I felt invincible. I practically encouraged my children to lick other kids with chicken pox. Ours were vaccinated. We would be fine.
YoungestGirl has spitefully gone and developed chicken pox, making a mockery of the £130 we spent on having her immunised against it.
Her little face is covered in blisters. Her hands are all scabby. Her nappy area looks like a horror film. Her back is – completely randomly – spot free.
I am not sure how this happened. All I can imagine is that each vaccine is about 95% effective, as per most vaccines. With things like MMR, your children are probably not exposed very often to measles or mumps, so the herd immunity makes it much less likely your child’s immunisation success will be tested. Whereas in the UK, chicken pox is still endemic. Apparently YoungestGirl’s vaccine was the 1 in 20 that is made from unicorn tears and false promises.
EldestGirl and TheBloke (TM) seem to be OK so far, although chicken pox does have a long incubation period, so we aren’t out of the poxy woods yet. I am hoping that their immunisations actually bastarding worked. I, on the other hand, had chicken pox when I was eleven, so should hopefully be fine.
On the plus side, YoungestGirl is getting it over with before we’re paying for a nursery place, and TheBloke (TM) is at home at the moment, so EldestGirl hasn’t had a unnecessarily housebound half-term. But it’s a pain in the arse, now that YoungestGirl is feeling better, although still itchy, that we can’t take her to the playground or, really, anywhere for a whole week until she’s not infectious again.
So I have a business idea: POX PARKS.
Each county has its own playground / soft play area, specifically for children with chicken pox. You pay a nominal fee, and your poxy, scabby child can suppurate over the ball pool as much as it likes, without fear of infecting any other people.
Am expecting investment any day now. Any day.
Oh dear, poor kid – that must be horrible, as much for you as for her. She looks remarkably cheerful though. Do you think perhaps they mixed up Varicella with Vienetta and injected her with ice cream by mistake?
(‘Suppurate’ is a hell of a verb – ten bonus points for that. And the tag ‘spotty toddler’ made me laugh – sounds like the kind of terrible indie band they liked at my school in about 1991.)
Ah, she’s fine. She had a miserable day with a temperature at the weekend, but she’s actually perfectly well now. It’s just frustrating that we can’t take her anywhere where there might be other people.
Plus I get to dress her up as a scabby witch for Halloween, so it’s all good.
L x