Chicken Pox

To the tune of a childhood song:
One little, two little, three little chicken pox,
four litle, five little, six little chicken pox....

Man oh man did we have chicken pox around here about 3 weeks ago. Fortunately, none of our adults or older kids got it. First Hector got it, then all 6 little boys in his house, a day or so later, all the little girls, etc. And it ran like mad fire all around school too as you can well imagine.

One little boy in the Oasis community came to our our tri-weekly Bible story and feeding program. He looked absolutely miserable. He was covered in blisters, but he wouldn't let me look too closely at him. They didn't look like chicken pox blisters to me. He had clear fluid filled blisters on his face, in his ears, on his trunk, arms, lets, etc. You could hardly find 1" btw any blisters. He even had sores in his mouth, poor thing. He said he'd had a fever, and denied he had any pain, but was itching terribly. Two days later, with permission from the administrator here, I took a staff member to go check on the boy and to possibly take him to the doctor. It ends up that he lives in the house I described in an earlier blog. The house has a side-ways turned mattress springs as one it's walls. Anyhow, the blisters looked much better, obviously healing. Unfortunately, his 3 siblings were in various stages of the same condition. I guess it was some form of chicken pox? I also discovered that he had gone to the MD a few days earlier. All they gave him was generic Tylenol, nothing for the itching! Can you imagine having a serious case of chicken pox and having nothing to help the itch? Or can you imagine being the mom of 4 kids with chicken pox without being able to give them any itch relief? Of course I warned them, particularly the dad, about the dangers of getting chicken pox and how to prevent it's spread.

Now several weeks later, all looks good.