Chicken Pox

The itchy spot rash. Once a thing that every kiddo eventually got in preschool or elementary school is now a rare occurrence due to an amazingly effective vaccine that not only prevents contracting chicken pox but in doing so prevents kids from getting the extremely painful shingles rash (which is reactivated chicken pox) when they get older. 

Now I get a lot of this in clinic: “But I got chicken pox when I was little, and I was fine so why can’t my kid just get it.”  Well, I don’t know if you remember when you got it, but I am sure it sucked when you had it. Other than scabies, chicken pox rash is one of the most itchy rashes anyone can get, and even though we have tried to put calamine lotion on the rash for years and years, it really doesn’t do anything. Also, if you got chicken pox in the past, congrats! Now you can also get shingles, which is the extremely painful rash older people or super stressed out people get because they had chicken pox when they were younger. 

When protecting your child from chicken pox (or varicella) with the vaccine, you are also helping to protect your community from the spread of chicken pox to those whose immunity is waning or deficient. I don’t like to do a lot of anecdotal evidence in these little tidbits of health info but allow me to indulge here. 

One of the saddest cases I had while in residency was taking care of a kiddo with cancer who was severely immunocompromised from their treatment course and was in the ICU in a medical coma due to a varicella infection given to them by one of their friends whose family chose not to vaccinate against chicken pox. Now I know it is a rare occurrence, but I for one would not know what I would do if I was the parent who allowed this to happen by not vaccinating my kiddos to help protect their friends. So please get the vaccine, it is safe and extremely effective. 

Now having said that, if there is a really big exposure event sometimes kids who are vaccinated will get breakthrough chicken pox, but because of the vaccination, the rash is way less prominent, way less itchy, and goes away way faster than without the vaccine.