Finally safe from measles
I am applying to work as a volunteer at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. Part of the procedure is to assure that I am up to date on my measles, mumps, rebella, and rubeola vaccinations, and am free from active TB. Of course I can't remember my immunizations from 30 years ago, but the cool thing is that they can just draw some blood and check.
Oops. I came out negative for measles vaccine. I could catch the disease.
Now, supposedly, I had an "MMR" vaccination as a child, but it seems that it doesn't take in everyone, and mine seems to be dead. Although I didn't know this, a friend recalls that in our era, certain years of measles vaccine were considered more effective than others. Perhaps I got a bad one.
So, one result of doing this volunteer work is that I am finally safe from measles. Volunteers get free innoculations when they are found to be deficient (keep this in mind if you need vaccinations but can't afford it!). Not a bad side effect.
This whole thing reminded me of the changing times regarding chicken pox. Back when I was a kid, there was no such thing as a chicken pox vaccine. Nearly everyone came down with chicken pox sometime in elementary school (except people like me who had it when we were babies because our older siblings got it in elementary school). It was sort of a rite of passage.
In fact, it was considered a good thing to have chicken pox! Most kids don't suffer much from it-- maybe a couple of uncomfortable days due to itchiness and a low fever-- but you still have to be quarantined for 6 to 10 days. What fun! You stay home, watch TV, get special food, and don't even have to feel sick for it.
Parents liked it too, actually, in cases where they were able to stay home with the kid. It is much safer to get chicken pox as a child than as a teenager, when it can threaten fertility (or is that mumps? One of them). So mothers actually used to encourage their kids to play with the kid who had chicken pox if they hadn't had it yet. Then the kid gets sick, gets over it, and doesn't have to worry any more.
These days, there is a vaccine. This is a good thing, of course, but the irony is that kids hardly get exposed to chicken pox anymore. The kid of a friend of mine somehow managed to catch it anyway, and when they took him to the doctor, the doctor assured them that it wasn't chicken pox. It was so unfamiliar that the doc didn't even recognize it! And so the kid merrily played with his friends, exposing all of them. And this kid had been vaccinated, too! Maybe it's still in the stage like the measles vaccine when I was a kid, where it isn't always effective.
Maybe we're passing the era of "childhood diseases"? Are there any standard illnesses that kids get anymore, now that we don't get measles, mumps, chicken pox, or polio?
Oops. I came out negative for measles vaccine. I could catch the disease.
Now, supposedly, I had an "MMR" vaccination as a child, but it seems that it doesn't take in everyone, and mine seems to be dead. Although I didn't know this, a friend recalls that in our era, certain years of measles vaccine were considered more effective than others. Perhaps I got a bad one.
So, one result of doing this volunteer work is that I am finally safe from measles. Volunteers get free innoculations when they are found to be deficient (keep this in mind if you need vaccinations but can't afford it!). Not a bad side effect.
This whole thing reminded me of the changing times regarding chicken pox. Back when I was a kid, there was no such thing as a chicken pox vaccine. Nearly everyone came down with chicken pox sometime in elementary school (except people like me who had it when we were babies because our older siblings got it in elementary school). It was sort of a rite of passage.
In fact, it was considered a good thing to have chicken pox! Most kids don't suffer much from it-- maybe a couple of uncomfortable days due to itchiness and a low fever-- but you still have to be quarantined for 6 to 10 days. What fun! You stay home, watch TV, get special food, and don't even have to feel sick for it.
Parents liked it too, actually, in cases where they were able to stay home with the kid. It is much safer to get chicken pox as a child than as a teenager, when it can threaten fertility (or is that mumps? One of them). So mothers actually used to encourage their kids to play with the kid who had chicken pox if they hadn't had it yet. Then the kid gets sick, gets over it, and doesn't have to worry any more.
These days, there is a vaccine. This is a good thing, of course, but the irony is that kids hardly get exposed to chicken pox anymore. The kid of a friend of mine somehow managed to catch it anyway, and when they took him to the doctor, the doctor assured them that it wasn't chicken pox. It was so unfamiliar that the doc didn't even recognize it! And so the kid merrily played with his friends, exposing all of them. And this kid had been vaccinated, too! Maybe it's still in the stage like the measles vaccine when I was a kid, where it isn't always effective.
Maybe we're passing the era of "childhood diseases"? Are there any standard illnesses that kids get anymore, now that we don't get measles, mumps, chicken pox, or polio?
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