Vaccinations

It's fairly common these days to find parents who think vaccinations are bad for their children and refuse to get them vaccinated.

I'm from a different group of people who feel vaccinations are important. My mom was traumatized by the number of children she saw that caught paralytic polio. Canada was one of the nations the hardest hit by this disease, especially between 1927 and 1953. Canada was also one of the first countries to successfully eliminate Polio after the introduction of the salk vaccine in 1955 and the Sabin oral vaccine in 1962.

There was an outbreak in the years before my birth in 1962 that scarred my mom for life. The number of children she saw remain handicapped made sure that she was going to have me vaccinated and convince me that the better option is to have my children vaccinated.

Sadly I did end up getting the measles, really badly, and I suspect the reason my eyes adjust so poorly to light was due to this. I spent 1 month in the dark when I had the measles. They were terrified I'd go blind.  The measles vaccination was offered to me at school, but on the day it was given, I had a cold, which wasn't a cold, but symptoms of the measles. The vaccination came too late for me.

I also got the mumps at 10, and the side effect of that is that I have had motion sickness since. Before the mumps I could ride in cars and even swing on a swing. After the mumps, I turn green in anything with a bit of motion. I've never been able to go on rides in amusements park since the mumps.

The chicken pox is the only childhood disease I got that did not seem to leave me with negative side effects, with the exception of a few scars from scratching.

Here's an interesting article written by a 70's kid who's mom thought it was healthier to not receive any vaccinations.

In 2007 when I travelled to the middle-east I got a plethora of vaccinations.  I got vaccinated against polio, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, as well as Hep A, Heb B, typhoid, cholera, and travellers diarrhea.  The only vaccination I never got is one against rubella. However they don't make that vaccine alone, it's usually along with mumps and measles. Since I had the other two, they couldn't vaccinate me against it.

The only vaccination I do not get these days is the flu vaccination, because I've had it once and reacted really poorly to the vaccine itself. However if I got older and more prone to catching the flu, I'd probably go back to getting a yearly shot