I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease when I was 9 years old. I receive IV infusions of a Crohn’s medication at the hospital every 8 weeks. My Crohn’s medicine keeps my disease in remission, but the other effect is lowering my immune system. Because my immune system is lowered, I rely on other people to […]
I want to tell you about the children that are impacted by those who choose not to vaccinate—children like my 4 year old grandson who has leukemia. His chemotherapy treatment will last 3 ½ years, and by the end, it will wipe out any immunity he had received from vaccinations. He is also immuno-compromised during […]
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 […]
On January 20th 2016, my husband and I had a doctor’s appointment for an ultrasound to find out the gender of our baby. It was all we could think about. We lived in an Idaho town at the time, so our doctor was part of a little family practice office. The ultrasound started off great: our […]
It was 1998, and the chickenpox vaccine was just coming out. At that time–the chickenpox vaccine became available in 1995—my daughter was four and completely up-to-date on all of the recommended vaccinations. However, I didn’t see the point of taking her in to get that one—I mean, chickenpox was no big deal, right? I was […]
In recognition of National Infant Immunization Week (NIIW), Voices For Vaccines is participating in a blog relay to discuss the critical role vaccines play in protecting children, families, and communities against vaccine-preventable diseases. NIIW is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). You can follow the NIIW conversation on social media using hashtag #NIIW. I have […]
I have always been pro-vaccine. My father worked in International Development, so I grew up and traveled all over the world in my youth, meeting children my age who had suffered from diseases that most of my friends back in Canada were lucky never to have even heard of. Later on, when I was going […]
Measles is running rampant in California. It’s all over the news—and not just local news, national news as well. As a parent of an immunocompromised child, I had, of course, been concerned. But, since I do not live in California, nor do I plan to visit there any time soon, I thought I was safe […]
When my son was 3 years old and my daughter 5 months, a woman emailed a local mothers’ listserv and revealed that her son had pertussis. He was unvaccinated. The mother brought the child to a strip mall where many children who were too young to be fully vaccinated, including my daughter, were present and […]
When I had little babies I was involved in many different parent/mothering groups, including a baby-wearing group and nursing mother’s group. A few of these groups were popular with mothers who chose not to vaccinate their children. I vaccinated my children and tended to keep my opinion to myself—I figured it was that their decision […]