The Pox that Stole Christmas

Hi, All. Aunt Hys here again with a holiday bummer anecdote for you...

So, everyone was down in L.C. for Santa's big show, when Van, my 1-year-old son and Gracie's adoring cousin, who had been sporting (for several days) something that might loosely be called a "bumpy rash", but might have been a hyperactive flea, spiked a fever.

Nobody panicked. Gracie and her parents went home to hold their breath while I called the pediatrician. Verdict, bring him in to rule out chickenpox. Chickenpox!!!!

I hadn't thought of chickenpox.

In an HSCT family, this translates roughly to "Run for cover!" We were a thousand miles from our doc's office, so we were left with the local urgent care joint. So it was. I packed him into the car and thought all the way to the urgent care place about how I put off that chicken pox vaccine because we didn't want to expose Gracie to live virus, and, irony of ironies, I had by that action potentially exposed her to a very mean mother of a live virus in the rootin', tootin' intact-guns-blazing chicken pox disease itself.

We had a peripheral blood draw. (Fun!) And a sort of nebulous diagnosis of "Viral rash, may-or-may-not-be-chickenpox-so-go-stay-in-a-hotel-for-a-couple-of-days" and orders to come back on Christmas Eve for the "is you is or is you ain't chickenpox" appointment.

Hello Mr. ...-ist! Merry bleepin' Christmas!

Van remained in quarantine at Noni's house, riding the Tylenol rollercoaster. Gracie and her family remained on clock watch, waiting for Van's 24 hours fever-free. December 24th, I hauled him back in for confirmation that we were safe from the chicken pox. I was sure the doc would let us off the hook. Alas, the most I could get out of her was "It doesn't look like chickenpox, but it doesn't look like anything else either, so it still might be chickenpox. Here let me swab his throat for strep." The throat swab produced a gusher of barf the likes of which I've never seen, and came back negative to boot, but there was still the fever.

I'm calling it Grinchpox until somebody tells me different.

So Gracie had to stay home Christmas day, and it was the first Christmas in 30 years that we all missed Sarah. Sarah just smiled at all my futile apology, saying "It's all so we can have many more Christmases with Gracie, right?"

...And that's the important thing. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!