I had chicken pox in 6th grade. I missed three weeks of school, and the story is that my fever went to 106.7 F. I don't recall exactly, however I do recall thinking my mom was crazy, because I was FREEZING and she took off all my clothes and put me in a bathtub of cold
water. (And no, my brain didn't melt. Apparently fever gets truly dangerous at 108 F.) I have some scars from that - I tried very hard not to scratch the blisters, but there were hundreds of them and they were SO itchy after they stopped hurting.
I had mumps at a younger age, I recall it as being very painful, but not weeks of illness. I'm female, so I didn't have to worry about orchitis (which is when the infection goes into the testicles, and aside from being super painful, can lead to sterility).
I was immunized against pertussis with the old whole cell vaccine, the DTP. As far as I know, no problems from that. I was actually immunized against smallpox and have the scar to prove it. I don't know if I still have immunity, but it sure helped me feel better back in 2001 when white powder was getting mailed around to politicians and academics.
I've had three babies die from pertussis in my care (I am a pediatrician.) The most recent was in an Amish family in 2013. Nobody was immunized. The baby was breast fed, the family ate a lot of healthy food they had produced themselves on their farm. The older children got the whooping cough, and the infant died, despite our best efforts. The parents were very stoic, saying that it was God's will. I was upset for. . . well, I think I'm still upset.
I have immunized thousands of kids in the past twenty years, with all the vaccines. None of them have had a serious vaccine reaction. I frequently ask my colleagues about their experiences and they can't come up with any either. In 2014 I (finally) met a mother whose child had a severe reaction to the old DTP vaccine. The baby cried inconsolably for hours, she just screamed. She ended up at the emergency room, and the mom remembers being told "your baby is allergic to the pertussis vaccine and should not get any more. And, her kids should not get any pertussis vaccine." This mother was in my exam room, with the baby in question, now in her 30's and there with her own baby. It was a scary event, but she had no lasting ill effects from it. They said "We know the pertussis vaccine has changed, and we want to give it to Joey." So we did. And, he got a big swollen hot red leg, like we used to see (I'm told by older pediatricians) with the old DTP vaccine. And I thought hmmmm, maybe we shouldn't give this kid any more pertussis vaccines. My plan is to draw titers for antibody response. It sure looked like he had a strong response - he may be immune with just one exposure.
My father had polio as a child, and suffered from post-polio syndrome in his 60's and 70's, which decreased his quality of life and likely shortened his life since he couldn't exercise without pain.
We have some families in our practice in Oregon who have side stepped our vaccine policy and are way behind on vaccinations. Last winter an under-immunized 18 month old was hospitalized for a month with strep pneumo, the infection that Prevnar prevents. He didn't just get pneumonia, he got necrotizing pneumonia. He was on a ventilator for a week, in the ICU for 8 days, and then went into renal failure because apparently that's a thing that happens when you have pneumococcus. He needed dialysis for a couple of weeks, and then he needed physical therapy and occupational therapy and speech therapy, because he'd been so sick for so long. He and his siblings are getting caught up on their vaccines now - mom's had a change of heart.
That case
led to a change in my behavior. When I had vaccine fearful parents, I used to insist on the pertussis, since I've personally experienced multiple sick babies with that, but I didn't insist on the Prevnar. Now I do. I have some babies that get a Pentacel at 2 months at the physical, then they drop by at 3 months for the Prevnar (shot only visit - 5 minutes), then another Pentacel at the 4 month, coming in monthly for one poke at a time. I'm OK with delaying the hep B - the risk of that is low in childhood. I'm OK with skipping the rotavirus vaccine: rotavirus is nasty, it gives a baby diarrhea that smells like rotten tropical fruit, but nobody is going to die from diarrhea in the United States, you'll just have to spend a week in the hospital getting IV fluid. I think the MMR is very important, and it's been studied to death. The guy who tried to link it to autism has been shown to have taken money from lawyers working on a lawsuit, and has been shown to have actually faked his numbers. Varicella, eh, you can delay it if you want, you're just increasing the chance of a more severe illness. It's really, really hard to find live varicella out there for a "chicken pox party." I won't even start with HPV. Suffice to say I have two children and I've given them all the vaccines, on the typical schedule.
And it went fine.
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