Water warts

So I was talking about ZK's water warts. After that first treatment at the skin clinic on 13 May, he couldn't have a proper shower for almost a week due to the pain from the blisters. So glad when they were no longer painful!

But on Monday, 23 May, we found more spots on him - this time on his right leg, elbows and his wrists!

What a nightmare.. We couldn't tell whether they were water warts. ZK went down a tunnel slide just on Saturday so they could also be some negative reaction, right? But to be safe, I started putting the gel from the doc on him. The doc said the gel would take time to heal the spots and indeed, the spots remained after a few days and a couple seemed to grow.

Sito did some massive googling on Friday night and found a mummy's account of how she eradicated water warts using apple cider vinegar. So on Saturday, after the boy returned from school, we started the apple cider vinegar treatment. And ZK became the plaster boy while I became the crazy mama whose fingers smelled like ACV!

The thing stung a bit less than the gel but amazingly, within a day, the biggest spot scabbed over! I gave the gel one more go and forgot about it, focusing only on the ACV. More spots continued to scab over and in less than a week, I could go without ACV in the morning. In the evening, I stopped applying ACV on old spots as the scabs hurt even more.

ZK had a couple more new spots within that week but after the ACV treatment, they scabbed over. We also had a scare with ZY during the week cos of unknown spots on his face! But after a dab of ACV, they were gone within the day. The little boy now says "I don't like it" when he sees my finger or a cotton bud near his face :p

A painful scab

Within two weeks of treatment, ZK's spots were greatly reduced in numbers. I still found new spots here and there but most disappeared quickly. Made us wonder if they were water warts! When we went back for a review on 7 June, the doc said the new spots were probably molluscum dermatitis, as a result of the body responding to the irritation caused by the treatment - and they were a good thing! He expected him to be free of spots in four weeks or so. We left happily with an open appointment.

But until the spots were gone, ZK was not to shower in school or participate in water play. Just to be safe - for himself and other children. And he had been going to school covered in clear adhesive tape. "But I'm not a paper!" he said :p When the spots on his limbs healed, we switched to tape for the spots in covered areas as that was more gentle on his skin. Even plasters tended to wrinkle his skin. Poor boy...

And two weeks later, ZK was free of molluscum dermatitis and was down to two stickers, but somehow, a new pimple was found on his scrotum! I wondered what went wrong... But at least this was discovered when the pimple was small. After a few days of ACV treatment, it looked ready to burst.

All was looking good by 2 July. But our happiness was shortlived as we found two little ones on his right leg. At first I thought they were mozzie bites but then one was pearly white - classic symptom *.*

It took a few more days plus buffer to make sure they were truly gone, but finally, the weekend before our Bintan trip, we declared ZK free of water warts. Yeah yeah yeah!! He has all those scars on him but he's young; they'll probably disappear.. In any case, I've been applying some kiddy moisturiser on him in the hope that it helps. Now, please stay free of those warts!