Friday, December 11, 2009

Chicken Pox

Peanut had chicken pox for the past one week, and the poxes (is that how you call it??) are finally clearing up! phew!!

So how did Peanut get chicken pox?? Our only conclusion is that she got it from BigB who had shingles a couple of weeks ago. Shingles is a "sister disease" of chicken pox, so if someone who never had chickenpox in his / her life before is in direct contact with someone who has shingles, that person will get chickenpox. Prime example: Our little Peanut. But if you had chickenpox before, you cannot get shingles from another person.

We knew that BigB's shingles is contagious especially since Peanut has not gotten her chickenpox vaccination yet, so he slept in a separate room for a week and did not hold Peanut. But I guess we miscalculated BigB's recovery period. *_*

It all started with a spot on Peanut's shoulder. I saw the spot last Wednesday when I was putting Peanut to bed, and stupid me, i thought it was a mosquito bite. By Thursday evening, when I came home from work, a few more spots appeared on her head. I was quite concerned by then and suspected that she chickenpox, but decided to wait for one more day before bringing her to a doctor because she had no fever then. By Friday, more spots started to appear on her torso, and we brought her immediately to the doctor.

After the nurse saw Peanut, and we told her that we suspected her to have chickenpox, she straightaway sequestered us in a different room, away from all the other patients..And the doctor confirmed that she has chickenpox. Haih...honestly i was quite upset because i knew we could have prevented it. And we were quite worried as she is only 9 months old. The doctor told us to just put calamine lotion on her, and gave us some anti-itch medicine to be taken at night before she sleeps so she won't scratch herself. And that the chickenpox will reach its peak by the weekend (meaning more spots will come out during the weekend before it starts to subside). Because of this, we had to miss Taurus's wedding in Singapore. By the way I like how the clinic takes infectious diseases and cleanliness seriously. Instead of putting Peanut directly on the clinic's bed, they lay her on this mat. The moment we're done, two nurses came and start spraying and wiping the area down with the dettol spray. The whole time we were talking to the doc, they kept rubbing the whole place down. lol

Anyways, true enough, a hundred more spots appear on her by Saturday. Well it seems like a hundred because there were so many on her back, front, head and face. My poor little Peanut. it was upsetting to see her in such a state, especially when she started to develop fever after that. And she was really listless and not her usual self. Cos when I lift up her arm, it just flops down. And when i try to call her name, she never even looked at me. She basically had no energy to layan me la. *uhuk uhuk*

But all is well now! *pumps fist into the air!* She's back to her normal self, and is crawling all over as usual, and is learning new tricks. She's learned how to say goodbye and can clap when asked to, and is starting to babble "wa..wa..wa...".

So i guess the only good thing that comes out of this episode is that she'll probably develop a lifelong immunity against chickenpox. And because she's a baby, she hardly scratch herself and she'll no longer need a chickenpox vaccination after she reaches a year old. :)

4 comments:

PINKPheng said...

am happy to hear tht Peanut is alright!! Yay!!!She sounds like a strong lil gal..

The Peanut Momster said...

pinkpheng: yalor, luckily she's better de! A load off my mind :)

Pei Chyi said...

Praise God she's all OKAY!

The Peanut Momster said...

pei chyi: ya wey!!!! yay!!