Molluscum contagiosum: how I kicked it

Can I kick it? Yes you can!

I wanted to share this little tidbit in case someone out there in the internet is looking for a solution to this problem like I was. If you are at all squeamish, go ahead and skip this post. File it with the childbirth posts. Cause it's bodies and fluids and it's gross. No pictures, though. No one needs that.

Late last summer, or early fall, I noticed my 8-year-old had a few little bumps on her chin. She wasn't great about washing her face after eating, and so I helped her wash it more often. I wondered if it could be acne already, and I showed her how to wash it every night.

A month or two went by and she got a few new bumps. Once or twice I noticed after swim practice that a bump would come off all by itself and it looked like a little pearl. Super weird. We wondered if it was warts. I took her to the pediatrician, who immediately knew it was molluscum contagiosum. (Or mollescum contagiosum; I've seen both spellings, but I think molluscum is the correct one.)

Anywho, so molluscum contagiosum is unfortunately NOT a super cool spell that you learn at Hogwarts; it IS a super annoying and very contagious but otherwise benign virus. The bumps look gross, like a cross between warts and chicken pox with some acne thrown in to the mix. Yes. It's not fun. They are also self-inoculating, which means they're not only contagious to other people but also to your own body. A bump on your chin, if opened up (for instance, scratched, or naturally falling off as the virus takes its course--the contagious part is inside the bump) can turn into another bump on your neck, etc.

Her pediatrician listed radical options like cryotherapy, laser removal, etc, but said it was best to wait and let them disappear naturally, which could take a few months to a few years. After a few more months, the bumps spread to her neck and got worse, so I took her to a dermatologist, who told me the same thing. She said I could also try anything abrasive at home if I really wanted to (apple cider vinegar, tea tree oil, hydrogen peroxide; she also gave me an Rx for Retin-A) as long as I was careful not to burn the skin around each bump.

It was seriously grossing me out at this point, and I was paranoid about the other kids catching it. There were dozens at this point. I noticed some cropping up around her eyelids and nose and chest. I could see it getting out of hand fast. So I spent the embarrassingly high number of hours that you would expect a librarian/mother to spend researching it on the internet, and I found a whole lot of ideas.

At this point it had been about 7 months, and clearly it was not slowing down. So I tried out some of the ideas that made the most sense to me. Tea tree oil and apple cider vinegar were "meh." I wasn't super convinced by Retin-A, since I had already tried benzamycin on it in the early months. (Which I realize is an antibiotic, so not helpful for viruses, but it has helped me with acne in the past, so I tried it when I thought it was acne.)

Next I tried the "pull it out by the root" approach. You can do this with tweezers or your fingers, but you should wear gloves and wash your hands, since opening the bumps out lets out the virus. Might I warn that this approach is very painful, and Ida was NOT a fan, although she was a good sport. I pulled three bumps out this way in one sitting--they came out in perfect little pearls like I had seen at the pool, along with a decent amount of blood, because the root attaches so firmly inside the skin--then cleaned the openings with peroxide, OUCH, covered them with bandaids, and within a few days they were completely gone.

However, despite this method's undeniable effectiveness, Ida begged me never to do it again, so I didn't.

Instead I moved on to a completely random idea I had found only once on a completely random website, which appealed to me for some reason: hydrogen peroxide cream. Like the kind that hairstylists use to bleach hair. The cream version seemed less intense than the liquid kind I already had in my cupboard. So I ordered a bottle on Amazon for a few bucks and proceeded to go to town each night with a Q-tip and some peroxide cream on my 8-year-old daughter's precious little face.

I would basically massage each bump with peroxide cream until I could get the pearls to emerge. I did a few at a time at night before bed, and covered them with medical tape, then removed the tape in the morning. Some took a few nights of coaxing before the pearl came all the way out--almost always intact. Some were painful, and I let those ones take a little more time, but the majority came out completely painlessly.

They all went through a phase of looking way worse before they got better. But it's been about three weeks since I started this process, and the bumps are all pretty much gone. Some of them are now faded-looking scars, which I hope I won't regret later, but they seem so faint already that I have high hopes for them. And the dermatologist told me that the ones that fall off naturally can leave scars too, so that makes me feel a little better.

Also, this entire time I've been washing Ida's pillowcase and towel extra often, being extra careful at the pool (where she likely picked it up initially), and not letting her bathe with anyone. I'm still being pretty careful, but so far it doesn't seem to have spread to the other kids. Knock knock knock on wood...

So there's my latest little medical adventure for you. I do need to point out here, as I've often pointed out to myself, that dealing with a completely benign virus is nothing compared to what I could be dealing with (and may deal with in the future). I realize that. But it was still really gross and obnoxious.

Maybe it's just a coincidence that it got worse and worse over a period of months and then suddenly got better when I treated it. (Maybe NOT) Either way, I'm glad they're gone. May they never come back again, and may you never need to deal with this yourselves. That is my wish for me and for you. Mwah!