The past three years have been grueling. During that time, I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Adenocarcinoma at age 36. I was a single mother with two children, ages 6 and 8. I got the diagnosis in a roundabout way, as, unfortunately, many of us do. I had had abnormal pap smears starting 8 years […]
1 Week Prior to Doctor Appointment Zoe: “I don’t want to get a shot. Will I have to get a shot?” Me: “Yes, you will have to get at least one shot.” Zoe: “I DON’T WANT TO GET A SHOT? Why? Why do I have to get a shot?” Me: “To keep you healthy.” Zoe: […]
Is there wiggle room about the idea that vaccines do not cause autism? Is it possible that sometimes in some particularly vulnerable children that vaccines act as a trigger for autism? Dr. Peter Hotez’s new book Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism leaves no wiggle room in the answer. Vaccines have nothing to do with […]
My brother, who is six years older than I am, has a scar where his smallpox vaccine was administered when he was a child. I do not have this same scar because smallpox had been eliminated from the United States by the time I was born and would be declared eradicated from the planet within […]
I sat down to write this piece and I asked myself “Where do I start?” My best answer for that would be to start at the end of December. Scott and I had moved to a decent apartment, the bottom half of a pretty house. We loved that apartment; it had a lot of space. We had […]
Nurses are trusted healthcare providers because they are caring, smart, and hard-working. We all love our nurses, so when they speak out against vaccines, they present a special danger. A few nurses have publicly come out or made the news for being anti-vaccine, and we want to provide ways for pro-vaxxers to combat this threat. […]
Who’s your favorite Superman? Christopher Reeve? Dean Cain? Henry Cavill? Ours is Jason Mendelsohn, the unassuming father of three who defeated Stage IV HPV throat cancer in order to urge parents to vaccinate their children in order to prevent it for them. Parents of boys are often confused by the HPV vaccine. Both Nathan and […]
For many in the vaccine advocacy world, we feel as though we’ve watched Ethan Posard grow up. First, we saw him receive his adolescent Tdap on film in his sister’s documentary, Invisible Threat. A few years later, he had published his children’s book about his puppy and kids as the superheroes of the herd immunity […]
When my daughter, Cambree, who is now fourteen months old, was born, she was a healthy, beautiful 6lb, 8oz baby with a head full of hair and long eyelashes. But at her two-month checkup, her eyes were yellow and her pediatrician believed her liver was swollen. When her labs came back, they were far from […]
Thanks to decades of awareness campaigns, parents are no longer surprised at a well-child check that their babies will be getting vaccines. But often, they are surprised or confused by how many vaccines are given, what diseases they prevent, how immunizations are monitored for safety, and how to make the shots less painful for their […]