When I was a kid it seemed as though my sister Laura, with whom I shared a bedroom, and I were always getting sick in the summer. Three adults (my parents and great grandfather,) and four children lived in a three bedroom farmhouse. I don't remember how we squeezed in before my father built two sets of bunk beds for my sisters and me to share in one bedroom. What I do remember is a series of summer illnesses in which Laura and I were confined to one of the bedrooms with the shades pulled tight. My parents' fear--at the time thought to be correct-- was because bright lights hurt, our vision might somehow be damaged. And so one of my strongest memories of those days is of my Dad moving the TV into our sick room, where our great grandfather had first dibs--to watch the Saturday night fights.
One other thing about those childhood summers was the way in which my parents rapidly forbade our visiting the local lake as soon as the first confirmed case of polio hit our town. I vividly remember standing in line at the local elementary school, one of hundreds of frightened children and relieved parents, awaiting my turn to receive my first polio vaccination.
Polio was, and remains, a truly frightening disease. In the year before the first vaccine became available over 50,000 people across the United States, many of the them children, died of polio. When the virus attacked the diaphragm and respiratory system people who survived often spent the remainder of their lives confined to iron lungs, Today, people in their 60s and older who survived the initial infection relatively unscathed often suffer from Post Polio Syndrome, which includes problems with walking, muscle spasms, and balance.
When I was growing up there were very few illnesses against which people could be vaccinated. Most vaccines were developed between my youth and my children's childhood. Our parents remembered children dying from polio and measles. People in our 40s, 50s, and 60s have unforgettable memories of spending hours stuck in bed--or at home-- thanks to chicken pox or the measles. So vaccinating our kids made sense on several levels. First, we understood that if enough people were immunized against a specific childhood illness chances were the chain of infection would be broken. Second, we recognized we needed to keep our kids healthy if we were to keep our kids in day care, and by extension ourselves in our jobs.
From my perspective one of the major problems associated with the current argument to vaccinate our children or not is we have forgotten the potentially devastating consequences of being infected with a common childhood illness, especially in adults. Here are two that are very much worth remembering.
RUBELLA. Rubella is also known as the three day measles or the German Measles. The names come from the fact that Rubella was first identified in Germany, and that the rash generally lasts about three days. It is the R in the MMR vaccine offered to children at 18 months. Thus it is part of the vaccination which recently has caused parents considerable concern. Kids get fevers from both Rubella (3 day) and Rubeola ( 9 day measles.) Rubeola can cause pneumonia and brain infections--one of the top reasons to vaccinate a child. But here is a lesser known fact about Rubella. If a non-immune pregnant woman contracts Rubella she is at great risk of miscarrying during the first trimester. If she carries the pregnancy to term the baby may be born prematurely, have cardiac, auditory, or ophthalmic defects. In fact the risk of damage to the mother or the baby is the main reason why the Rubella vaccine was developed in the first place.
CHICKEN POX. There was no vaccine against chicken pox when my children were little. Since it is so contagious if one child in a family gets it his siblings are likely to get chicken pox too. Before the vaccine was developed it was not unusual for parents to purposefully expose their children to kids with chicken pox. Why? In kids it is mostly an annoying disease. Kids itch, they are miserable, and they can't go to school or daycare if they have the rash. Not so in adults. Chicken pox in adults who have never had the disease, including people with compromised immune systems can, and do, suffer significant consequences. It is even more complicated when pregnancy is involved. Babies born to non-immune mothers often are born with the chicken pox and a whole host of complications like hearing damage. But the most frightening problem, to my way of thinking, is if a non-immune pregnant woman gets chicken pox during the final trimester of pregnancy she is likely to have a stroke. I have only seen this once in my years as a maternity nurse. But once was more than enough. The Mom lived, but she had brain damage, and it was months before she could hold her healthy baby.
If you are interested in reading about childhood illnesses the easiest place to find accurate information is wikipedia. Go to www.wikipedia.org and type in the childhood disease you're most interested in learning more about.www.wikipedia.org www.wikipedia.org
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