

[PennySycamore]

The September 2017 issue of Smithsonian magazine has a great article about smallpox, the history of small pox vaccination/inoculation, and how Benjamin Franklin and his wife lost their firstborn to smallpox at the age of 4.  The Chinese and people of the Indian subcontinent developed inoculation, which involved inhaling from a  infected person's pox.  circa 1000 CE and eventually its spread west.  Cotton Mather encouraged inoculation.  English physician Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine after noticing that milkmaids that had developed cowpox seemed to be immune from smallpox.  Interestingly  enough, there were a few other English doctors that noticed the same thing, but Dr Jenner was the pioneer in developing the vaccine.  If you don't subscribe to Smithsonian,  you'll have to see if your library has it as the magazine is not on the newsstand. 

[HarleyQuinn]

1 minute ago, candygirl200413 said:

 I didn't know people used to use lollipops to spread it too

That reminds me of that episode of South Park where they're trying to give all the kids chicken pox at the same time and Kyle's mom says something like "Kenny, why don't you spit in Kyle's mouth?"  

[calimojo]

On 8/31/2017 at 4:57 PM, nssherlock said:

The vaccine is less than 45 percent effective, so I wouldn't rely too heavily on it.

Best thing is to avoid people who have shingles at the contagious state, but that's not always possible.

 

 

ok, I just have to correct this.  It is confusing, even to medical people.  But, Chicken pox is caused by the varicella virus.  In order to get Shingles you first must have had Varicella.  If a person has shingles, and you are exposed to them, you cannot catch shingles from them.  If you have never had Chicken pox, and you are exposed to someone with Shingles,  you can catch Chicken pox, but you can't catch shingles.  Shingles is a reactivation of the varicella virus after it has been dormant in the nerve roots for a period of time. 

So,  just to reiterate you can't ever catch shingles from someone.  If exposed to shingles, you could contract Chicken pox if you have never had them before, or if you were not vaccinated. 

If you have already had chicken pox,  you are not going to catch anything by being exposed to Shingles.  ( though if you had a very mild case of chicken pox there could be some risk, but again, very very unlikely.  Typically if you had at least 50 pox, you will have had a severe enough case to commute immunity for future exposures.) d

Also Chicken pox is actually spread via droplet and airborne in addition to contact with the fluid from the blistery type of rash ( called vesicles).  Most cases of shingles are what we call localized shingles and the rash follows along a nerve tract.  In that case,  only contact with fluid from the rash is  contagious.  Some people, especially people who are immunocompromised, like Cancer patients  will get widespread shingles, which is called Disseminated shingles.  That is also contagious via airborne or droplet.  But again,  It is only contagious to people who have never had chicken pox. 

 

Oh and shingles sucks.  I had it when pregnant with my last kid.  The antivirals were new back then and my OB wasn't sure they were safe for pregnant women.  She also wouldn't prescribe pain meds, and I had stabbing, burning and electric shock like pain for weeks, especially at night when I was trying to sleep.  My step dad had shingles on his face and in his eye.  He lost some vision in that eye.  He got on antivirals right away which really helped the pain, but it still got to his eye and damaged it. 

 

[Jenn The Heathen]

I really wish the CP vaccine was a thing when I was a kid.  I had it twice.  It's statistically so improbable that most people don't believe me, but according to my sophomore year microbiology professor, I somehow picked up two separate strands of the illness.  Fun times. Can't wait for my first, inevitable breakout of shingles.

[calimojo]

On 8/31/2017 at 11:24 PM, Kittikatz said:

I got chicken pox when I was six. It was a miserable two weeks, and some of my least fond memories include 'pox parties' - every bloody day some mother was bringing their children over to play with me in the hopes they would catch chicken pox. All I wanted to do was to be left alone to sleep or wallow in solitary misery, and instead I had strange children (I'd never even met many of them) playing with me and being instructed to hug me and kiss me. It was weird AF and just about the definition of sick introvert hell.

Shortly after I got chicken pox, my father broke out in shingles over half his face, and I was informed that this was my fault. It was very confusing to six year old me - I couldn't understand how my pox could result in that (never fear, it was explained in detail - repeatedly), but - yeah fun times at the Katz house. Not.

I wish I could have been vaccinated against chicken pox, and will be getting the shingles vaccine as soon as I'm eligible at 50 - sooner if in can convince my GP.  

@Kittikatz  please call your family and let them know there is no way you gave your dad shingles.  See my other post, but people don't 'catch' shingles.  They already have it in side their nerve roots.  After a person has Chicken Pox,  the virus goes dormant and lies in the nerve roots.  When conditions are right, it re-emerges.  THings that make a person at risk for Shingles includes Exhaustion, stress, lack of sleep, immunocompromised conditions, or immunosuppressant medications, and in some cases, they happen after recovering from another illness because the body's defenses are down.  So basically anything that decreases your body's ability to keep suppressing the virus.  Pregnant woman are prone because your body is mildly immunocompromised during pregnancy to prevent your immune system from attacking the baby as a foreign body. 

So  if your dad got shingles after you had chicken pox, it was either completely coincidental, or he was suffering from exhaustion from caring for a sick and itchy kid.

6 minutes ago, Jenn The Heathen said:

I really wish the CP vaccine was a thing when I was a kid.  I had it twice.  It's statistically so improbable that most people don't believe me, but according to my sophomore year microbiology professor, I somehow picked up two separate strands of the illness.  Fun times. Can't wait for my first, inevitable breakout of shingles.

Or the first time you had it, it was a milder infection.  My youngest had it twice too, but the first time she only had about 20 pox and they went away quickly.  A year later she got a stronger case, and had pox head to toe.  So hoping she is immune. 

[Percy]

Eldest got chicken pox age around 3.  like many parents at the time, I bathed her with her younger sister to 'get it over with'.

Younger sister 20 months younger and got so sick the Doctor questioned whether she had cerebral irritation with it. No vaccine available at the time.

Lesson learned, now if a vaccine is available, get said child vaccinated.

[calimojo]

I am in favor of vaccination, but I do wonder if women born in the 90's and beyond should get an antibody screen for immunity to chicken pox before they get pregnant.  As Sassy said,  babies born to moms who get Chicken pox during pregnancy face serious complications. 

[jozina]

The varicella vaccine has not cause chicken pox epidemics.  Don't care where you are - science and medicine crosses borders and those sort of things are monitored. 2-3 people a year do die from chicken pox in the Netherlands and in other comparable countries deaths have sharply decreased from chicken pox after the varicella vaccine was introduced. Yes it's nasty in adults, but it can be nasty in children too.

There were murmurs a few years ago that it may be somehow "causing" shingles epidemics, but the research was that around the same time as the vaccine was introduced shingles were increasing. Correlation =/= causation. Further evidence showed it was already increasing prior to that and likely had more to do with increased reporting, diagnosis and aging populations. I know the data has been manipulated on anti-vaccination sites and they still claim it's causing it but they're wrong.

I think it'd be a good idea for all adults to get screened and further boosters as appropriate for diseases like chicken pox, pertussis and rubella.  Chicken pox can be very serious if you're pregnant, but that's for mothers as well as babies. Yes the babies can have congenital varicella syndrome, but the mothers are also more likely to end up very unwell or die than someone who is non-pregnant.

[calimojo]

In our area, most adults are recommended to get a pertussis booster and we had  mumps outbreak so many people in high risk jobs are recommended to get a 3rd MMR.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

8 minutes ago, calimojo said:

In our area, most adults are recommended to get a pertussis booster and we had  mumps outbreak so many people in high risk jobs are recommended to get a 3rd MMR.

I got an MMR booster when I was in my early 20s and working in a daycare. I read an article that said that people in my age group in the US were at risk of having received improperly stored vaccines and not having immunity. It was easiest and cheapest to just get a booster. 

It would be interesting to know if I have immunity to chicken pox, measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, or any of the other things I've been vaccinated for over the years, but I have no medical reason. Just excessive curiousity, as usual. 

[Jenn The Heathen]

I got an MMR booster after having my 2nd son.  Part of of "hey, you're  pregnant" blood work tested for my immunity and it was way low.  Probably because my mom decided to just stop vaccinating us as kids.... anyway, I was supposed to get the vaccine after little heathen #1 was born, but I developed an infection, yadda yadda yadda.

I also recently got a pertussis vaccine when I needed a tetanus booster (long story).  It was a tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis combo vaccination.  Come at me, germs.

[closetcagebaby]

My mom had chicken pox twice as a kid and sent me to every friends house who had it. I didn't get the vaccine (or any vaccine...) because she didn't believe in it. Ended up with chicken pox at age 12, totally covered from eyeballs to feet. It was miserable. 

[louisa05]

My cousin's son was hospitalized for three days with severe chicken pox at age two. He had it under his eyelids, in his mouth, inside his nose and ears...his entire face was swollen. He had high fevers with it, too. On his body, they were huge blisters and there was a lot of swelling as well. It was horrible. My cousin had decided to skip the chicken pox vaccine for him as her older son had the vaccine and got it anyway. But older son had an extremely mild case. She completely regretted that decision. 

My brother had shingles a couple of years ago at 49. He had it on his head and in and around his eyes. He had some vision issues after it, too. It was pretty miserable for him. 

[RosyDaisy]

The fact that I have to qualify my last post with a reason is disturbing. For those who want one here goes. You (general) are deliberately exposing your child to a disease for the purpose of making them sick. There is no theory under which that is justifiable. It deliberately causing harm to a child. That is abuse.

[ViolaSebastian]

Just want to step in and link to this podcast, from my favorite (and only) podcast I listen to. (Yes, it's weird, I know, I just don't like the majority of them.) In any case, it's a medical doctor and her comedian husband, and they do podcasts on topics in the history of medicine. They recently did an episode on chicken pox, and they address pox parties in it.

http://www.maximumfun.org/sawbones/sawbones-chicken-pox

 

At the risk of outing myself, my family has a tradition in which the kiddo who got chicken pox receives something that's white with red polka dots. My mother got a doll furniture set with a red polka dot bedspread, and I got a sundress. It's strange to think my niece won't get to take part in the tradition, but I'm thankful she doesn't. I still have a pox scar on my nose from having it when I was five. 

[Exposedknees]

This conversation just reminds me how broken healthcare is in the US. I'm pre-vaccine age at 53 and have a compromised immune system. I had a mild case of CP at age 9. My doctor wants me to get the shingles vaccine but my insurance won't cover it until I'm 60. Do I cough up $300 out of pocket?!? UGH.

 

 

 

 

[Kittikatz]

@calimojo thank you for explaining that and correcting the erroneous information I'd been living with. My family are clearly bigger jerks than I gave them credit for being.  Lesson learned - in the future I'll be in the safe side and assume maximum asshattery 

In the case of my father, stress makes much more sense as a causation for shingles - I know he certainly wasn't involved in my care and feeding - in fact, he was quite hostile to me at the time, which probably had a lot to do with why he was blaming me so insessantly. Around that time in my family's existence, my brother had been born prematurely, endured 16 months of hospitalisation and 24 surgeries before passing away. My father was of the opinion that the wrong child had lived, he had lost his job, and my mother was barley functional due to what I now know is depression. Also, my parent's marriage was coming apart at the seams. I'd say his stress levels were pretty high. Still, blaming a child for something that she had nothing to do with was a dick (or dwrek type) move. So glad we didn't have Twitter back then - he'd probably have given Dullard a run for his money inflicting ignorance, awfulness and bigotry on the world.