One of my coworkers probably has shingles.
No big deal. It’s not really contagious — you can’t get shingles from someone who has shingles.
You CAN get chicken pox, though. But only if you’ve never had it. And hey, the youngest person in our office is what, 24, 25? No problem. Who hasn’t had chicken pox by their 20s?
Well. That would be me. Fuck a duck.
On the upside, apparently it’s only contagious from the lesions (which he doesn’t have so far), and even then not very much. Still, methinks I’ll keep a ten foot “No Theo Bubble” around me at all times. Just to be safe.
There is a vaccine for varicella, the virus that causes both chicken pox and shingles. If you haven’t had chicken pox by now, you should ask your doctor about the vaccine. While it’s rarely fatal, I did come damn close to losing a brother to chicken pox, and the later in life you catch it, the worse it is.
Chances are, I’m actually immune — neither my mother (50) or grandmother (87) ever had chickenpox either. I’ve had several occasions to be exposed to it pretty excessively. I *should* have had it by now.
However, I do plan on getting tested to see if I have the antibodies or not… eventually.
I highly recommend the vaccine – my family had a history of some bad reactions to chicken pox (brother even had them in his mouth, and he was the one who went on to develop shingles) – so my wife and I had our children vaccinated before the province started covering it for children. No problems for them. If you have a health plan they probably cover it, and if you don’t, it’s probably around $100 (or thereabouts, unless its become cheaper over the past 10 years).