Picture taken from the Public Health Library.
This guest post is written by Michael, the author of the wonderful Skeptical Raptor blog. His description of himself can be found here: http://www.skepticalraptor.com/about.html
Sometimes history gives one perspective to
understand the consequences of our actions. I grew up in a world with numerous
infectious disease epidemics, in a time before there were large numbers of
vaccines available. I was very young, so my memories were of my parents keeping
me out of school or away from friends if I had something or they knew an
epidemic was flying through the area.
I had the polio and smallpox vaccines when I
was young, so my parents stopped being worried about them. My father would tell
me stories about polio epidemics during the summers of his youth in Upstate New
York. I remember thinking that these stories were reminiscent of the same ones
where he said that he walked uphill in the snow both ways to and from class.
Until I ended up going to a university in Upstate New York, and I had to do
that. So I guess his polio stories might have been true.
Then as I grew up, I realized that polio was
dangerous. I had several classmates who had had contracted polio. One was a
friend who had to walk to and from class with two canes. One time, one of her
canes broke, and I literally carried her from school to my car, then drove her
home, then carried her into her house. Lucky for me, she was small and petite,
and I was tall and strong.
So, I saw the effects of polio directly as I
grew up. I was of the age that was right on the cusp of massive immunizations
with the Salk and Sabin vaccines against polio. But it took time for the
immunizations to get to everyone, so there were a few who were debilitated by
the disease. Kids just a few years older had a higher rate of classmates who
were afflicted with the after-effects of paralytic polio. Many died. Many were
hospital bound in iron lungs.
It was in this world that I contracted
chickenpox when I was about 6 or 7 years old. It's hard to remember all of the
details, but I remember a few things. First, I itched like crazy, and my mother
would yell if I tried to scratch it. But I also got to stay out of school, so
that was fine. Because, when all is said and done, chickenpox isn't that
dangerous of a disease.
Except when it is.
According to the CDC, before the vaccine was available, about 4 million people got
chickenpox each year in the United States. Of those, 10,600 of those people
were hospitalized, and 100 to 150 died each year. Those statistics seem small,
unless you happen to be one of those who were hospitalized.
Which I was.
Again, it's hard to remember all the details,
but I remember feeling OK. Kind of like getting a cold. However, two things
happened at the same time that nearly put me in the category of those who died
from the disease. The first thing that happened was one of the pox marks, on
the back of my head, became seriously infected. At the same time, I got a
serious brain swelling (at that time, no one was sure if they were independent
events or one caused the other). Within hours, I was dizzy, and I kept passing
out.
My father was a career military officer at
the time, and was of the opinion that "whatever didn't kill you made you
stronger." Doctors were useful if you had a gunshot wound. But in this
case, I clearly remember the concern in my parents' face as I was shipped off in
an ambulance to the military hospital on base.
Now everything is fuzzy. I recall laying on
my stomach, as several surgeons were inspecting my head talking in secret
medical talk (this was the 60's, so no one was asking for an MRI or CAT scan).
Finally, I had to undergo surgery to remove the infection from the behind my
ear and to relieve pressure on my brain. Only many years later did I find out
how bad the surgery had gone. I was close to death, but I was very young, so
all I remember is coming out of anesthesia, and asking the surgeons to show me
what they cut out of my head. It was seriously gross, looked like an alien
organism had attached itself to me.
I lived, which is obvious since I can write
this article. All that remained was a 5 cm scar behind my ear. I don't think
about it much until a get a haircut and the barber kind of stares for a few
second.
Of course, when I was in my early 40's, I
contracted shingles, which is a disease that is caused by the same exact virus that causes chickenpox. The evil virus hangs out in your nervous
system, waiting for an opportune moment to strike again. Except shingles is an
infection of the nerves, so it's much more painful (think of pouring hot oil on
your skin, and you'd be about 50% of the way to understanding the pain). It
attacked me, oddly, in the same place as my scar from the chickenpox, although
my doctors said it was coincidental. Ten years later, I made sure I got the shingles
vaccine so I'd never experience that again.
For most kids chickenpox isn't awful, although the
subsequent shingles is horrible, so there's that. But if I were 5 years old
again, and the chickenpox vaccine were available, I'd be begging for it so that
I would have avoided what I went through. Many decades later, I remember the
fear in my parents, and the scary smells and screams in the hospital. These are
images that no 7 year old kid should ever have in their memory.
Vaccines would have saved me from that.
