I decided to start a new thread to show evidence or stories of just how serious these illnesses can be
And to anyone who disputes the severity of just how serious these well documented illnesses and complications of them are, I would seriously suggest reviewing some of your science courses
From another board I was reading.....
Obviously you are not of the generation of those of us who suffered through these illnesses. We ALL had measles, mumps, chicken pox. Oh, and let's not forget polio. Even an ear infection could result in complications. With the mumps you think you are choking to death. Oh yeah, testicular mumps can cause sterilization. The chicken pox left scars. But with the measles the scariest part was the high fever. I remember that illness in a dreamlike state. I remember the doctor making the house calls, my parents bathing me in alcohol to try and get the fever down. My mom told me I was delirious. Now picture that times the eight kids that were in our family.
Of course, the problem with the high fever is that it can lead to convulsions and other serious complications. I had an older cousin who got the measles at age 16. Her complications led to such severe brain damage that she was left with the mind of a two year old. She spent the rest of her life in an institution.
Because I was curious, I pulled out my Kindergarten and first grade report cards. I was absent 22 days in Kindergarten and 30 days in first grade. I remember as these illnesses would go like wildfire through the classrooms there would be 8 - 10 kids gone at a time. Pretty hard for a teacher to teach when kids are out for long periods at a time.
You can bet that when these vaccines became available our parents got us vaccinated. The Polio vaccine didn't become available until 1963. They did mass community vaccines for that. I remember going to **** School in ***** and standing in long, long lines of people waiting to get it. It was an oral vaccine and I remember they put it in sugar cubes.
I met a pregnant patient last year from Bangladesh who's had polio since childhood (not sure if the vaccine is readily available there now, but it obviously wasn't when she was young). Her pelvis and legs were severely deformed as a result. She walked with a cane, although really she should have used a walker but she thought it was too bulky for NYC apartments/streets. She had regular PT, and dealt with chronic pain. She had to have a scheduled c-section, due to her pelvic bone abnormalities. So in addition to polio, she had to deal with recovery from major abdominal surgery while caring for a newborn. Her husband was great, and they definitely were excited to be parents, but I just couldn't get over how tough her life situation was. The kicker was that she was always so cheerful and smiling, grateful to be getting their idea of sophisticated American healthcare in our gritty little city hospital. Really made me grateful for vaccines!
Specializes in Early Intervention, Nsg. Education.
When I did my pedi clinical rotation in the late 80's/early 90's (pre-HIB vaccine), there were always one, two, ten kids getting IV ABX for peri orbital cellulitis. Some of these kids became septic, and I know of at least one 3 or 4y.o. who ended up with either encephalitis or meningitis. He lived, but at an enormous cost. The Neuro effects were devastating. He was in PICU for months. At some point he had a trach and G tube placed, and he was eventually transferred to a pedi floor at a LTC. I was only peripherally involved in his care, but seeing this child who was walking and talking when he was admitted end up losing all developmental milestones shook me to the core. The first time I saw him, he was feverish and irritable, but talking up a storm. The last time I saw him, I was told that I could get him to smile if I rubbed his head.
This is the stuff nightmares are made of.
(Edited to fix autocorrect's "helpful suggestions" and re type a sentence that disappeared.)
Smallpox is eradicated per WHO. It is no longer endemic in any human population and the last known infection was in the 1970s. We don't vaccinate the public for it anymore.
The only samples that exist are in CDC BSL4 in Atlanta and Biopreparat in Moscow...
Oh and also randomly discovered forgotten vials in a FDA/NIH lab in Bethesda...
Oh and also maybe possibly some vials forgotten or stolen from illegal covert Soviet/Russian biowarfare labs...
Otherwise, totally eradicated.
Yes I know. But this is a thread about the diseases pre-vaccine. It just came to mind when someone mentioned the smallpox vaccine. Many anti-vaxxers are against any vaccines at all. Would they have had this same viewpoint back in the days when the smallpox vaccine was being given? They have certainly been the beneficiaries of this vaccine, that's for darn sure.
There have been conspiracy theories about "the bad guys" getting a hold of a sample of smallpox and unleashing it upon the world. Would make for a great horror movie, but of course, unlikely.
Yes I know. But this is a thread about the diseases pre-vaccine. It just came to mind when someone mentioned the smallpox vaccine. Many anti-vaxxers are against any vaccines at all. Would they have had this same viewpoint back in the days when the smallpox vaccine was being given? They have certainly been the beneficiaries of this vaccine, that's for darn sure.
Depends on the flavor of anti-vaxxer... some of them actually believe that vaccines don't do much and that diseases like smallpox were headed for extinction without vaccines. Don't ask what mental gymnastics are involved to reach such conclusions unless you have a bottle of ibuprofen at your side for the headache that will inevitably follow
Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
I had an art teacher who had polio as a child and in her late 50's began having trouble with her legs again d/t post-polio syndrome.
I remember as a young girl visiting a young guy who lived in an iron lung. He said, "it isn't so bad", but I could tell he was not being totally truthful. He said how "cool" it was to have prism glasses so he could watch tv from a completely flat position in the iron lung. He had a mirror placed so he could see who came in the doorway to his room. He also had someone who rigged up a book-holder from the top of the iron lung, so it was hanging just above his face. The only problem with that was he had to have someone come in and turn the pages. He had to eat from a totally flat position, too. His mother had to grind up his food so he wouldn't choke. Couldn't be out of the iron lung much or often because his stomach muscles and diaphragm could not move, so he couldn't breathe on his own. God forbid the electricity would fail; somebody would've had to bag him!
My mother-in-laws family lost 9 people in 4 days to the 1918 flu epidemic.
I also am old enough to have lived through standing in lines at school for mass vaccinations; we were positively THRILLED when we heard we could take polio vaccine in a sugar cube instead of having to have still another shot. My smallpox scar is not on my upper arm, like most were given; our family doc gave them on top of the shoulder. We couldn't scratch it under penalty of I don't know what, but it was STRICTLY prohibited to scratch it or pick at it. It had to fall off by itself! ​And it could not be covered with a bandaid, either.
I had "the red measles" and "the German measles", CHICKEN POX which left me with the dormant virus to return as a severe case of mono at age 18: three months of not being able to even lift my head from the pillow. I had a 'slight' case of shingles on my left back the following year. Man did that ever itch like crazy! And there is one spot there that STILL occasionally itches and/or gives me a jolt of pain, even now, 40 something years later. You better believe I got the shingles vaccine when it became available. I don't feature getting shingles on my head/face like I've seen some patients have to go through!
i was born in 1950, had all the childhood diseases without complication. the only person in my small town that was known to have a problem was one girl who had polio. that was it...no problem with measeles, mumps, rubella, rubeola, whatever... and anyone who has grown up in small town knows that just about everything about everybody gets known......
The rest of the world hasn't been so fortunate. Last year roughly 250,000 people came down with measles; more than half of them died. Currently the Philippines is experiencing a major measles outbreak that sickened 57,000 people in 2014. China had twice that many cases, although they were more geographically spread out. Major outbreaks were also recorded in Angola, Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Measles causes an intense fever, coughing, watery eyes and a signature full-body rash. The disease is rarely fatal in developed nations with modern health care systems but can cause brain damage and permanent hearing loss.
So, we don't have to worry about our American children. They probably won't die. What's a little brain damage or permanent hearing loss in the big picture?
My uncle got polio as a child and lost much of the function of his legs. He has had dozens of surgeries since his illness and as an adult still has to use special crutches to help him walk. This is probably just one of the many reasons why I have always been such an advocate of vaccinating. Could you imagine having to worry that this might happen to your own child? Thank goodness for modern medicine!
I've been sharing this website with friends and family. It's written by a pediatrician and he answers questions people post. His replies are definitely worth reading.
And this is a second article I read today. Some interesting points I read are the mom who said "I'd rather my kid miss two weeks of school than get the measles vaccination". Another mom refused to let her child get the tetorifice shot after her child got impaled with metal. Guess she doesn't worry about lockjaw... (maybe impaled is the wrong word)
I was always given whichever vaccines were due, but the problem was that there weren't very many. I got my smallpox vac in y upper arm, just below my shoulder, but wished it could have been on my upper thigh where my mom's was. I got polio vac in both injection and the next year in sugar cube for. I got the chicken pox vac as a prenursing student, as well as rubella vac, which I'd already had.
I had chicken pox when I was a four year-old kindergarten student, as did most of the class. I also had rubella, what was then referred to as "the ten day measles," but somehow, I skipped the mumps. I'm morte's age and there simply were not the vaccines available then.
I knew in a fairly abstract manner that we who live in America are extremely fortunate to have the vaccines and, let's face it, a good healthcare system, but when I went to Haiti, India, and other third world counties with our church, I became very aware o two undeniable facts -- starvation and no viable healthcare, and diseases long eradicated in my country running rampant A few years after
my other trips, I traveled to the former Soviet Union. At that point, the medical care was about 100 years behind our care here.
Although the vacs for that trip were an absolute nightmare and, in some cases, deciding that having the disease instead might be an improvement over the side effects, we all survived. The lack of sanitation in Soviet hospitals was an absolute nightmare.
Since that trip, I can't understand why parents refuse to vaccinate their precious children because there are much much worse things
LibraSunCNM, BSN, MSN, CNM
1,656 Posts
I met a pregnant patient last year from Bangladesh who's had polio since childhood (not sure if the vaccine is readily available there now, but it obviously wasn't when she was young). Her pelvis and legs were severely deformed as a result. She walked with a cane, although really she should have used a walker but she thought it was too bulky for NYC apartments/streets. She had regular PT, and dealt with chronic pain. She had to have a scheduled c-section, due to her pelvic bone abnormalities. So in addition to polio, she had to deal with recovery from major abdominal surgery while caring for a newborn. Her husband was great, and they definitely were excited to be parents, but I just couldn't get over how tough her life situation was. The kicker was that she was always so cheerful and smiling, grateful to be getting their idea of sophisticated American healthcare in our gritty little city hospital. Really made me grateful for vaccines!