Help with Molluscum contagiosum - Page 4

[wantingagirl2b#4]

Just wanted to say hi and that I also have a 9 yr old competitive swimmer in our home too! Is there a swimmers board?

Originally Posted by 3boysmom

My ds is a competitive swimmer, so he is in pools an average of 8-12 hours per week! (More in the summer when he is also swimming just for fun). I guess it's amazing that he made it to the ripe old age of 9 before getting it!

[TigerTail]

Originally Posted by Gitti

I am just asking a question so please don't flame me:

Could the varicella vaccine be the culprit for Molluscum contagiosum?

If your child did NOT have the varicella (chicken pox) vaccine and also was NOT in contact with anyone who's had it or who had shingles, but does have the Molluscum virus, then ok, I am wrong.

I am just curious. I've read that there might be a connection. ?

nope, no cp vax or contact, but ds1 caught molluscum years before he had cp. because of the excema, it was getting really bad (as in, 'mama, PLEASE make the bumps go away') & some freak derm said he was going to slice them off (not on my watch on my 2 yr old, mf), so i got a 2nd opinion with a better doc and they used a blistering agent (i think made from spanish fly! hey, natural ) & it looked awful, but a few visits cleared it up (he showed no fear of going back, just wanted to be rid of the damn things).

my littler one caught it and had the same treatment, but without excema there was no scarring.

getting it on faces, eyes, etc- it was just not cool. i wanted to catch it before it got that bad. it really upset him, and not from what we said or friends or anything, his self-image was really suffering. i'm glad that freak derm didn't cut them off two at a time, the other drs i talked to said it would've probably come back (& I know traumatized the bejeezus out of him). he really didn't mind the cantha-whosit blistering stuff.

[TigerTail]

Originally Posted by tommom

I have been having my son go topless in the sun with no sunscreen on the bumps for a little while each day. I have been putting sea salt in his bath and he went in the ocean the other day. Brr!The zymaderm seems to be working although it is very labor intensive. You are supposed to drip the liquid onto each bump without actually touching the bump. Good luck with a two year old! I have to bribe him with promises of a tofutti cutie or a smoothie pop. Once I get rid of the molluscum I'll be looking for a forum discussing ways to get him off the sugar!:

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yeah, we did that too first (not the bribing ). i believe it is teratogenic, so be exceedingly careful touching it, possibly pg ladies, ok? (gotta read the small print!)

[wantingagirl2b#4]

Mama's is there a way to do a poll on here to tally about the whole pool idea? I thought I saw on other threads where you can do a poll but I don't know how. Anyone?

[TigerTail]

sorry mirlee, missed your post. god bless the spanish fly, huh? (it wasn't *that* bad painwise; my nearly 3 & 2 yr old were old enough to understand what would happen, & not freak- the blisters were short-lived, caused a night or two of stiffness, & they gladly went back to get more. looked much worse than they felt, apparently.)

it's natural, dammit! (one of the most highly regarded teaching derms in the southeast did it- now if he could only miracle-cure excema ).

[tommom]

daniedb, what finally made your child's molluscum go away? Time? My guy has a very strong immune system, no excema, and eats great. I tried to pop one but the poor thing freaked out and I wasn't even successful in opening it. Oh and by the way, we were going to the public pool for waterbabies once a week when he developed them! :

[Lisa Lubner]

My son has one or two. I had them too at one point, on my fingers and on my forearm. I finally made a choice to stop fiddling with them, stepped up my hygene, and they just went away. I noticed that they start tingling and itching shortly before they would disappear... but if you scratch or pick at them then they just don't go away!

So I would say... keep them clean, teach your child not to pick or touch, and let it take it's course.

Didn't read the whole thread, so sorry if this is redundant!

[bamamom]

Aye aye aye. I'm kicking myself in the rear end!

My dd has had this for about 10 or 12 ish weeks. It doesnt seem to bother her too bad, she does have one or two really red ones that have taken forever to go down, and one skintag looking one on her upper arm/armpit area.

I was told by the ped that it would go away on its own in 6 to 8 weeks. That all the dermatologist would do is cut/scrape/burn them off and it really didnt stop the virus.

So we've waited it out and she STILL has them, and I ordered the SilverCure stuff today. Hers arent that severe so I'm hoping it works.

Also, I've been letting her and ds bathe together. Ds has shown no signs of them until today I spotted 2 tiny little white clear bumps on his thigh. I am praying fiercely that its just something else! :

I will stop letting her take a tub bath tonight!

PS..No public pools, no vaxes. Nada.

[starry_mama]

My son Danny had these for about 2 years. We read (on MDC I believe) that applying vinegar directly to the spots and putting vinegar in the tub would help, and it did after only a week. I can't believe we dealt with them for 2 years when the solution was so easy!

[tommom]

How much vinegar? White vinegar? I know the apple cider vinegar worked on two of ds's spots after keeping a cotton ball soaked in it under a band aid over night. It kind of hurts though because he now has some slight excema due to all the treating I have been doing and when i put the cotton ball on he SCREAMS. I have to do it before my dh gets home from work because it upsets him almost as much as my ds! Lucky me I get to be the bad guy! His left side is looking better, the right is looking worse. We've been dealing with them for almost three months now. I read that that is the average time. Anyone else?:

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[Mamato3wild ponnie]

Ds #3 has had the bumps for over a year and time and time again they get infected and all red and raised up and even gooy oze comes out of them. I have used tea tree oil and vinegar and peroxide and breast milk and nothing is helping. I do noticed that they seem to get get infected about 24 hours after being at the pool. We havent been in about 2 weeks and none of them are infected at this moment. He's still breast feeding at 39 months so as far as his immune system..i feel that we have that covered. So where are they coming from? I'm not sure, it looks like the average age is 24-36 months when they first appear. Now dd has a couple of them and she scratches them all the time..i feel so bad that now she has them. I ordered the zy--something the other day online....it's tea tree based. Hopefully this will help. I just want them gone. I also noticed one on his little pee pee the other day. I about lost it and figured i needed to do something more about them.

[wantingagirl2b#4]

We had no luck with silver cure :-( Maybe for others but vinegar or nothing really worked for us except the unforbidden do not POP!! Well we did and was careful to let the waxy core not touch the other healthy skin and removed waxy core and threw away immediately. We dealt with it alot longer than 3 months tommom. I hope you don't have to though. Good luck to all of you I know how frustrating it is.

[tommom]

ARGH! I tried popping. First I squeezed, hard, and nothing came out. Then I tried a sterilized needle, nothing came out. Both times the scream was blood curdling. Maybe he has extra tough skin but judging from the way he swells up from bug bites and the random rashes he gets I'd guess not. I'm not sure if I can go the popping route again although I'd like to. We have been trying to avoid the water too. I think it helps. It is hard though as we live in the lakes region and it has been 90 degrees. :

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[daniedb]

Originally Posted by tommom

daniedb, what finally made your child's molluscum go away? Time? My guy has a very strong immune system, no excema, and eats great. I tried to pop one but the poor thing freaked out and I wasn't even successful in opening it. Oh and by the way, we were going to the public pool for waterbabies once a week when he developed them! :

From my post above, so sorry for the repetition.

We tried Aldara, after I did a great deal of research on it. From what I've read, MC are not recognized by the child's body as a foreign invader, so there's no immune response to it. Aldara is a cream that you dab on just on the MC themselves, and it works almost like a signal, to alert the body's immune system to a foreign body, and serves to "turn it on" to attack the MC and kill them. Once they are gone, using the cream, they are supposed to not reappear except in unusual circumstances. We used the cream for about 2 months, and did see an improvement. It is a longer-term solution, and we weren't getting the relief we thought was worth the effort. It's a long, drawn-out process, and since I was PG at the time, I wore gloves and a q-tip to apply it so I couldn't touch it and absorb it through my skin. It's very strong stuff, and does have a risk of scarring. The generic name is Imiquimod, so if you want to do some googling, there you go.

My sister is a ped, and in her practice, there's a wonderful ped. dermatologist. We talked to him, she had a consult with him about it, and we, again, after a great deal of deliberation, decided to try curettage, where the doc gently scraps each MC lesion in order to release the contagious inner core.


Quote:
Curettage. The viral material in the center of the bump is scraped out. A local or topical anesthetic can be used to numb the area. A small scraping instrument called a curette is used to quickly remove the bumps. This procedure is very effective and not too painful. It may cause scarring.

Henry was about 2 1/2 at the time, and it was a really difficult decision to make, but I can tell you now how relieved and glad I am we did it. It was very fast, and he had probably 150-200 lesions, and on our follow-up visit, there was not one left, and he has not had any since. It is quite an intense process as a mom, because it can be scary-looking. Each MC bleeds when the doc scrapes it, so there is quite a bit of blood. However, they immediately wrapped him in gauze, so he looked like a little mummy, and by the time we got him that evening, and got him in the bath, he already looked a zillion times better. That very night, I started slathering him with an eczema cream I made that is shea butter and lots of healing oils, and kept it up until the lesions were gone.

He doesn't have one scar, nor has he had a return of the MC. That's what worked for us, so I HTH, and feel free to PM or ask if you have any questions!

I just can't imagine trying to pop them myself. Eeek! Not only would Henry have freaked out, but I wouldn't have trusted myself to be able to clean them accurately enough to prevent them from spreading, since the additional MC are created when the inner core bursts and spreads on the skin.

[bamamom]

Mentally I am frantically debating what to do. Our silvercure kit is on the way to us, but should I go have them removed by the dermatologist? they spread even since overnight, and I dont know how she'd get them all :

[tommom]

I looked for a pediatric dermatologist because I was thinking the same thing. The closest one to me is several hours away so I guess that's out for now. I say if there is one in your area, go for it. Let me know how it goes. I just want them gone!:

[bamamom]

We've been using the Silver cure for about 5 ish days and we're already seeing improvement!

I have been completely unable to remove any of the cores or pop them , like the instructions say, but The silver stuff seems to be working. Some of them are just disappearing, some are just shrinking and turning red.

I will keep you all posted. If I feel its necessary and some of them dont die soon, I will probably take her to the ped dermatologist to see if any can be removed quickly.

[littlecityfarmer]

I don't know why I didn't think to search here for MC cures sooner! DD has a 5-6 lesions on her eyelid and around her left eye orbit (temple area), including one really huge one that has been there for about 5 months now-- it think it was the blister that started them all spreading. When DS had MC a couple of years ago, the lesions were there for a few months before they either went away on their own or the Tea Tree Oil worked... But, since these are on DD's eyelid/lashline, I don't can't fathom using TTO or even vinegar for fear it would really sting... I'm actually leaning towards surgical removal if they don't resolve on their own, even though I'm sure they'd have to give DD a strong sedative to calm her down enough for the procedure, because I'm really concerned that she's going to end up damaging her cornea from all the eye-rubbing.

We had a consult with a pediatric Ophthalmologist on or Ped's recommendation, because the big lesion seems to really irritate her eye. He advised us to keep the lesions as clean as possible, keep her from rubbing them, and to come back in three months for further planning.... ..

FWIW, DD is otherwise healthy, has only had DTaP vax, eats a balanced diet with lots of vege and probiotics, and minimal sugar...

[bamamom]

The dermatologist thinks the Silver Cure is actually working, plus she wants us to use the Alderra (Aldara?) 3x a week on top of that. She said she could not physically remove them b/c it would absolutely scar her. And she wasnt willing to scar her. So we're still treating it, but it looks better!

[tommom]

Maybe i should get silver cure! My ds's are slowly clearing up with apple cider vinegar but as i mentioned earlier I can only treat a couple at a time as it stings. Is the silver cure a pain to apply? The zymaderm required only applying to the bumps which was next to impossible on an active two year old who is sick to death of me rubbing various potions under his arms. Can the silver cure be applied to a wide area? I looked it up on their website. I liked the idea of their liquid bandage style stuff that you apply after a bump has opened. i would guess that prevents spreading. :

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