Hemorrhagic Varicella???

[jeslynmo]

Anyone ever heard of this?
My (mostly flexible in working with me on vaxes) Pediatrician is "really worried" that I won't get my children Varivax because she "had a patient whose older brother had died of Hemorrhagic Varicella."
This was not a patient that she had. The family came to her practice after the little boy had died and they had the daughter.
According to my ped, the boy had been unvaxed and the family "learned their lesson the hard way."
Her logic was that since CP is a virus, if you get the hemorrhagic version, there is nothing that can be done, since antibiotics don't work on viruses. And apparently, her position is that if you are exposed to a person with "normal" CP, you can get the hemorrhagic version... ???

Just another scare tactic?

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

Scare tactic is my gut reaction.

I have found that all Pro-Vax peds have one specific vax they favor. Apparently yours favors the varicella. Maybe she owns stock in it?

ETA-I am also thinking, that since I have never even heard of this virus (And i survived the regular chicken pox) It must be one of those rare ones, like the flesh eating strep?

[JBaxter]

ok....I just talked to a friend who worked on the varicella and asked her if it is possible to get hemorragic varicella She has never heard of it but she said in theory if you had hemophelia it is possible but has not ever heard of an actual person having it happen

[2boyzmama]

http://www.psmid.org.ph/vol17/vol17num2topic6.pdf

I had never heard of hemorrhagic varicella, so I googled it. Here's the first article that popped up.

This dr being worried about it is like a dr being worried about a hang nail because it could get gangrene. Seriously. Hangnails can hurt, can be bothersome, and in some extreme cases could require some medical treatment or even surgery. And in the case of uncontrolled diabetes, it could even lead to amputation. But it's so so so SO rare, no need for the entire population to panic about a hang nail.

[mama2soren]

Yikes. This reminds me of the vet who warned me that I was making a bad choice to not get my cat vaxed for rabies (she was an indoor cat in an apartment!), because oh-my-gosh, what if a rabid bat flew in through a (screened-in) window and bit her? Seriously. I didn't go back.

I am going to assume that your doc doesn't warn vaxing parents about hemorrhagic varicella, even though the vax isn't anywhere close to 100% effective... If it were me, I'd call her on that.

[Fyrestorm]

This is almost as bad as when on our one and only trip to a Ped, we were told that DD would die if we didn't allow her to get the HIB vaccine...I actually clarified and she meant that the child would die due to lack of the vaccine, not from the disease itself.

(HIB was her pet vaccine, her partner's pet vaccine was DTap. They all have one)

I also think Peds think that if they can scare you into one, then they have gotten the genie out of the bottle and can convince you to do more.