Yes, you can get chicken pox twice!

By TOM SYKES FOR MAILONLINE
Updated:

Tom Sykes

Tom Sykes: Regrets going to a 'pox party'

My friend Alexandra is very dear to me, but I find her attitude towards medical science rather exasperating.

You see, she’s one of those mothers who gives her kids boiled nettle juice to drink when they have a fever and thinks Calpol is harmful.

Me, I do whatever the doctor tells me.

So when Alexandra rang us two weeks ago to inform us that her children had chickenpox and that she was having a ‘pox party’, expressly for the purpose of transmission of the disease, first I checked on the internet to find out whether deliberately infecting your children with chickenpox was a good idea.

As the disease is usually more severe in adults than in children (we don’t know why, but it’s thought to be something to do with hormonal changes post-puberty), many parenting websites think it is a good idea.

The belief is that a dose of the pox will do your kids no harm and give them subsequent immunity to the disease.

So I took the children to the jamboree myself, safe in the knowledge I’d be immune because I’d had chickenpox as a child.

The bash was a celebration of communicable conditions. There was sunshine, ice cream, and all the spotty children you could shake a stick at.

‘Was that fun, Bento?’ I asked my son.

‘Yes, Daddy,’ he said, licking a lollipop that had been passed around 20 kids to ensure effective transmission of varicella zoster virus. ‘Molly said they might be having a measles party next week.’

The party was earlier this month. Over the next few days, we checked the children’s
backs and tummies for spots. They remained defiantly healthy.

But over the weekend, I noticed I was getting a very sore throat. Disgustingly, I took to spitting rather than swallowing, because every swallow felt like I was ingesting razor blades. I felt feverish and had sickly palpitations. I was hardly able to get out of bed.

Then, on Monday night, the spots came. By Tuesday, I had about 100 of them all over my torso and legs.

‘What are those spots Daddy?’ asked Bento — still totally spot-free.

‘Are they chickenpox?’

‘No,’ I replied defensively. ‘You can only get chickenpox once in your life and I had it when I was a little boy.’

‘They look like chickenpox,’ he replied.

On day two of the spots, I decided to call a nurse. Shingles causes a horrid blistery rash, not individual spots, she said. There was no doubt, I had chickenpox.

It turns out that, although it is very unusual, you can get chickenpox more than once without the benefit of reincarnation.

You are especially likely to be re-infected if you are exposed to the virus when you are run-down.

The constant itch of the chickenpox blister is like nothing on earth. It basically
feels like your skin is on fire.

The only consolation in all this is that my second bout of chickenpox should make me even more resistant to shingles.

But guess what? Now the kids really do have chickenpox. And I think they caught it from me.

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