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April 16th, 2012
Real Men Like Hercules
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Important to use hand sanitizer. You can get shingles from just shaking hands with someone who has it and has touched their sores.
No, Chaya, actually, you can not get shingles from someone who has it. A person who has the shingles cannot transmit shingles AS shingle, to anyone. Shingles is only contagious to people who are not immune to chicken pox itself- people who have never had nor been vaccinated against chicken pox, or the fraction of those whose vaccine didn't "take." If any of those people come into contact with the herpes zoster virus from a person with an active shingles outbreak, if they become sick, it will be with the chicken pox, NOT shingles. Of course, once they have had the chicken pox virus, they are susceptible to developing a case of shingles later in life, but only from their own virus coming out of dormancy in their own body. http://pediatrics.about.com/od/weeklyquestion/a/0…
OMG, how brilliant! Thanks Macushla. I was worried about that for personal reasons.
For decades, my mother insisted that she'd caught shingles from my older brothers when they got chicken pox as toddlers… even tho she'd already had chicken pox herself as a child. I don't think GP docs in the 1950s were very good on their immunology, b/c hers never corrected her. In the years since, she was set straight. One of the strongest correlations for shingles onset is stress & anxiety, esp. with lack of sleep. At the time, she had 3 kids aged 3 and under; my parents had no car; we lived in a 3rd floor walk-up apt. w/ no air conditioning during the worst series of heat waves our area had ever seen [triple digits for weeks at a time and NOT a "dry heat"! with hundreds of deaths] and a baby on our block had been snatched out a window and murdered, so no one dared use the "sleeping porches." And my mother had clinical malnutrition after her first delivery and was hospitalized for weeks after having me prematurely. So, I'd say that her stress level was pretty much off the charts.
In short, if someone in your circle has shingles, he or she is probably suffering terribly, but not contagious to those who have working immunity to the chicken pox virus. Doesn't mean one should be careless– You [or your hands] could still, theoretically, tho unlikely, be a vector to a third person. That might be if another contact of yours is or has a pre-vaccinated baby, or is a tween adult who never got chicken pox or the vaccine, or is immuno-compromised by say, cancer, chemo, immuno-suppressive meds or HIV. But you shouldn't stress about you yourself being at risk, if you have known immunity to chicken pox. [My prenatal tests, even 30+ years ago included checking for antibodies to chicken pox and German measles, but I don't know how long ago those were developed or made standard of care.]
I very appreciate your info, Macushla. Sorry about your mom. Anyway, about the cartoon. I think C-Dawg probably needs more of a shower than the hand sanitizer, anyway. We know Lemont takes showers because of the attack of the alien mold (remember?) Hahaha.