Updates on updatable things

[slipjig3]

1) rafaela's poor sleep cycle is still totally bat-whack f'toqwid (although at the moment she's actually sleeping at a normalesque sleep-time, so pardon me a second whilst I knock wood and hope. Sweet dreams, hon.) Unfortunately, the current State oof the Sleep is at least partially my fault: it seems that my damned snoring gets even worse when I have a head cold and, well, I have a head cold. Um, I'm sorry.... (Anna, I think I owe you a world of snuggles now.)

2) News as of yesterday: Miss Abbey has the chicken pox. Oh, joyous rapture flambé. What's especially annoying is that she got it from the vaccine, which her elementary school swore up and down she absolutely had to get, dag nabbit. No one's terribly happy about this. Luckily, it's a mild case, with only a dozen or so spots, most of which have already progressed to the crusting-over stage. Plus, everyone else around her has had it except Nik, and he's been vaccinated.

Besides all that, chicken pox isn't a slow-you-down kind of disease. I visited with the young'uns for little bit this evening, and really, if she didn't lift her shirt to show you the spots on her belly (which, of course, she did, since the whole point of being a kid with chicken pox is to skeeve out the adults), you'd never know that anything was wrong. Our main activity: Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation, which is a spectator sport for them. It was there that I got introduced to new bits of vocabulary from Abbey like, "You're gonna kick some bad-guy booties!" and "That is so yesterday!" and the rather alarming, "BOOOOyah!" (Nik was content to just snuggle up against my elbow.)

3) We hauled Lucy, Cat the Younger, off to the vet this morning to get her spayed. Everything went fine, including the surgery (rafaela called to check—she's a good mommy), except for the putting-the-pointy-feline-in-its-handy-carrying-case activity. Let's see: chunk out of my right thumb, and nice stigma in the middle of my palm, scratches on my chest, and some seeeeerious injuries to Anna (I think there was skin loss involved). Ah, well. She'll return tomorrow. In the meantime, Sunny has been quite the little cuddlebug, purring at every little smattering of attention. I think she misses her little adopted sister. (Yes, this is the time to say, "Awwww...." We do.)

*yawnstretch*

Comments

[sionainn.livejournal.com]

I've never had chicken pox... and I worked in a daycare. Diagnosed several cases, been exposed to it many, many times.

After a blood test, it was determined that I may have had a sub-clinical case (no scabbies or symptoms) as I have antibodies.

I sincerely hope this is the case as I would hate to have chicken pox at my advanced age.

[krystynayt.livejournal.com]

You could look into getting the vaccine. For adults, it's actually recommended if you've never had chicken pox.

[krystynayt.livejournal.com]

She got chicken pox FROM the vaccine? That's actually very unusual to get an illness from a vaccine -- you may STILL get the illness because the vaccine hasn't kicked in yet, or you might've been coming down with the illness when you got the vaccine, though...

People used to have chicken pox parties where when one kid got it, all parents sent their kids to play with the infected kid so that they'd all come down with it... and have it over with sooner rather than later.

...I didn't even know they had a vaccine for it. Why was it required?

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

Vaccine's been out for awhile, possibly 3-4 years. It's required now because of the same reasons mumps and measles are required vaccines... they're spread very easily amongst children and can be deadly. Undiagnosed pox can lead to infections of the liver, kidneys, and heart and the pox aren't always recognizable. Tis better to zap them and get it over with-- even if they end up catching the disease from the vaccine (which happens when the kid's immune system is down, and Abbey was ill recently), it's a much milder form.

[krystynayt.livejournal.com]

same reasons mumps and measles

Fair enough.

catching the disease from the vaccine (which happens when the kid's immune system is down, and Abbey was ill recently)

...I still harbor doubts on the exact cause of Abbey's chicken pox. General consensus is that the vaccine wasn't properly processed by the body and thus the kid's still susceptible to it. But that the kid gets it because there's, like, varicella in the air, rather than in her body.

Yeah, I'm REALLY obsessive, for several reasons:
1. I'm interested in medicine
2. I need to procrastinate
3. I like looking stuff up online
4. I am constantly on the lookout for possible mix-ups of correlation and causation (because what happens is that info gets twisted and before you know it, the entire of Long Island is coming down with measles because parents are afraid of their kids getting autism)

...it doesn't really matter. Abbey's got chicken pox and that's that, really. Has she tried connecting the dots yet, Adam? :)

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

It's possible but not always the case-- should probably do some lookups on the polio vaccine, as well. But maybe in a book and not the 'Net; I don't trust the 'Net. ;)

As for my knowledge, I worked in kiddo care. What I know is what I got from seminars with trained professionals (pediatricians and the like) to help us do our jobs.

[krystynayt.livejournal.com]

Actually, I did do some look-ups on the polio vaccine since it's another live vaccine. As for the net... I trust recent online medical journals more than I trust books. :D

I'm going to stop here because otherwise, I'm going to start citing articles as if I have something to prove and really, I don't (not on the topic of medicine anyway).

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

Well if you find something let me know?? I'd like to know, too!! I said the books because I work in a library, it's easier for me to just click through the catalog.

Makes me wonder what other live vaccines there are & what their infection rate is?

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

The only one I know of offhand is the oral form of the polio vaccine (but not the injected variety, oddly). The infection rate, however, is very, very low. Not so low, however, to prevent some parents from refusing its administration. If I remember correctly, we had to sign a release form before we got it done.

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

People used to have chicken pox parties where when one kid got it, all parents sent their kids to play with the infected kid so that they'd all come down with it... and have it over with sooner rather than later.


And so you'd have the chicken pox at a predictable time, rather than Two-Days-Before-The-Family-Vacation-To-Disneyworld.

Not that I want to have had the measles or something, but I sort of feel like having a disease that you get once and stay home from school for a week with is an important part of being a kid. A cold or influenza is not the same sort of experience.

[krystynayt.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's such a rite of passage. Mostly because after the first day or two, you are infectious and itchy but not actively sick so you can, like, be yourself and drive your parents crazy. :D

I have very fond memories of being itchy as all hell and getting a care-package from my kindergarten teacher and the five kids that were NOT out with chicken pox.

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, yes, remember it well. That and Calamine lotion over every square inch of darned near everything in the house.

I'm with you on this one. When I learned that they'd begun implementing the vaccine (somewhere between Abbey and Nik, incidentally, which is why she hasn't gotten the shot until now), my reaction was, "What? You mean my kids don't have to go through this like every other kid in the last 50 years?" Chicken pox, by and large, is a nuisance disease; yes, it can have some wide-reaching consequences in a few extreme cases (which is true for many otherwise harmless diseases), but mostly it's a week of itching on the couch in front of the TV, making forts with the afghans and not missing school all that much. Certainly not in the same category as polio or smallpox, or even the flu.

*shrug* I dunno. If we can keep the youth of America from getting chicken pox, fine. But it's not the most crucial health crisis out there by a long stretch.

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

Even though she got it from the vaccine, it's a much milder case than she would have had otherwise. My niece had them so bad that they were inside her vagina, ears, and mouth. Now aren't you glad she had the vaccine?

[rafaela.livejournal.com]

No need to get quite so...vehement. Nearly all of us here had chickenpox as children; all of us know the horror stories from at least one relative/friend of ours: blisters showing up in interesting places, complications (meningitis, encephalitis, hepatitis) and Reye's syndrome. Yes, it's better that she has a mild case now than a severe case when she's older. It's still frustrating, because there's really no treatment other than addressing the symptoms. It's all the more frustrating because this happened at the behest of the school, who presumably were seeking to prevent this very thing from happening.

I'm not opposed to vaccines on principle; all my shots are up to date, even my tetanus booster. I'm wondering if maybe more work needs to be done with the chickenpox vaccine, because it's so new. There's always room for improvement. Maybe that particular vaccine shouldn't be mandatory - chickenpox tends to be fairly mild in school-age children, a lot of children are vaccinated anyway, and complications from chickenpox are no more common and certainly no less frightening than complications of other contagious illnesses for which vaccines either don't exist or aren't mandatory - e.g., influenza, conjunctivitis, and strep (including scarlet fever), all of which have the same risk of really nasty side effects. In fact, there other diseases, just as contagious, which have far worse symptoms, and a far greater chance of complications. Pneumonia, infectious mononucleosis - no vaccine, and with mono and viral pneumonia, no treatment other than supportive care.

(Of course, I might be cynical and say that since mono rarely if ever manifests full-blown in children under the age of 15, no one really thinks of it as being so important to mention loudly the amazing contagiousness of the Epstein-Barr Virus, where children [in whom the disease manifests, if at all, as a mild nonspecific cold/flu like infection] often act as carriers to the disease's prime victims, young adults. Because sick adults aren't worth the trouble. But don't mind me.)

Anyway, the point - and I do have one, digressions aside, I've read a lot on epidemiology and infectious diseases - is that Adam's frustration is not unfounded, and that perhaps the school is a tad overzealous in requiring all children to have the chickenpox vaccination, especially as it is a new vaccination compared to MMR, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, pertussis etc. which have been around for over 30 years.

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

Anna, darling, I think "vehement" is the wrong word, especially since my comment was what... two sentences?

I know you're feeling poorly yourself, but I am going to say that whapping me upside the head for trying to make Adam feel better was a little unfounded.

[kraftygal.livejournal.com]

ooh. Poor R. and Ms. Abbey... The men in the house are hopefully catering apprppriately to these gals.

:o)

Abbey's case sounds minor, thank goodness. As stated, it really is not an illness that drags yo down but damn, I can so remember the itchiness they caused. Then again, I had them everywhere!

I'll have to remember this as I cannot recall if Kayla was vaccinated yet. I don not think so and I know Lily has not...

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

If it hasn't happened in the last four years, it hasn't happened. Abbey's eight, and she was already too old to have gotten it mandatorily when it was first put into wide circulation.

[merowme.livejournal.com]

Okay since everyone covered every possible icky thing about Chicken Pox. I'm very glad that she got a minor case and is getting better quickly.

Tips on putting a cat into a crate/carrier. Two person job apparently since Lucy seems to be a spaz.

1. Scruff her tightly. This will not hurt her. Should make her go limp. Hopefully then you can stick her butt end in without her seeing where she's going.

2. Butt end first. If she sees where she's going, she will use her front legs to prop herself against the carrier and scratch everything in sight.

3. If you can. Get control of those front legs. Not near the claws. Either have the other person hold one leg in each hand or have a finger between each leg and use the others to grab her legs.

Remember these are just tips and no matter how dumb you think she is, cats are smarter than humans, trust me. They have Jedi Mind Tricks.

Good luck and may the Force Be With You.

I'm on drugs and cold medicine but the advice should be good.

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

Jedi Mind Tricks, indeed. *laugh* But thank you for the tips; we'll definitely keep them in mind. In the end, we had to dust off the old wrap-it-in-an-old-T-shirt technique to cram her in.