Those of you that follow me on Twitter will probably be sick of me droning on about chickenpox by now. We are on day 21 and we currently have 1 recovered plus 3 infected!
I feel like we’re living in an episode of The Walking Dead. Anyone who hears you have chickenpox suddenly cuts you off and almost runs away screaming! I though chickenpox was an illness that most parents wanted their children to catch but people are almost afraid of us at the moment!
The last 21 days have been horrid. The oldest one sailed through chickenpox. He got a good covering but wasn’t head to toe in spots. With a dose of good old Piriton at bedtime, I didn’t hear a single complaint from him. Apart from a few scabs remaining, he has recovered and it looks like he’ll be scar free – hooray!
We had just been released back onto society when the smallest boy caught it followed the day after by his sisters. This happened on Good Friday and all our family who were due to be visiting over Easter, suddenly cancelled because they didn’t want to catch shingles! I thought it was fairly common knowledge that you couldn’t catch shingles. We did manage to persuade some of them to come after bombarding them with numerous sites explaining you can’t catch shingles. Good job really as I had enough food to feed the 5000 and nowhere to store it!
O is completely covered in chickenpox. I don’t think there is a patch of his body that hasn’t got a spot on it. He is really bad in his nappy area and I think they’re going to take forever to heal.
There must be a really large outbreak at the moment as it is impossible to get any of your traditional remedies such as calamine lotion. We have been using Virasoothe on the spots and it seems to be easing the itching. We’ve also tried the bi-carb baths which worked wonders drying the boys spots out.
What has upset me the most though is my babies being poorly. They’re only 8 months old and I in particular, is absolutely covered in spots and there is very little I can do to help her as she’s too young for magic Piriton. She just looks so sad and it’s heartbreaking to see them covered in so many spots and getting frustrated with the scratch mitts. I was really hoping they would escape it as I would have liked them just a bit older when they caught it. They’re still too fresh and new to be plague covered. Thankfully, it’s not disturbing their sleep so at least we don’t have sleep deprivation to deal with as well.
The only saving grace is that we’ll get through this and never have to do it again. It’s all out the way in one (very long house arrest) go and I’ll never have to worry when the chickenpox sign next goes up on the nursery door.
I’m hoping to be able to wash the red cross off our front door in the next few days and rejoin society!
4under4madness 