My sister got it too, it was horrible and after it had gone you get a really horribly dry flaky face for a few weeks, damn you forgetful mother!

You are. I kept meaning to get it while I was working in paeds, because I'd only had one shot when I was about 5, and my mum had pointed out I'd need a booster to be immune. However, by the time I got around to speaking to occupational health about it, I'd almost finished my paeds job, and there didn't seem like much point.

I didn't know you were meant to get a booster of the MMR vaccine until I began my job at the hospital, and they wouldn't let me start work until I got my MMR booster and TB test.

I remember getting an injection in high school... that may have been it?! They come to the school and do a vaccination drive basically. Ya folks sign for you to hve it and you line up with your class. I am pretty sure it was MMR, but I can't be 100% on that.

my dad caught chicken pox as an adult (they call it shingles at that point) and when he got it it was BAD. the doctor said that people can actually die from it as an adult.

but people are right, the chicken pox vaccine doesn't prevent chicken pox at all. and the idea that you can only get chicken pox once is a complete myth. more people don't get it again, but because it's a strand of herpes that never goes away, it can rear it's ugly little head again at any time, just like it did with my dad. i know someone who's had it pop up 3 times.

People CAN die from it as an adult, but it's extremely rare. I looked up the numbers when this was mentioned in the HPV vaccine forum thread, and I can't remember now, but it's something like 100 adults in the whole of the US a year, which is tiny in terms of population.

Usually it comes back as shingles rather than chicken pox though. But I'm told shingles is incredibly painful.

My mom got shingles when she lived in South Africa, after a spider bit her face. She told me it was the worst illness she has ever experienced.

Singles is different, but caused by the same virus.

Shingles is the adult form of chicken pox. I opened my previous post saying that he caught chicken pox as an adult and then stated that it's actually called shingles so people would know what I was talking about right off the bat. A lot of people don't know what shingles is.

But I had chickenpox as an adult, when I was 20. It was chickenpox, not shingles. They are different.

ok so i guess we're going to be technical about it.

shingles is the reactivation of the chicken pox virus that occurs mostly in people over 60, though it can reactivate in people younger (as in my dad's case). The reactivation can be caused by stress or immunodeficiency caused by AIDS/HIV or other immuno-compromising diseases. You cannot get shingles if you've never had chicken pox. I don't know if you had chicken pox before age 20, but if you hadn't, that's why you didn't have shingles. That's not to say that a person can't catching chicken pox twice, because you can, it's just less likely to happen once you reach adulthood.

Oh I know it's the same virus and you have to have had chickenpox to get it.

BUT I was just saying that it's not the 'adult' form of chickenpox as chickenpox and shingles ARE different. Your dad had shingles, not the 'adult form of chickenpox'.

And yes I had it very mild as a child. But I have heard of some people catching chickenpox three times.

Shingles is CHICKEN POX. It is the exact same virus. It's just that you can't get shingles unless you've had chicken pox. It's a re-manifestation of the virus. If it wasn't the same thing then you wouldn't be able to catch chicken pox from someone with shingles.

Think of it like this, a baby and an adult are both humans. Just because one looks and acts differently than the other doesn't mean they're not essentially the same thing: human. It just means that they're in different stages. You can't become an adult unless you've been a baby. Just like you can't get shingles unless you've had chicken pox. But an adult can create a baby (like getting chicken pox from someone who has shingles).

Does that make my point clearer?

It's still not the adult form of chickenpox, because an adult can get actual chickenpox, and not shingles. You just sounded like to me you were saying that an adult can't get chickenpox, they can only get shingles.
From wiki; ' Once an episode of chickenpox has resolved, the virus is not eliminated from the body but can go on to cause shingles—an illness with very different symptoms—often many years after the initial infection.' (From herpes zoster page, shingles does not have a page)
Lets just call it the herpes zoster virus, there we go everyone's happy.

My argument is, HIV causes AIDS, yes? But you wouldn't call AIDS 'the grown up version of HIV'. Yes they are caused by the same virus, but they are different illnesses.

Anyhoo, Transit says that you can get shingles if you've not had chickenpox. I am too lazy to research this so if someone who isn't hungover could do this, I'd like it.

Shingles is just major chicken pox, so they can have the exact same symptom, which is why someone who has not had chicken pox can get shingles, instead of being diagnosed with severe chicken pox. Kind of like how tonsilitus and glandular fever are the same virus, but have different effects, hence two different illnesses, I am aware that this probably makes zero sense!

I just wikipedia'd Shingles and it looks MUCH fucking worse than chickenpox, eugh!!

Thought I'd inflict it on the rest of you mwaha!

Also, my mom works in a hospital and I just asked her about this and she said that kids, whilst rare, can get shingles SO it's not the adult form, so THERE!! (not directed at you Transit lol)

Hahaha, bored of this argument now ;D

You can't get shingles if you've never had chicken pox.

Robyn Cummins year 11 at Walton Girls' Highschool, never had Chicken Pox, had a month off, due to shingles so then loads of people were off school incase they caught it.

how can they prove she never had chicken pox before? not everyone gets the same symptoms of chicken pox.

ok, wait. let me rephrase this since i'm being taken so literally today. it's either one of two things to explain this.

1. robyn had had chicken pox before but didn't know it because her symptoms weren't bad.

or

2. robyn has the chicken pox vaccine (thus the virus had been introduced to her body)

but honestly, the ONLY way you can get shingles is if you already have the virus in your system. sorry that i forgot to mention the thing about the vaccine earlier.

The vaccine wasn't about when we were children, her brother nearly died from chicken pox as a toddler as it caused his throat to swell so he couldn't breath, so her parents were very watchful and absolutely no one with pox were allowed near her or family, when she was 15 her little sister had pox and then Robyn developed shingles a day after her sisters rash came out then she was hospitalised as her throat was doing the same thing that it did to her older brother.

Everything I've ever read in both medical journals (I work at a clinic) and stuff online says you can only get shingles if you already have the virus. So maybe she had the virus and didn't know it. Not everyone exudes the same symptoms when they have chicken pox.

I would guess it's entirely possible she was exposed to the virus, but just didn't develop symptoms. Unusual I would have thought, but probably possible.

Transit! You're giving completely incorrect medical information again (and you've been sounding so sensible lately!) Tonsilitis and glandular fever are NOT the same virus. Tonsillitis can be either viral or bacterial (usually strep). Glandular fever (mono) is caused by a specific virus called the Epstein Bar Virus. In fact, if a doctor misdiagnoses glandular fever as strep tonsillitis and treats with amoxicillin (usually it would be penicillin, which is safer and prevents this problem), an antibiotic, it can actually cause an extremely severe rash in a person with glandular fever.

They are definitely NOT caused by the same virus (chicken pox and shingles are though).

i was just typing this when the little "new message" thing popped up. so i will continue it here

"maybe I just shouldn't have said that it's the "adult form" of chicken pox because that's technically a misnomer because I guess that implies that as an adult you can only get shingles, not chicken pox. But I really meant it as it's "chicken pox" that people typically only get in adulthood. (yes i know there are rare cases of children getting shingles, but that's not common). My point was that it's a form of chicken pox that you typically only get as an adult.

And no, you cannot get shingles if you've never had chicken pox. It's a proven fact. And I have researched it.

Shingles is essentially the same as chicken pox, except when it manifests it's much worse than most people have with the initial bout of chicken pox.

We're just playing semantics here. And we are obviously are never going to agree on this so I'm not going to spend any more time debating this with you. I don't mean that in a rude way at all but I'm not going to convince you of anything you're not going to convince me of anything.