The rest of the story.
Memories: of being first-time parents, scared, holding our very, very sick six-month-old, trying desperately to get her fever down. Nighttime. On the phone with the doctor, sorry to bother him, grateful that he was as concerned as we were. The cool-but-not-cold bath on his advice, after Tylenol proved useless, that brought her down to 104 from 105.4, but that temp just refused to budge more than that.
She’d been given her DPT shot that day.
There are people who wonder if their kids will react to their shots, and for most, they learn there’s nothing to worry about. (Please: there will not be a debate here about the alleged autism thing. I have too much of a scientific background to give it any credence.) We were one of the unlucky few for whom the DPT was actually a problem. The pediatrician had no doubt it was the Pertussis part of the shot at fault, and insisted she not be given the full trio again.
So, K-12, we knew that if any other child at her school should test positive for whooping cough, our kid was the one who was going to be isolated at home by order of the school district (and common sense). Okay; you do what you have to do.
Which is why when our youngest was born, the Stanford researcher who knocked tentatively on my maternity-ward door in ’88 was surprised at how fast I said yes when she asked if we were interested in enrolling him in a study of a new, acellular DPT shot after she explained that, so far, two million Japanese two-year-olds had been given it without one single reaction ever. But it had never been given to infants. Did we want in?
Heck YEAH!!!
That acellular vaccine is now the standard shot. It has meant that there is less genetic material for any child to hyper-react to like ours did, while still being immunized.
You’re welcome. And thank you for providing herd immunity for our oldest in return.
After all those years of knowing there were all these what-ifs…
Thank goodness for the astute doctor who recognized a rare disease. And for the fact that it’s safer in adults.
Whooping cough in one’s late 20’s.
Now the trick is for her not to get swine flu on top of it.