My father was born in 1908, the youngest of nine children born to his parents and one of six to survive to adulthood. He watched his favorite brother, Alexis, die of meningitis when Alexis was just 16.
My mother was born in 1907, one of 12 children her parents had and, like my Dad, was one of only six in her family to survive to adulthood. She was about 10 when she watched her little sister, Rose, age 4, die of meningitis, arched and frozen on her parents’ bed, with only her eyes able to move, following the movements of whoever entered the room. My grandmother, I was told, had a nervous breakdown after Rose’s death; she had lost so many of her children to that terrible disease.
Today, meningitis is rare, thanks to the advances of medicine. In addition, there is a vaccine to protect against at least one of the remaining forms of the disease.
When I was a child in the 50s, there was one summer, maybe two, during which we were not allowed to swim in public pools because polio was attacking children and it seemed to be especially contagious in water. Then, Dr. Salk came out with the polio vaccine and EVERYONE rushed to get it. We had seen our playmates become paralyzed, confined to big electric tubes called Iron Lungs, which breathed for them because they were so paralyzed they couldn’t even inhale and exhale on their own. My husband’s cousin married a woman whose legs were paralyzed by polio. She lived the bulk of her life on crutches, bravely even giving birth to and raising two fine boys; in her later years, she became confined to a wheelchair and experienced renewed suffering from something called post-polio syndrome.
In 1966, in Costa Rica, I had a brush with diphtheria; it is endemic there, and while I was being treated, the doctor told me there was a man in another room dying of tetanus; he had stepped on a rusty nail and ignored the wound until it was too late. There is a vaccine called the DPT to prevent diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus. It’s just a DT at our age; we renew it every 10 years.
Several years ago, my husband developed shingles, a hideously painful rash that burned and hurt him for many months. When medical science came up with a vaccine against it, I jumped at the chance to get it. I had seen what it did to my husband and I did NOT want to go there!
Having lived through, or heard about so many dreadful diseases, we vaccinated our children as recommended by their pediatricians and, since then, we annually get the flu shot and, now, the COVID vaccine. At 82 and 91 years of age, we are active and healthy and enjoying our retirement and our family. Modern medicine has given us some pretty miraculous protections and we are not going to risk fate. We live a healthy lifestyle and we get vaccinated on schedule.
It is hard for us to understand the hysteria that has arisen around vaccines. We are much more concerned about the many chemicals that surround us, in our food, our food packaging, beverages, toys, clothing, make-up and toiletries, vaping and cigarettes, the paint on our walls and the fumes coming from our rugs and furniture. These many chemicals are surely affecting our children’s health and development but we aren’t hearing an outcry about those things. That seems so strange to us. With so much real danger all around, why vaccines? We don’t get it.
Louise Amyot is a retired registered dietitian and a 51-year resident of Greenfield.