United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

My daughter Anna, who had the chicken pox at 4 months, 10 months AND 22 months, woke up this morning with what seems to be her fourth case. The symptoms are the same every time -- runny nose, fever, general crankiness, and then suddenly a bunch of pox I'm pretty sure it's not shingles, because it's along her hairline and on her cheeks, not around her waist or on her stomach.

Anna has a plexus brachialis injury on her right side (occured at birth) and the only explanation I can think of for her recurring chicken pox is that her nervous system was somehow affected during the regrowth of the nerves. The virus remains latent in the nervous system and can come back, usually as shingles. (Sorry for the strange language/sentence structure, I'm an American living in the Netherlands and all my PB vocabulary is in Dutch, so I'm translating here as I go.) Anna was not operated on for her injury, she had a sudden recovery at five months and was taken off the surgery list. We are under observation at the Leids University Medical Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. Her function is at about 90% and she has managed to get that far by herself.

My question is, has anyone else experienced this, recurrent chicken pox? Children are not vaccinated against chicken pox in the Netherlands, it is considered a minor childhood sickness and almost everyone gets it at some point (children with chicken pox are encouraged to go to school, if they feel well enough -- so it spreads rather quickly

I know I had chicken pox 3 times when I was a kid (I am OBPI), but them my 2 oldest boys had the vaccine, then got chicken pox twice! My two girls had the vaccine and got it once. Only the youngest (who is only 3) hasn't had it yet.

I also know that as a child I had Rubella. Then with all 5 of my children I was tested, and was told that my blood tests confirmed I didn't have an immunity. So I had a Measles shot when I was pregnant with EACH ONE!!!

I don't think it had a thing to do with my OBPI though. I think some people bodies just don't develop immunities the way others do.

I had it 3 times. My last case when I was around 10, it was so bad that they were even on my tongue! After that, never again.

My girls never had chicken pox. But my nephew did and my sister gave him Aveno oatmeal baths.

I had it twice too as a child. Nothing to do with BPI/nervous system. Some people do get it again. They say it is uncommon and these 2nd infections are called breakthrough infections. They tend to be milder than the first time the child had chicken pox.
Marieke
http://nurse-to-be08.blogspot.com/

There are so many different strains of chicken pox and now they are even stronger because of the vaccines.

Unrelated to your post, I know a very young child who actually got a TBPI right after she received the chicken pox virus. She's still struggling gaining function. How sad is that. Chicken pox is also one of the viruses that can cause bpi while in utero.

sorry, typo
received chicken pox virus should be chicken pox vaccine

Thank you all for your responses, I'm guessing it's not EP related but just how Anna is...

There is one another question I had for you all, about speech development. Anna has an unusual vocabulary quirk, in that she says her words backwards forwards, when she first learns them. Reed instead of deer, god instead of dog, that kind of thing. It happens when she moves a word from her passive vocabulary, which is very large for a child her age, to her active vocabulary, which is average. It takes about a week for the signals to unscramble, and then she says the word correctly.

Has anyone else experienced this, or something similar. She´ll turn three in January and we´d like to have a more informed answer for when she has her school screening. Children start kindergarten here at the age of four, and they´re screened for possible dyslexia etc. shortly after they turn three. I´m wondering if this is EP related, which I don´t think so, because no one else in the EP community here has ever heard of something like this. Or if it´s just an early warning sign for dyslexia, in which case I´d like to start working with her in any way I can.

We always had our daughter evaluated privately for speech, OT and PT and then brought the results to the school. When you have a private evaluation, the results aren't being slanted one way or another - whereas the school may slant based on what kind of budget they are working with during that year. And the school evaluations won't be as thorough as the private ones. (at least the ones in my district aren't). I have another child who used to write upside down and backward and I thought she might be dyslexic. But it turned out that she KNEW she was doing it and could stop it at anytime, so they didn't consider it dyslexia.

About the speech...by daughter did/does some of those quirky things too. She's been in speech since 3.5, is now 6. From what I understand it is related to word/phonics retrieval. She holds onto the last sound she hears and says it first...so with dog, she has the "g" sound in her brain so she says that sound first and it comes out "dog". She still always says "no" when she reads "on". She's in 1st grade now, and we're working a lot on sight words with flash cards, spelling (which we do every night in a different way...one night we'll spell the words on paper, another orally, another we'll move magnetic letters, etc.).

We also work with her on categorizing her vocabulary, which is also a part of the word retrieval process...she has to re-learn how to catergorize things for rapid retrieval, which has it's own set of quirkiness...she'll say things like "girl" when she sees the word "her" on a card or something like that...she's clearly trying to access the word from a category, but it's not terrbily fluid.

She is also working on the phonetics and sounding out words, but really that doesn't not come very easy for her (when she's tired she switches to the categorization, and does those "girl" "her" things....but there has been a huge improvement over the last year in this area.

I'd be happy to answer more detailed questions from our experiences with this...it's definately a challenge, but we're finding ways to give her the tools to make her successful.

I had it 3 times too. Docs say that if you get it twice, it is not impossible to get it every time you are exposed.

Marlyn