No specific treatment is commonly used for normally healthy children who have a bout of shingles. Treatment is symptomatic, and you may choose to give your child paracetamol if he complains of mild pain. Do not apply creams or lotions to the rash. If you cannot stop your child from picking at the blisters, apply antiseptic.

When to see your doctor

• if the rash is on the child’s face;

• if your child complains that the rash is either itchy or painful;

• if you are unsure that the rash is shingles;

• if your child suffers from a chronic illness, or if he is taking immunosuppressive medication;

• if the rash does not clear up in 10-14 days;

• if the rash looks infected, or your child has a fever or is otherwise unwell.

Complications

Occasionally shingles can affect the eye. The cornea is mainly affected, and the eye becomes red and sore, with the shingles appearing as tiny ulcers. If you suspect this in your child, you should see your doctor immediately.

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Make sure that whenever you are breastfeeding, both you and your baby are comfortable. In the first week or two it may hurt you to sit down if you have had stitches, and using a rubber ring or pillow can help a little. Some women prefer to breastfeed while lying on their side, facing their baby. This can be more comfortable, especially if you are very tired. Proper attachment of the baby’s mouth to the breast is essential for successful breastfeeding and can prevent problems such as sore nipples. Good techniques can be learnt, so do not be afraid to ask for help. It is important that the baby’s head is in line with his back, and that his whole body is facing towards you. Bring the baby to your breast, supporting it as you offer it to him, and make sure that he sucks on most of the areola, not just the nipple. The baby should be placed at the right height in relation to your breast so that he does not drag on your nipple. A pillow or cushion can help you to hold the baby comfortably. Place the telephone by your side if possible, or better still take it off the hook during feeds so that you won’t be disturbed unnecessarily.

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I often tell couples to select a weekend soon, a time when you can go away together and not receive any phone calls. You may not take your watches. This is a trip only for one another and based on the marriage, not the clock. You can ask for wake-up calls and check clocks anywhere, but on this trip, no watch-watching. You must make sure that all of your concerns about home are taken care of. Start planning now, because this trip is difficult. This will be your R&R trip, a trip to recommit to the marriage and celebrate its re-creation. Couples generally appeared eager but confused.

“Do you mean just a weekend away?” asked the husband. “We do that often.”

No, this is not just a weekend away. This is a re-honeymoon trip, a special marital trip of intimacy. A celebration. Each partner should buy a gift for the other that costs a total of less than five dollars and will last forever. You will exchange this special symbolic marital gift with a personal note during the trip. I would like each of you to write out special new vows to one another that you will exchange. The selection of the gift is important and difficult. The price limit will cause you to think about this.

This couple selected Toronto for their trip. They had been there several times, usually with friends. They selected a play to attend and a deluxe hotel. Your own trip could be down the street, just so long as you are alone together away from everyone and everything. When you check in, make love before doing anything else. Sexual intimacy should not be the last thing, but the first thing. Remember your daily walks, remember the posture of the future, and remember to set aside time for your own private ceremony of recommitment.

One wife described the ceremony she shared with her husband.

“We lit a candle, but the damn smoke alarm went off. We decided to turn off all the lights and open the drapes so the city lights would light our room. We got in the posture of the future, naked, but we didn’t touch genitals. We looked at each other. I don’t know how long, we didn’t have a watch. Time just didn’t matter. We shared our vows and we cried. Really cried. We sat closer and held each other. Later we exchanged gifts and little notes.”

Her husband added, “She gave me a picture she had framed. Just a snapshot of us at the beach when we first met. Do you know what I gave her? You would never guess. I gave her two things. First, I gave her a cheap little painting of a light tower. She couldn’t stop laughing. [Remember the sex word game? This was the creative wife who had a new name for the penis and testicles, the light tower on the rocks.] Then you know what? I gave her a little painting I did myself with a plastic frame. Five dollars doesn’t go too far. I painted a picture of our house. Just our house with a big sun behind it. We laughed and cried. We knew we were making memories.”

The wife added, “We just sort of nodded our heads when we shared our vows. The words didn’t seem to matter.” The communication of this couple was on a level beyond words, in a language unique to their marriage, to their love.

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If you are courting now, or if you have accepted my invitation to re-court with your spouse by discussing the issues raised in this chapter, I suggest that the following five systems rules replace the hypocritical, distancing rules that you read at the beginning of this chapter.

Never Lie

Right from the beginning, tell the truth, nothing but the truth, so help your present or future marriage. Give the gift of self-represen-tation. Don’t even tell little white lies; lies of any color are still lies. In courtship, in marriage, and in every religious system in the world, integrity is the key. Remember the material in Chapter One on the “protective insult” and how damaging that can be to love. Some lies may maintain some marriages, keep them surviving, but they never make for a super marriage.

My colleagues suggest that it is unwise to disclose extramarital affairs. They say this is only a “guilt dumping” on the partner, a way of clearing one’s own conscience at the emotional expense of that partner. They say that the affair is irrelevant; just go to work on the marriage.

I say that such an approach is totally without support in the literature. It is opinion, and it helps a marriage survive, but not thrive. It will never work for making a super marriage, for super marital sex. It is just another form of the protective insult that can block the “psychasms” I will describe later. The question is how to deal with major problems in marriage, not how to cover them up and go on. Having sex outside of marriage is not irrelevant; it is a major obstacle to super marital sex, and that applies to extramarital sex of both Types I and II.

“There has never been anything like this in our marriage,” reported the husband. “We seem to be more open than ever. The honesty seems to be arousing, sort of a stimulant. I guess truth is an aphrodisiac. I carried that burden for so long and wondered why I felt incomplete in my marriage. Now I know it was because I was not completely in my marriage. It was a risk, but it was worth it, a risk for love. I took a risk for sex, had sex outside my marriage. At least I should be willing to take this risk for love.”

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Nightmares occur during REM sleep and the child or adult wakes and can remember not only at that time but the next day, most of the details of the dream which caused the awakening.

Sleep paralysis, or hallucination to sight and sound may occur in children and adults and it is often most marked when they are just drifting off to sleep.

They are of no significance but may cause anxiety.

Narcolepsy is a specific disorder with episodes of severe lethargy during the day so that the person must sleep.

This sleep can last for minutes or hours and may recur throughout the day.

Probably the worst treatment for insomnia is to get into the habit of taking sleeping tablets.

These are satisfactory for the short term, taken for a few nights or even a week or two, but if their use is prolonged beyond this then dependence and tolerance may develop.

Most people with sleep problems just need simple reassurance and help in modifying their habits so as to gain the benefits of a good night’s sleep.

For others with marked disturbance it may be necessary to refer them to special clinics which are being developed in many major hospitals.

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Injections of a hormone prepared from the urine of pregnant women, chorionic gonadotrophin or HCG, has been popular in some weight reducing clinics. But controlled studies have shown that it is the diet, the daily visits to the clinic and the encouragement the patients receive that causes the weight loss — and not the injection.

Motivation is all-important in losing weight. Overweight people who have had a heart attack usually lose weight rapidly and maintain their ideal weight. The aim should be to provide that motivation before the heart attack.

I think it is important for the person trying to lose weight to have the help and encouragement of someone else. If this is to be the doctor, then he or she needs to see the patient regularly to check weight loss, encourage, praise, cajole or abuse the patient.

Some patients react better to one of these methods than to others. Some need all measures at different times. Group therapy can be useful and this is why self-help organisations such as Weight Watchers have success.

Many people will seek less orthodox means and have acupuncture or hypnosis to help them control their eating. Others have had their jaws wired together so they cannot eat solid food. Some people even resort to surgery to lose weight. There is an operation called an apronectomy where the surgeon can remove the apron of fat from the abdomen. It certainly is a quick, if expensive, way to shed 10 kg.

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Infantile eczema or atopic dermatitis may produce a rash on the limbs, the trunk, the nappy area and even the face.

It may be dry and red or weeping and crusting.

This skin condition is one of the atopic diseases which have a strong family history, and include asthma, hayfever, sometimes migraine and, of course, eczema.

In some families there may be little evidence of the disorder but in others most or all of the members suffer from one or more of these disorders.

The role of allergy in atopic dermatitis in infants is difficult to evaluate. Some may be allergic to cow’s milk, or to other foods, but this is unusual.

What is definite is that breast-feeding tends to delay the development of eczema, and the outbreak is usually not as severe.

Rubbing and scratching may break the skin and lead to secondary infection. Repeated scratching in children and also in adults may lead the skin to become thick and dry and this increases the itch, so a vicious cycle becomes established.

Due to a disturbance in the immune system of the body associated with this disorder, general infection and infection of the skin is common.

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Since there is now good evidence that deficiency of selenium in our diet encourages the development of cancer, many people are taking supplementary selenium in the form of a tablet every day. One must be careful not to take too much selenium, however, since it can be very toxic if taken in excess.

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (33:157) contains the story of a 57-year-old woman who took one selenium tablet daily and, after 11 days of this dosage, began losing her hair and developed sore fingertips. Continuing with the selenium because, at the time, she did not know that is was causing her problems, she slowly lost all of her hair during the next two months and developed a discharge around her nails, all of which she later lost as well. In addition, she suffered with episodes of nausea and vomiting, a sour-milk breath odor, and increasingly severe fatigue.

Eventually, her doctor found that her selenium blood level was four times higher than normal, and that this, in turn, was due to the selenium tablets being more than 100 times stronger than advertised.

The tablets (now recalled from the market) had been distributed in 15 states coast to coast. Knowing what to look out for, we should be able to quickly recognize selenium overdosage and protect ourselves against this danger.

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