06-09-2006, 05:58 AM
More anectotal comments:
My daughter wasn't vaccinated when she was a baby. I wasn't completely dead-set against them, but had decided to hold off while she was a tiny infant and let her immune system develop on its own for a while. Although it wasn't that long ago, that was when they were still giving the oral polio vaccination (opv). At that point, the only way to contract polio in the USA was from the opv. (luckily they no longer administer the vaccine in that form)
She ended up in the hospital at 11 months with a very bad case of bronchiolitis. She was in an oxygen tent with asthma medication for about 3 days. She had been a baby who had barely been sick as an infant, but as soon as they heard that she was unvaccinated, their entire attitude changed. The ER doctor peeked at her ears and said, "Oh, she has an ear infection, let's get her on antibiotics right away." He barely looked at her ears, and she has never had an ear infection before or since. I think they just wanted her on antibiotics because she was unvaccinated. The same thing happened when they were about to release her. They said that she couldn't go home unless they tested her for pertussis first. Now, she did have a respiratory condition, but the symptoms didn't match those of pertussis at all. I let them do it, because we wanted to go home, but regretted it when they came in with these huge tubes that they stuck into her sinuses.
That was in December. Although she got better, she wasn't really 100% throughout the cold season. By spring, they were saying that she had asthma. We were sent to a specialist who said that we should start asthma medication in the early fall, before she would develop any symptoms. We decided to wait and see if she had similar problems the following fall, and we would start medication ONLY if she had any problems. Well, it's been 7 years and she hasn't had any trouble like that since then. She does tend to get a lingering cough after a cold that might be asthma-related, but since she rarely gets colds it's not much of a problem. But, we would never have known that if we would have started medicating her right away.
We did decide that since her respiratory sytem was not strong, pertussis would probably be particularly devastating for her. So, we did the DPT series in the summer, spread out to avoid cold season. The following summer, we did MMR, because there are enough unvaccinated kids in this area that measels does go around pretty frequently. I haven't heard of anybody having serious complications from it out here, but by that point we felt that she was old enough and healthy enough to handle the vaccine well.
There was a pertussis outbreak here a year and a half ago. A co-worker of mine caught it, in fact. Very few kids caught it (most were vaccinated), but a lot of adults caught it, because their immunity had weakened over the years. Luckily, it's not particularly lethal in adults, only very annoying (particularly because symptoms can last for quite a while).
We did NOT get my daughter the chicken pox vaccine. I don't see any point in preventing somebody from getting an illness in childhood if the illness is only particularly dangerous if you catch it when you're an adult. I can see the argument for those with weakened immune systems, but not for the general population. When she was 4, a vaccinated child in her class caught chicken pox. Naturally, she caught it. She got a pretty good case, but even so, she was over it in a week and none the worse for the experience. The interesting thing to me was that 25% of the kids in her class ALSO caught chicken pox, even though she was the only one who hadn't had the vaccine! I really believe that chicken pox will start to cause some serious public health problems once the genration of mandatory-vaccine kids grows up and starts to catch it in adulthood.
I wasn't too worried about the chicken pox, but we still had to take her in to the doctor to get him to verify that she had it, so that we would be exempt from the immunization requirements. The nurses acted like she had the plague, and we had to go in through the back entrance. The shuffled her into a room and scooted out of there quickly. Luckily, our doctor has been practicing for a number of years, and he had a more relaxed attitude about the whole thing. He did ask if he could bring his medical student in to show him the rash, though, because he said that he didn't get to see many good examples of the chicken pox rash any more, and he wanted his student to be familiar with it.
Anyway, I don't think that I answered anybody's question, but those were my two cents on the subject. I hope that they were at least interesting.
My daughter wasn't vaccinated when she was a baby. I wasn't completely dead-set against them, but had decided to hold off while she was a tiny infant and let her immune system develop on its own for a while. Although it wasn't that long ago, that was when they were still giving the oral polio vaccination (opv). At that point, the only way to contract polio in the USA was from the opv. (luckily they no longer administer the vaccine in that form)
She ended up in the hospital at 11 months with a very bad case of bronchiolitis. She was in an oxygen tent with asthma medication for about 3 days. She had been a baby who had barely been sick as an infant, but as soon as they heard that she was unvaccinated, their entire attitude changed. The ER doctor peeked at her ears and said, "Oh, she has an ear infection, let's get her on antibiotics right away." He barely looked at her ears, and she has never had an ear infection before or since. I think they just wanted her on antibiotics because she was unvaccinated. The same thing happened when they were about to release her. They said that she couldn't go home unless they tested her for pertussis first. Now, she did have a respiratory condition, but the symptoms didn't match those of pertussis at all. I let them do it, because we wanted to go home, but regretted it when they came in with these huge tubes that they stuck into her sinuses.
That was in December. Although she got better, she wasn't really 100% throughout the cold season. By spring, they were saying that she had asthma. We were sent to a specialist who said that we should start asthma medication in the early fall, before she would develop any symptoms. We decided to wait and see if she had similar problems the following fall, and we would start medication ONLY if she had any problems. Well, it's been 7 years and she hasn't had any trouble like that since then. She does tend to get a lingering cough after a cold that might be asthma-related, but since she rarely gets colds it's not much of a problem. But, we would never have known that if we would have started medicating her right away.
We did decide that since her respiratory sytem was not strong, pertussis would probably be particularly devastating for her. So, we did the DPT series in the summer, spread out to avoid cold season. The following summer, we did MMR, because there are enough unvaccinated kids in this area that measels does go around pretty frequently. I haven't heard of anybody having serious complications from it out here, but by that point we felt that she was old enough and healthy enough to handle the vaccine well.
There was a pertussis outbreak here a year and a half ago. A co-worker of mine caught it, in fact. Very few kids caught it (most were vaccinated), but a lot of adults caught it, because their immunity had weakened over the years. Luckily, it's not particularly lethal in adults, only very annoying (particularly because symptoms can last for quite a while).
We did NOT get my daughter the chicken pox vaccine. I don't see any point in preventing somebody from getting an illness in childhood if the illness is only particularly dangerous if you catch it when you're an adult. I can see the argument for those with weakened immune systems, but not for the general population. When she was 4, a vaccinated child in her class caught chicken pox. Naturally, she caught it. She got a pretty good case, but even so, she was over it in a week and none the worse for the experience. The interesting thing to me was that 25% of the kids in her class ALSO caught chicken pox, even though she was the only one who hadn't had the vaccine! I really believe that chicken pox will start to cause some serious public health problems once the genration of mandatory-vaccine kids grows up and starts to catch it in adulthood.
I wasn't too worried about the chicken pox, but we still had to take her in to the doctor to get him to verify that she had it, so that we would be exempt from the immunization requirements. The nurses acted like she had the plague, and we had to go in through the back entrance. The shuffled her into a room and scooted out of there quickly. Luckily, our doctor has been practicing for a number of years, and he had a more relaxed attitude about the whole thing. He did ask if he could bring his medical student in to show him the rash, though, because he said that he didn't get to see many good examples of the chicken pox rash any more, and he wanted his student to be familiar with it.
Anyway, I don't think that I answered anybody's question, but those were my two cents on the subject. I hope that they were at least interesting.
Why can't we all just get along
--Pete
--Pete