Power Your Memories: Tell the Stories!
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| Iron lung, St Bartholomew's Hospital, London: a patient inside a Drinker respirator, attended to by a nurse and a doctor. Photograph, ca 1930. Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) |
Valorie: While listening to the news about recent controversy concerning vaccines, I thought of my uncle, who died a few years back. When I was young, he was infected with polio. According to my cousin, doctors have said he was actually infected twice, with two different polio strains. He was deathly ill for many months and in an "iron lung" for a while. Although he mostly recovered and was able to work, travel and have a wonderful long life, he was never free of polio even at the end of his life.
I asked my husband if he had ever known someone with polio, and he said that a kid in his neighborhood was infected and paralyzed. He eventually was able to walk wearing braces. This was frighteningly common until the polio vaccines were finally available after thorough testing. It was common for the streets to be crowded with people lining up to get the shot.
MaryLynn: The polio vaccine became available when I was in high school and it was with great sighs of relief that every student in our high school gathered in the gymnasium, rolled up our sleeves and got the shots in our arms. We felt that we were not only receiving our own protection but also protecting our family members and our community by not infecting others.
Valorie: This generation of parents does not have memories of the terrible scourge of polio, measles, chickenpox and far too often, are choosing not to vaccinate their children. This endangers the rest of us, especially those with weakened immune systems who cannot safely be inoculated. Recently, a movement has started asking grandparents to begin telling their stories about the dangers of diseases now fully preventable, like measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria. The list is long, so here is a link to the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/global-immunization/diseases/index.html. I thought that this was a natural topic for this blog, because we live in history, and "do genealogy" in order to discover and share the stories of our past.
While doing some research, I came across an OpEd published by the Yakima Herald-Republic by Donna A. Gaffney and Teri Mills, nurses and leaders of Grandparents for Vaccines. Here is part of it.
"Becoming a grandparent begins a bond unlike any other — one that promises depth, delight and unexpected wisdom.
"Today’s grandparents aren’t just storybook figures or weekend babysitters. Many have also taken on the role of fierce protector. They may tread lightly when offering advice, but when it comes to health, especially vaccinations, their life experience instructs them to take a firmer tack.
"Many of today’s grandparents lived through a time when vaccines were unavailable. They remember the itchy fevers of chickenpox, the swelling from mumps, or being quarantined with measles — no school, no playdates and sometimes no happy ending. These weren’t just childhood rites of passage. They were serious, sometimes deadly, illnesses that changed lives and stole futures.
"Filmmaker and grandfather Francis Ford Coppola was 9 years old when he contracted polio, a traumatic experience that shaped his life and advocacy. Today, he is a vocal champion of vaccination, calling it “so absurd, the idea that they would consider reversing course on vaccines now.”
"But that is what’s happening: Critical vaccine research is being cut and trusted oversight panels undermined, endangering the health of our families and putting our grandchildren at grave risk....
"The numbers tell a troubling story. In 2024-25, only 92.1% of U.S. kindergartners were fully vaccinated. It was the fifth consecutive year below the 95% threshold needed to maintain herd immunity against highly contagious diseases like measles. Public confidence in vaccines is slipping. As a result, the safety of our communities is being compromised.
"Now we have a multi-state measles outbreak, the worst in more than 30 years. Of the more than 1,350 people with confirmed measles diagnoses, 92% were either unvaccinated or had no known vaccination status. Three people have died, including two children.
"Cases of whooping cough are also on the rise. Health care workers are once again caring for infants who cough until they turn blue, gasping for breath in scenes that should belong to history, not headlines.
"Many of today’s parents, having never witnessed the devastating effects of polio or whooping cough, are being lulled into a dangerous complacency. But we grandparents remember. We saw children on crutches, or struggling to breathe inside iron lungs, or deaf from post-measles infections. This is our lived experience....
"A 2024 Canadian study of 2,000 parents affirmed that personal stories were convincing and highly successful strategies for promoting health. (And if there is anything grandparents know how to do, it’s to tell stories.) We’re calling on grandparents everywhere to share their stories about vaccine-preventable diseases and to talk about how they survived measles, mumps and even polio with the help of vaccines."
Many readers of this blog have memories such as I have; please share these stories with your families, and if you are willing, with readers here. Send them to m.strickland@skcgs.org. Thanks so much!
This is what could happen to a child who doesn't get vaccinated
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| Valorie Zimmerman |
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I found my grandfather in a September 1962 newspaper ad containing a list of doctors who were encouraging people to attend a clinic to get the Sabin oral polio vaccines. Grandpa brought three doses home from the clinic and my brothers and I got them in Grandma's kitchen (I seem to remember a cookie afterwards for not fussing).
ReplyDeleteMy husband had polio when he was 5 yrs old circa 1951 and had to be hospitalized for 6 months in Santa Monica, California. Initially at the onset, he could not walk or bear weight but he was a lucky one who survived and had no post polio paralysis. His little fried who was infected at the same time spent the rest of his life using "Kenney Sticks" type crutches to walk.
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