Poll: Your Original Antigenic Sin (Early Childhood Infections)

[Rufous McKinney]

many times ear infection left site only.

I decided that the creature giving ear infections just must not have existed when I grew up. How could I, the kid constantly sick, never have had an ear infection.

I then produced my one perfect baby, 99%tile, I ate too much organic food. She gets an ear infection at week four.

She proceeded to get ear infections, and the implication was- more antibiotics- in my perfect tiny baby. I was despondent. We gave her antibiotics per the Doctor- but sometimes I didn't because of it being so f-ing dangerous. Probably every 2-3 months she'd get raging fevers and inner ear infections.

grumble

 

[vision blue]

I may have missed it and I haven't read thru everyone's post yet, but I didn't see on list some other childhood infections to think about: roseoloa, fifth disease, cold sores (hsv1), mononucleosis (EBV), rheumatic fever, CMV, "trench mouth", (recurrent?) ear infections, influenza, Lyme, and "other" (I.e. not listed). Or perhaps you had some reason for listing just the ones in the poll? (I will read thru posts soon as I can)

Note also that how people interpret childhood illness will change the voting. AGain, may have missed the disambiuation, but by childhood illness, some people mean those infecitons acquired before school age, so until age 4-6. Was that what you meant? It could also mean before age 13, before age 18, before age 21, even before age 25. I assumed w/o thinking about it about age 13.

Would sure be nice if you could also ask exactly your poll in exactly the same format on a non-ME forum with people of roughly the same age. Do you have any such forums? This way data can be compared to a control.

in scanning, i'm guessing similar to a ciontrol w/o ME, except probably here a higher reporting of some unknown. Even so, i'm guessing folks with ME are so primed to think about early childhood illnesses, we are just more likely to remember an obscure childhood illness when we didn't know what we have. I almost voted for it because i figured, jeez, i must have had that in my childhood...(and actually, i just realized I did BIG TIME at age 17 - but that may be off the age range anyway- too old to be original sin i guess. Unoriginal sin?

 

[vision blue]

10
But then I"d have literally never left the bedroom what with my Mom.....not letting me do things with the Other Children.

ok, irrestable piquing of interest here. Why not? you mean like locked in the basement movie of the week stuff? Or caught everything in sight? Brittle bone disease? Germophobia? Mind wants to play with this one.

 

[GeorgiaLinders]

I had a really bad case of impetigo.....at FIVE.

I missed most of kindergarten sick with everything.

but I remember that, it was horrible the symptoms were very intense, far more extreme than some itchy spot by. your nose. It was covering much of my body.

They likely gave me antibiotics for SURE, if I had impetigo. So this is actually my first pinning down the likelihood of antibiotics, early.

I really wish I could have gotten this out of my mother. There are numerous questions I can't ask her and failed to, when I had the chance.

In 3rd grade I had Chicken Pox (when all the other kids had it) but mine didn't go away and it actually got worse. I ended up with really bad Impetigo (ecthmya) and still have visible scars all over my entire body from it.

 

[Emmarose47]

I used to get a lot of cold sores around my mouth ....herpes virus ...
In my late teens lot of tonsillitis

When I had chicken pox I had like 5 spots ...my mother caught it off me and was covered

 

[Lieselotte]

I was always the kid in my family who didn't get sick. My brother had constant ear infections and coughs and my sister was always getting bronchitis or pneumonia and even had her tonsils removed.
I had strep throat twice, and other than that an occasional viral sore throat. Never caught what the other kids had and didn't stay home from school sick except for chicken pox.

It wasn't until my early 20s that I started getting sick regularly like a 'normal' person. I've had EBV reactivation, but no idea when I caught it originally as I never got sick!

 

[Strawberry]

In my late teens lot of tonsillitis

chronic tonsillitis and strep here too. Actually had my tonsils removed in my 30s and felt better for a year. Then chronic sick returned.

 

[EtherSpin]

is this asking which we had first or which was serious ?

e.g. I had chickenpox at ~8 and it was not bad, really standard childhood infection BUT EBV when I was about 13 and it had me with temp for weeks and losing about 5 kilograms of weight where I looked gaunt and gawky for a few months after

so do I mark chickenpox on this or skip it

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

is this asking which we had first or which was serious ?

e.g. I had chickenpox at ~8 and it was not bad, really standard childhood infection BUT EBV when I was about 13 and it had me with temp for weeks and losing about 5 kilograms of weight where I looked gaunt and gawky for a few months after

so do I mark chickenpox on this or skip it

I'd say if it applies, go ahead and check it.

Like you, I had and EBV infection (mono) when I was about 8, but there's no option for that, which is suprizing since it would apply to about 3/4's of the members here...

 

[CoolBreezes]

I had chicken pox when very young (under 2, I don't know more specifically than that). My mother worried that I didn't gain sufficient immunity from that because I only had about two little spots, so when I was in elementary school and all the neighbor kids got chicken pox, she made sure to get me exposed, but I never got it again.

I did get strep throat in elementary school, repeatedly.

 

[Pyrrhus]

I had chicken pox when very young (under 2, I don't know more specifically than that). My mother worried that I didn't gain sufficient immunity from that because I only had about two little spots, so when I was in elementary school and all the neighbor kids got chicken pox, she made sure to get me exposed, but I never got it again.

I got chicken pox when I was 9 months old, before my immune system was fully developed. But I never caught chicken pox after that.

Recently I received the shingles vaccine to boost antibodies to the virus that causes chicken pox and shingles. This triggered a 3-week long episode of meningitis, leading me to believe that I hadn't, in fact, developed sufficient immunity to the virus from the episode of chicken pox I had when I was 9 months old...

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I hadn't, in fact, developed sufficient immunity to the virus from the episode of chicken pox I had when I was 9 months old..

I was around my baby grandaughter and it was so odd to see her body having no reaction to a mosquito bite...(its just a red spot)...and then some time later, the body reacts to the mosquito bite with a raised welt, etc.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

triggered a 3-week long episode of meningitis,

that sounds very unpleasant. Glad your better.

 

[Tammy]

Lots of fever blisters which are in the herpes family....................but other than that I had no childhood infections that I remember.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Lots of fever blisters which are in the herpes family....................but other than that I had no childhood infections that I remember

gosh: I had every childhood thing and then some ...and never had a fever blister!

 

[Tammy]

gosh: I had every childhood thing and then some ...and never had a fever blister!

Go figure!

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Go figure!

I"m also convinced inner ear infections must have been released from some research lab in teh mid 1970s.

I never had an inner ear infection and my perfect baby daughter in 1983 was getting one every three weeks.

There is another proof: that I did not give her a very good start, but she is doing much better now as an adult than I ever did, so good for her.

 

[mermaid]

I was ill constantly as a child with the usual childhood illnesses (not vaccines for all of them in the 50s), and I had a severe urine infection when I was about 3, and I had some kind of investigations in that area when I was a similar age as I recall the awful internal exam I was given (can't imagine they would do that now in that way).

I recall doing a lot of vomiting as a child, as did my brother who apparently was worse than me, but it's me that ended up with the chronic stomach issues. I suspect that I had food intolerances.

Also pneumonia when I was 6, and seemingly constant sore throats and colds. I was given antibiotics a lot I recall, probably because of having had the pneumonia, my mum must have worried afterwards. Then I had glandular fever (known as Mono in the US) when I was 13 that was so bad they wanted to send me to an isolation hospital! I didn't go though but I was ill for about 6 weeks or so.

 

[Marylib]

I got chicken pox when I was 9 months old, before my immune system was fully developed. But I never caught chicken pox after that.

Recently I received the shingles vaccine to boost antibodies to the virus that causes chicken pox and shingles. This triggered a 3-week long episode of meningitis, leading me to believe that I hadn't, in fact, developed sufficient immunity to the virus from the episode of chicken pox I had when I was 9 months old...

Ugh..meningitis. Sorry to hear it @Pyrrhus

My childhood was the usual old days stuff with measles, chickenpox - for some reason I remember seeing the measles on my stomach. Various viruses that probably have names these days. I am told I was given phenobarbital when I was quite small, which I don't remember - I guess for a febrile seizure. And the usual colic for the first months of life - could not digest whatever I was eating - in those days they wanted to give babies formula. I also have a memory of being taken to a doctor for IV fluids after more digestive troubles when I was about 4 - I guess too much vomiting and fluid loss. After that was hives, skin rashes and all that kind of allergic thing. (Had a bad bout of impetigo just a few years ago, which was odd, according to the doctor.)

 

[valentinelynx]

Just a comment. I just saw this poll. I wanted to point out that shingles is caused by varicella zoster reactivation in people who previously have had chickenpox or the. chickenpox (a live vaccine). It's not caused by herpes simplex virus, which causes cold sores or genital herpes, depending on the type of HSV.
What can be confusing is that varicella (VZV), herpes simplex (HSV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and others (e.g. human herpes virus-6, HHV-6) are all herpes viruses.