a pox on both your houses.....

ok, so in public health it is considered bad taste to gasp at the sight of blistering nodules......and so when i client informed me that the blistering nodules on her daughter's hands and arms (but not her neck nor face....) were 'some sort of pox the doctor told us'.....i just went on with my previous line of questioning.....as the child was not the client and she had seen a doctor....and i was pretty sure it wasn't chicken pox....which would have been ok because i have had that childhood disease during....childhood.......and because i had seen worse-case scenarios of chicken pox with my own children.....i was pretty sure it wasn't chicken pox....and smallpox.....well......i wasnt' so sure about that, but it wasn't on her face......and it seemed to be clearing up rather than newly erupted.....but still....hours later...i am googling poxes in hopes of satisfying my poxial curiosity...turns out there are many poxi....including Rickettsial pox.....which is endemic in new york city and in developing countries......small nodules that fill with fluid and burst and crust over and go away.....with some scarring...caused by a virus tranmitted by some sort of mite that lives in unclean sheets.......yech.......i washed my hands thoroughly after that client left......this is one child out of the hundreds i have come across in public health.....one doesn't see much in the way of pox these days due to dilligent immunization campaigns.....and so the word has gone out of favor, as a descriptive or as a curse.......having seen this child today, however, i certainly felt the depth of the barb....a pox on both your houses was a meaty jab, indeed.......