I really wish the chicken pox vaccine had been widely used when I was younger. Most kids get a sort of vacation with itching, but I was really sick for two weeks and out of school for nearly a month. My clearest memories of it are the visit to the doctor's office where Dad had to carry me in through the back entrance because the doctor wouldn't let me into the waiting room and I was too sick to walk in, and lying in my parents' bed and being so out of it that I felt like I was floating above the bed. I knew I was in the bed, but I couldn't feel myself lying on it. It was really, really awful, and I had pox inside my mouth and down my throat and in my ears and everywhere else, but I don't have scars because I was too sick to scratch.
Anyway, the way people dismiss childhood diseases like chicken pox as rites of passage, as you say, really annoys me because you can't tell when a child is going to have a "normal" experience and when it's going to become a serious medical problem. That statistical unlikeliness really diminishes in importance when it's happening to you or someone you love.
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Date: 2010-11-07 07:49 pm (UTC)Anyway, the way people dismiss childhood diseases like chicken pox as rites of passage, as you say, really annoys me because you can't tell when a child is going to have a "normal" experience and when it's going to become a serious medical problem. That statistical unlikeliness really diminishes in importance when it's happening to you or someone you love.