Hey, I’m a 19 year old male, and a friend of mine from college recently came down with chicken pox. He’s been at home since the virus surfaced, but he contracted it 2 weeks ago.
His girlfriend spent the weekend, and just after she left she discovered she was coming down with them. He couldn’t remember whether or not he had had them, but for 2 weeks he was completely fine. And now he’s sick.
But apparently his doctor has a record of him already having chicken pox. So my question is, am I at risk? I’ve already had them, but if he came down with them, what are the chances that I could get them a second time? And was he contagious for those 2 weeks of incubation, even though he wasn’t symptomatic?
The chances of you coming down with chicken pox for a second time are very, VERY low.
Of course, this assumes you’ve actually had chicken pox, and not another viral illness that was mistaken for it.
Have your doctor check your varicella-zoster serum IgG levels. If you have measurable serum IgG to varicella-zoster virus, you’ve had the chicken pox, and you have nothing to worry about. If you don’t, you may have never caught the virus and should get the vaccine (assuming you don’t come down with the disease itself as a result of your recent exposure).
What they said, but just to add: your friend’s chicken pox behaved just like it should. Once infected, there’s an incubation period of about two weeks, give or take a few days(cdc says 10-21 so I guess give or take a few more). The infected person is only contagious for two days before the pox present themselves and then until they stop weeping and form scabs. And then the itching continues. On and on.
-Lil http://www.cdc.gov/nip/diseases/varicella/
My friend’s sister had never had chicken pox as a kid, and when she was 23 she caught it and it flared up in full force…on her WEDDING DAY! Thank goodness for Photoshop!
I’ve had chicken pox twice…once when I was 2, and once when I was 18. So, it does happen. Apparently, the immunity received from a mild case at 2 was only good enough to get me through all the outbreaks in elementary school. Mine flared up the day after my high school graduation (Actually, you can see the “master pock”, the one I still have a scar from, on my upper arm in some of my graduation photos, so it must have actually started earlier, but I didn’t feel sick until the next day.)
I had them twice myself, once at 9 and once at 14. I was living in the midwest for the first case and the east coast the second one, and I’ve always thought that perhaps I just caught a different strain the second time around. Both times were fairly nasty cases, both times diagnosed by a Dr.
I had them twice. The second time, I was not very sick, and only for a couple of days, but my mother caught them from me and was horribly ill for about a week.
My young relative had the Chicken Pox vaccine as an 18 month old.
As a 4 year old he had a complete blood titer test (for medical reasons unrelated to Chicken Pox – sort of like this is unrealted to the OP but sort of fits) and the test showed no immunity to Chicken Pox. So he had a second vaccination which “took”. Just was sort of an odd thing.
I had chicken pox when most of the neighborhood kids did when I was in first grade. Sometime around Junior year in college, I got them again, and this time it was horribly bad. Like pretty much every bit of skin everywhere was inflamed and swollen… including inside my mouth, ear, and places that would be TMI if I discussed them. My brother, who had also had them as kids, got them again from me this time. I checked with some other former neighbors who I still had some contact with and they all had it a second time later also, although from a different source than my second time as we were living in completely different places.
Other people who had previously had it didn’t pick it up from the college source, so I think it depends upon the strain you were first exposed to, and perhaps age.
I also may have contracted chicken pox twice. Here’s why I say “may:”
When I was, oh, about 18 months old, my older brother and sister (6 and 5) caught chicken pox. Although Mom didn’t notice any pox on me or that I had any symptoms, she also didn’t make much of an effort to keep me separated from my siblings. After I came through many childhood exposures to other kid’s chicken pox bouts as I grew up unscathed, she felt reasonably sure that I must have caught them from my brother and sister way back then, but she was never 100% certain.
My junior year in high school, I caught them from another girl who had them. My case was extremely mild, however; basically, I got to stay home from school for a week with some scratchies, but nothing I couldn’t tolerate. I don’t know that I even had much of a fever.
So now we say I had them twice: my first case was mild, but conferred enough resistance to make it through childhood, and my second very mild case sealed the deal.
You might wanna get checked out anyway, for your own peace of mind, if you’re worried about it. I’ve heard that chicken pox gets increasingly worse with age.
I had the chicken pox twice. The first time was in kindergarten- a very mild case. The second time was in the third grade and I got a raging, nasty full blown case of chicken pox.
I’ve never had chicken pox before, and this thread has me worried. Can you just go to any basic doctor and request a vaccine? Does the vaccine leave a scar, and are you still susceptible to catching a different strain of pox just like if you caught the disease at a young age?
