Chickenpox!!!!!!!!!

We have had an infectious January. Two weeks ago, my toddler came down with Coxsackievirus, commonly (or uncommonly!) known as Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. Very unpleasant. I caught it after her, then my son. Last week, while my son & I were still feeling the effects (which luckily didn't hinder our enjoyment of king cake & ice cream cake too much), I took my daughters to the doctors, and the Chiclette received some immunizations. This week, my son, who was not immunized against chicken pox, who we thought had had 2 milder cases when he was younger, came down with a full-blown case. Remember those? So it's Aveeno & Calomine for him! And another 3-4 days off of school. And the 4th copay in 3 weeks! This gave me the opportunity to ask the doctor about the vaccine. He brought it up, actually.

I really like my son's PCP. I like the girls' PCP also, as she believes in parental judgment, but I never feel as comfortable around female pediatricians as I do around a certain type of male pediatrician--the "old school" variety. This is quite different from how I feel about male vs. female OBs. But it's nice to have--for once--two pediatricians I trust.

So the doctor brought up the old cliche that chicken pox used to be a "rite of passage," that there were (ill-advised) chicken pox parties, etc., before the vaccine. He asked if the toddler was vaccinated (she is) and said that she could still get it (!!) but that it would be mild if she did. The baby should still be protected by maternal antibodies. So I asked about the vaccine--since there are reports of breakthrough infections, increased instances of shingles, and need for booster shots. He said that they always knew that a booster would be needed (!!). He hasn't heard of increased cases of shingles. And then he told us a few interesting things:

The Japanese have been vaccinating against chicken pox for about 20 years to our 15.

When my son was little, it had not yet become routine to vaccinate them at 1 yr., and that was only 10 years ago. By the time he was school age, the chicken pox vaccine was mandatory, but we skirted the issue.

Our current pediatrician did not recommend the vaccine when it was new for a few years, until the sample size was larger than the original test subjects.

He had a friend whose son (now 23 and an animator for Cartoon Network) had chicken pox induced meningitis. He was on the phone with the father when the boy had a seizure. It was at that point that he began to take chicken pox seriously as a disease.

The real reason that they vaccinate against chicken pox is not the disease but the secondary infections. The secondary staph infections landed 8,000 in the hospital on average, and would result in 40-50 deaths a year (which he whispered to avoid causing anxiety in the 11-year-old). With antibiotic resistant strains of staph, this is a valid concern to my mind.

I value such frankness in a doctor. It gives me much more to work with hearing these things from an informed person whom I trust.

Interestingly, the local news was reporting increased cases of chicken pox in spite of the vaccines only days before he came down with it. Picking up my son's homework today, my husband told one of the teachers that he had chicken pox. She said that a number of people do. It's "going around." Hmmm. . . I though that wasn't supposed to happen now!!