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.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
remember we do not vaccinate against smallpox any longer
Active duty military are vaccinated against smallpox before they are deployed to the middle east. I believe they are the only Americans routinely receiving that vaccine at this time.
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
Active duty military are vaccinated against smallpox before they are deployed to the middle east. I believe they are the only Americans routinely receiving that vaccine at this time.
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
In the military, when deployed to certain places, they do. My husband was vaccinated against smallpox in 2010 just before deploying to Afghanistan. He's the only member of our generation I know who has that telltale circular scar on his shoulder, that I remember so well from seeing on my dad growing up.
Absolutely...military and traveling excluded.
I had a patient that got chicken pox from his kids he had never had them when he was little. He got varicella of the lungs and brain....he died.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
I've been to Vietnam twice with a medical mission and we got yellow fever vaccine plus many others. Had to take prophylactic antibiotics against malaria as well.
I'm healthy and haven't developed autism. . . yet. I just thought of something because I was being silly - if vaccines did cause autism, wouldn't it cause it in adults as well?
The mechanism would be at play, right?
I haven't gotten weaker after each flu vaccine. I'm 57 and still run (albeit slowly) and have completed my first half-marathon. No health issues.
Anecdotal . . .I know.
Yes, anecdotal, however I'm sure you have also noticed that anecdotal examples and cases are as meaningful and maybe even more influential than actual facts and verifiable data to many antivaxers.
My FB contacts include several nurses who do not vaccinate their children. They are stuck in correlation and anecdote and cannot get past their fear and paranoia of the "government" to think critically through the studies and research.
For example, one has recently begun to post studies which suggest that there may be a link to thimerasol in vaccines causing an encephalitis type response which correlates with autism dx later. Unfortunately for those who are hanging on this notion, the rates of autism did not drop notably after thimerasol was removed from all routine recommended childhood vaccines. In fact, the rate of ASD dx increased to 1:88 following that removal of the preservative.
That same person then related how she received an influenza vaccination and then was dx with an autoimmune disorder. In her view it is clear that the vaccine caused her problems. Correlation = causation in her mind
It seems to me that quite a number of people are unfamiliar with exactly how contagious measles actually is. They apparently don't know that it is spread via the respiratory system and that droplets can survive for hours on a surface. They must not care that measles is spread by people who are not yet symptomatic and have no idea that they may be endangering others. They seem to think that they are no more susceptable to getting this disease than are the children who have been adequately vaccinated. They are counting on the odds being in their favor that they will not be one of the unlucky who are exposed and get sick.
Sadly, until there are significant consequences to not vaccinating children we will have to deal with too many otherwise thoughtful adults making this very bad choice for their families. I fear that we may have to entertain requiring that children be fully immunized to attend public schools or to visit crowded public venues like amusement parks or cruise ships, etc in order to protect those most vulnerable in our society. Yes, they may have the right to abstain, but perhaps stiffer social consequences to that choice might inspire some to make a better choice. That would be preferrable to the potential consequence that they child becomes ill and suffers damage or death from a vaccine preventable disease.
Thanks for participating- wow! I can't believe the overwhelming number of stories - I hope people will continue to contribute
As the person who started this thread,I feel some ownership of it
Therefore, I'm respectfully requesting that all discussions re: debating why vaccines work and how to reach anti-vaxxers be done in the other thread I started "Anti-vax nurses? Are you serious?"
I just personally feel this thread is more powerful if it is stories of the illnesses, all of which certainly speak for themselves
I am not a moderator and do not claim to be so this is merely a request :)
Yes, anecdotal, however I'm sure you have also noticed that anecdotal examples and cases are as meaningful and maybe even more influential than actual facts and verifiable data to many antivaxers.
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Which was why I was just making a couple of silly comments about anecdotal information and related back to the poster who got weaker each year after a flu shot.
I've got some of the same kinds of posters on my FB feed and some are family.
Gives me a headache sometimes. . . . .
Edited . . just read your request dinah . . . good idea. That other thread is going gangbusters.
Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
There were more than a few kids in my grade school, circa 1950's, who had effects from 'mild" cases of polio. One kid had his left side affected almost as if he'd had a stroke. His arm was curled up and he had a brace on it and his left leg. Another one, a girl, had to wear those Buster Brown shoes with a metal splint that went up both sides of her legs and buckled under the knee. Both kids were picked on pretty badly and no one would eat lunch with them.The girl, however, didn't take it though, she had one really wicked ability to kick a person in the shins, and if that wasn't enough, she'd threaten to BITE you and 'give you polio!' Another girl was confined to bed in a body cast and I remember my mother suggesting (after I'd been vaccinated, of course) that I go visit and play with her. She had a lot of comic books, and a tiny little tea set which I coveted, but not enough to have to be in a bodycast to get one!
Specializes in Early Intervention, Nsg. Education.
When I was doing my pedi clinical rotations in the late 80's (LPN) and early 90's (RN), before kids received the HIB vax, there was always at least one infant/toddler with peri-orbital cellulitis on the floor for IV ABX. As a young, inexperienced nursing student, it seemed to be mostly an inconvenience, a relatively mild condition that needed admission and treatment "just in case there were complications." I heard the horror stories about kids developing meningitis, encephalitis, sepsis...blah blah blah, I had it written down on my Pedi Illness index cards, yet never seemed to witness anything but crabby little kids with facial swelling and IV's protected with an entire roll of Kling gauze. It felt a whole lot more like babysitting than nursing, in my naive opinion.
Well, wouldn't you know, that eventually I witnessed one of those "just in case there were complications" scenarios. The little boy was around 3 or 4. He was older than most kids that came in with the dx, and the swelling looked worse, even to my inexperienced student's eye. He hadn't been my patient, but I saw him walking in the hall and heard him singing, laughing, yelling, complaining, and talking up a storm. The next afternoon (we did evening clinicals in pedi), I noticed that his room was empty. He had started seizing, went into resp arrest, and was moved to PICU. The "inconvenient" peri-orbital cellulitis had spread to the area behind his eye, and within 24 hours he had meningitis. He remained in PICU for the rest of my pedi rotation.
He lived, but the meningitis was neurologically devastating. This was a child who walked into the room when he was admitted, and sang at least 50 verses of "Whoa, whoa, whoa a boat" with my classmate. The last time I saw him, he had a trach and a G tube, and the plan was to place him in a pedi LTC facility. He didn't respond to sight or sound, but he smiled and squirmed when his head was rubbed.
I live in an area where parents can choose not to vaccinate their children based on religious beliefs. As an EI Nurse Educator, I've met many families who have chosen not to vaccinate; they report religious conflict, but when asked about it informally many say that they "just don't believe in vaccinating their children." Religious conflict or personal choice? I'm not sure.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
I spent all of the 80s working in pediatric critical care.
Every year I worked with small children who suffered, were permanently damaged by, and sometimes died secondary to Haemophilus Influenza type B. Scores of them with acute epiglottitis or HiB meningitis or sepsis, mostly under the age of 5, many of them not even 2 years old yet. Some of them lost fingers and toes and portions of their distal extremities secondary to the disease. Some of them suffered anoxic/hypoxic brain injury when their airways were lost in rural areas or the family car on the way to the ED. After the widepsread vaccination against this bacteria this horrible bug was essentially stopped in it's tracks. Rather than the PICU expanding from 10 to 24 beds in the influenza months because of HiB, the unit population remained relatively stable.
Whooping cough in a neonate is unimaginable. It is not a prettier picture if the child in the next bed over is the 6 year old unvaccinated sister. The neonate typically ends up intubated while the older child with greater reserves can struggle without the ET for a longer period of time. Watching them struggle and seize and sometimes die is not easy. All preventable.
We have heard other stories of tetorifice. Seeing a 10 year old in the throes of tetorifice where only the crown of the head and the heels of the feet are on the stretcher is heartbreaking. It is not easy to ventilate someone whose chest muscles are not moving.
I really don't like having those images back in my minds eye.
It makes me angry that some people are so entitled and protected that they endanger themselves, their children, and the most vulnerable in our society by this sort of ignorant behavior when it comes to vaccines. They are choosing to react out of fear of an unknown rather than respond to the science of the known benefits of vaccines.
. . yet. I just thought of something because I was being silly - if vaccines did cause autism, wouldn't it cause it in adults as well?
SummitRN, BSN, RN
2 Articles; 1,567 Posts
This is known as the Nocebo effect.
More here:
Nocebo - Placebo