Growing Up III, Painful....

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Last weekend, Joyce were enjoying growing up with her 7 teeth and life is full of wonderful things, at least for a 18 months old girl. Today (in fact on 21 March), growing up is not fun anymore for her, sad....

On Wednesday** (21 march) characteristic spots started to appearing on her body, mainly on her body and head rather than the hands and becoming itchy raw pox, small open sores that we realised IT IS......

Chickenpox!!!!!

Chickenpox according to Wikipedia is "...caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), also known as human herpes virus 3 (HHV-3), one of the eight herpes viruses known to affect humans..."

Also "Chickenpox has a 10-14 day incubation period and is highly contagious by air transmission two days before symptoms appear. Following primary infection there is usually lifelong protective immunity from further episodes of chickenpox. Recurrent chickenpox is fairly rare but more likely in people with compromised immune systems."

"The chickenpox lesions (blisters) start as a 2–4 mm red papule which develops an irregular outline (rose petal). A thin-walled, clear vesicle (dew drop) develops on top of the area of redness. This "dew drop on a rose petal" lesion is very characteristic for chickenpox. After about 8–12 hours the fluid in the vesicle gets cloudy and the vesicle breaks leaving a crust. The fluid is highly contagious, but once the lesion crusts over, it is not considered contagious. The crust usually falls off after 7 days sometimes leaving a crater-like scar. Although one lesion goes through this complete cycle in about 7 days, another hallmark of chickenpox is the fact that new lesions crop up every day for several days. Therefore, it may take about a week until new lesions stop appearing and existing lesions crust over. "

So, little Joyce really suffered from these "fluid" as it is very itchy and it is so itchy that she can't help scratching them with her figures...OH NO! Don't do that, it will leave scar on your beautiful face, my dear!! Alamak...growing up is more painful for papa leh...

Take care, my little girl.... growing-up is not always easy, your brother Lucas can confirmed that, for he also experienced it.

Don't worry, after this you will be immune. But wikipedia said "Second infections with chickenpox occur in immunocompetent individuals" ...

How ah? growing-up...itsh...painfullllll.....


**Joyce was the 3rd to be infected after Siew Lee and Matthew who got it 2 weeks ago believed to be contacted the virus in Sungai Rambai during CNY. And now, we are keeping a close eye on Lucas, who will be the last one in the family who have YET to develop "pox" :-)