Janey's Molluscum Contagiosum

by Donna Milligan

I remember the day Janey came home from school looking upset. She was more quiet and withdrawn than usual - I was used to her chatting away about her schoolwork and her friends.

"Janey, what on earth's the matter?" I asked. Her bottom lip quivered. "You know you can tell Mummy," I pleaded. Still she said nothing.

I made her a warm mug of cocoa and stroked her fringe back off her forehead. “What’s upset you?” I asked calmly. Inside I was fuming: if she was being picked on, I’d march down to the school myself and confront the bully’s parents!

The cocoa wasn’t enough on its own to convince her to reveal her problem, but after a couple of jammy dodgers she started to open up a bit.

“Some of the girls were making fun of me in the playground,” she said, her voice shaky. “They’re saying I’ve got warts and that they’ll spread to anyone I touch.”

She held out her left hand and showed me a collection of nine small pink bumps. They didn’t look like warts or verrucas to me. I’d had a wart on my finger in my teens and it had been larger with visible roots in the form of tiny black spots.

“Can we get rid of them, Mummy? Deborah said I’ve got them for life.”

Kids could be so cruel! My poor little girl was devastated thinking these lumps would be with her forever. On top of that worry, she was being left out as the other kids didn't want her joining in their games or even touching the same skipping rope handle!

“We’ll make an appointment with Dr Schofield,” I told her, “and he’ll fix you.”

When we went to see the doctor, he told us the ‘warts’ were actually ‘molluscum contagiosum’. These do look like small warts and are caused by a virus which can be passed on by skin-on-skin contact, although most people are actually immune to the virus that causes them.

"No need for you to stay away from school, you'll be pleased to hear," said Dr Schofield.

Janey rolled her eyes. Normally she loved school, but I could tell she was hoping for some time off because of the playground teasing.

"The risk of other children catching this is quite slim," the doctor explained. "It's not too serious a condition."

The doctor said that mollusca usually disappear on their own within 12-18 months, or you can squeeze out the central plug. "We could use acid or liquid nitrogen," he said, "but the effects would probably look more unsightly than the mollusca themselves."

He told us that the other methods were burning off the mollusca with a hot metal stick (diathermy), or scraping them off with a special instrument called a curette. Janey and I were not tempted!

I was relieved it wasn't anything serious or extremely contagious, although just to be on the safe side we had to be a bit careful with sharing bathwater and towels, in case we or her little brother Sam caught them.

"I want them to go," Janey grumbled. "They're disgusting."

After I squeezed the cores out, the mollusca were gone within a couple of weeks. I wore gloves just in case I wasn't immune, to avoid cross-infection, and we made sure that we wiped up carefully and threw away the white curd-like material that came from the centre of each molluscum as it contains infective virus.

Once Janey knew exactly what the spots were and was able to explain them to the other children, they were actually quite fascinated. They wanted to see the cores being squeezed out, but I told Janey that might be a bit gory and we could get complaints from the other parents if we put on a special ‘Show and Tell’!