Well, what do we have here?

I will give you a hint-no, it's not a zit. That, my friends, is a bump associated with varicella (otherwise known as chicken pox). Now I know that you all are wondering who in the household has this lovely mark of distinction? Um, that would be me. I never had chicken pox as a child nor did I get the vaccine. I have been in contact with the nasty disease 3 times in my life and managed to never get it. Just a year or two ago, my cousin Rachel got it and I touched her bumps trying to figure out what they were. She had already had the pox, so we figured that wasn't it. After going to her doctor, she found out she was going through a second bout with it. Ugh! I was pregnant with Emerson at the time and getting that disease could have killed me and caused my baby to be born serious problems.

Anyway, I had tried to get the vaccine after having Hayden. When I got pregnant in Atlanta, they run lots of routine blood tests. Mine showed that I was not immune to varicella, so I was supposed to get the immunization right after I had him and was done nursing. I managed to move to NC just before he was born, so my new OB did all the bloodwork on me again. They said that I was immune to it. I was pretty confused. I was still worried that I wasn't immune, so I called around to see if I could get the vaccine anywhere. It turned out that only pediatricians and the health dept. had it. Doctors that deal with adults usually don't carry it because most adults had it when they were kids or had already had the chicken pox. After calling the health dept. and finding out what a pain in the butt it would be to get, I decided to just go with what my last bloodwork results were and quit trying to get the shot.

Fast forward to now-When I went to Denver to do all the preliminary testing for the surrogacy back in May, they told me that I was not immune. I had to go get the shot. This just baffled me. I searched around on the CDC website and it turns out that different labs do different versions of the test for varicella immunity. Some tests are more sensitive than others. So, I went into our nasty health dept. (and I do mean gross!) and got the first round of the vaccine back on May 30th. Some people are lucky enough to have no reactions to it and others (like me) actually get a few souvenirs, lol. I have a grand total of 3, so I really have nothing to complain about. Hey, at least I am now immune ;)