Measles

Parents, please vaccinate your children!

/ edebock / 7 Comments

When I learned that only slightly more than 80% of the children who attend the same school as two of my grandsons have been vaccinated, I was more than a little concerned! They live in Vancouver where there has been an outbreak of measles this month. Nine cases have been confirmed. The number grew from four to nine in less than 24 hours! At the centre of the outbreak is a family whose three children were not vaccinated due to concerns that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine might cause autism, a belief that has been scientifically debunked.

It may not be a popular opinion, but I don’t think that children should be allowed to attend public schools or any other kids’ programming if they haven’t been vaccinated (unless there’s a valid documented health reason why they shouldn’t be). Vaccines don’t just protect the people getting vaccinated; they protect everyone around them. The more people in a community who are vaccinated, the harder it is for a disease to spread. Having grown up with a dearly loved brother who was severely brain damaged by measles related encephalitis as an infant, I feel very strongly about this!

Some years ago, popular children’s author, Roald Dahl, who lost a daughter to measles encephalitis at the age of seven, had this to say:

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. 

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

I feel all sleepy,” she said. 

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her. 

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is ask your doctor to administer it. 

I couldn’t agree more! In my opinion, people who refuse to have their children vaccinated are putting their lives at risk. Roald Dahl went on to say:

So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunized? They are almost non-existent. In a district of around 300 000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunization! That is about a million to one chance. I would think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunization. 

I can only assume that parents who have been blessed with perfectly healthy children and refuse to safeguard their health by immunizing them are completely oblivious to the risk they are running. As a parent who has lost a child and a grandparent who has watched a beloved grandchild fight for life; as a sister whose brother never had the opportunity to realize his potential and a daughter who saw her parents’ grief over that, that makes me livid!

Vaccines save lives! It’s as simple as that. There are no treatments or cures for diseases like measles, mumps and polio. The only proven way to protect your child is with vaccines. Parents, please just vaccinate your children!

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Dowboy

/ edebock / 10 Comments

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This is one of my favourite photographs, taken of my older brother, Donald, and I when I was about four months old. Isn’t he cute? He looks like a perfect child and in many ways he was, but what you can’t see is the damage that had already been done to his brain when he suffered from encephalitis as the result of having measles about 10 months before this photo was taken. No, this isn’t a rant about vaccination, but it definitely could be!

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Encephalitis is acute inflammation of the brain caused by either a viral infection or the body’s own immune system mistakenly attacking brain tissue. The most common cause is a viral infection and it occurs in approximately 1 in every 1000 cases of measles. It develops rapidly and requires immediate care; care that was not available in the small, isolated town where we lived in 1952. In fact, it was not until a few months had passed and Donald began to lose his words and exhibit other signs of brain damage that our parents realized that something was seriously wrong.

As I grew up, I came to realize that my big brother was different from other children and I loved him with a fierce and protective love that endures to this day. Though his brain injury robbed him of the ability to speak, I knew he loved me too. In fact, I remember Mom telling me how difficult it had been to discipline me when I was little because if she spanked me, Donald cried too! She also told me that before I could say his name, I called him Dowboy.

Donald has always been a gentle soul and very easy to love, but I remember one occasion when some neighbourhood boys teased me about my brother, the “retard”, a word that I have always hated with a passion. Perhaps, it was then that I learned the power of using my words. I was a timid child, known amongst my peers as a goody two-shoes, but in that moment I must have become a wild and vicious creature! I don’t remember what I said, but I dressed those boys down to such an extent that word got back to my parents about how I’d stood up for my brother, and my father speaks of it admirably to this very day!

Though I do remember my grandmother telling me more than once that I would always have to watch out for Donald, I don’t recall my parents ever making me feel that I would have to carry the burden of caring for him. Regardless, I grew up with a tremendous sense of responsibility for Donald that has remained with me through the years even though he lives a long distance from me.

With two other handicapped men, Donald lives in a fully staffed house in North Vancouver that is operated by the Community Living Society. CLS provides residential and personalized community-based support to individuals throughout the Lower Mainland of Vancouver and the Upper Fraser Valley. As a family, we are so blessed to know that Donald receives excellent, compassionate care and lives a productive and meaningful life.

In his earlier retirement years, my father was actively involved as a CLS board member and served as president of that board for several years. Until recently, he has been the primary family contact for everything to do with Donald’s care, but Dad celebrated his 92nd birthday last week and over the past couple of years, I have been gradually taking over that role. CLS is committed to working with the families of supported individuals so meetings have been scheduled when I’m in Vancouver to visit, phone calls have been made, and when necessary, paperwork shuffled by email or snail mail.

Then came this week! On Wednesday morning, I was approaching the second last green on the local golf course when my cell phone rang. It was Trudy calling; manager of Donald’s house, and a dedicated caregiver who has been involved in his life and therefore, mine, for over 30 years. She was phoning from the emergency ward to let me know that he had fallen and they were waiting for x-rays to be taken. To make a long story short, Donald had a fractured hip and underwent surgery yesterday. It has been killing me not to be there. In my head, I know there’s nothing I could do that isn’t already being done, but my heart wants to be with my Dowboy! Fortunately, one of his caregivers has been with him throughout each day since he arrived at the hospital and they have been texting me regularly with updates. The orthopaedic surgeon and the anesthetist were both in touch with my sister (a medical doctor) by phone to discuss the medical details. Today, the physiotherapists began working with Donald and they already had him standing up. A lady from his church even visited and brought him cookies! Yes, he is in good hands and, though my heart wants to be there now, I will wait until early August when I’ll be in Vancouver to help him celebrate his 65th birthday!