|
Chicken pox is caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that in later life causes shingles. Chicken pox is mainly unpleasant but not dangerous, except for women during pregnancy, when it can cause severe damage to the fetus. In almost all other cases, chicken pox is mild - usually, only cases of adult chicken pox (the disease mainly affects children) tend to be severe and sometimes life threatening.
In spite of the blistering, chicken pox usually does not even leave any lasting scars. The problem however is that the varicella zoster virus remains in the bodies of children affected by chicken pox, and they can develop shingles later in life when the virus somehow gets reactivated. Shingles is a much more severe disease, with much harsher symptoms, including headaches, fever, itching, rashes, body aches and tingling, and lasting scars and nerve damage.
For this reason, people today consider it advisable to do whatever is necessary to avoid chicken pox. Earlier, it was considered a good thing to have your chicken pox infection and get it over with during your childhood - in fact, there used to be "pox parties" so that kids could contract chicken pox from each other and then be immune to the disease for the rest of their lives. This may seem crazy now, but at the time, it was probably the only way to develop immunity, and it was much safer to have the disease during childhood than during adulthood.
Today however, a chicken pox vaccine is available, and is in fact mandatory in most parts of the US and Japan. If you live in either of these countries, you should try to find out whether you were vaccinated as a child, and whether you need to be vaccinated again. Your family members should be able to help you, and in addition, you can ask your doctor about this. In any case, the duration for which the vaccine is effective is not too certain - it seems to last for over a decade in some people, while others need to be re-vaccinated after four or five years. You will therefore need to ask your doctor whether you need to be vaccinated or not.
You may also want to consider the fact that the chicken pox vaccine was developed using cell lines from aborted fetal tissue - some people have moral or religious issues with this, and therefore reject the vaccine.
|
