Crisis averted due to misdiagnosis

Over the last weekend, my wife's grandmother got chills and rashes on one side of the face. She thought that this is some kind of food allergy and ignored it.

The rashes become more severe next day prompting my mother-in-law to take her to a dermatologist. They came back as said that she has been diagnosed with vasuri and there is nothing much to worry about.

Now 'vasuri' is what english people call as _smallpox. I was surprised when a dermatologist diagnoses smallpox like this as it will become an international emergency.

Smallpox has been eradicated 50 years ago and the last known occurrence in India was in 1980. What is more shocking is that the doctor termed it as non-contagious and non-fatal for a disease that is second only to plague in fatality rate and spreads faster than a plague.

I immediately called my cousin who is a general practitioner and asked for his diagnosis. He asked for a picture of the rash and immediately diagnosed it as 'Shingles' - a reoccurrence of chickenpox which affects older people. It is contagious and may spread chickenpox to those who did not have the virus in them earlier.

Fortunately both smallpox and shingles cannot be cured by medicines and doctors prescribe only medicines for fever and rashes which are common to both these diseases. I asked him about taking vaccinations for others, the chickenpox vaccine costs around 2000 bucks. He said that the chickenpox vaccine will not prevent the disease it will only reduce the severity, so there is no need to take it. Taking precaution is the only way to be safe.

Second opinion saved the day for us.

Cheers,
dbdecoy