One of the most fascinating episodes of the biopic of John Adams demonstrated how Abigail Adams vaccinated her children with the live smallpox virus. I had never realized that people understood how to use the virus itself as a preventative. I remembered my own childhood vaccination against smallpox. It was a nasty affair during which I had to wear a plastic shield on the shoulder where I had been jabbed. Over time a sore appeared that I suppose was similar to those I would have had if I had somehow contracted that disease. Eventually the sore healed and I was left for a time with a round scar on my left shoulder. My mother explained that if I had actually contracted the disease I might have ended up with such scars all over my body, even my face. I felt relieved that my mother had taken the time to get me vaccinated against that once dreaded disease. 

By the time my children were born vaccines had literally eliminated smallpox from the face of the earth. Nobody needed the vaccine anymore because the virus itself had died out due to the massive worldwide vaccination of people on every continent. I felt a sense of wonder that I had been among the last group of children watching that crusty sore grow underneath the plastic shield that I wore on my arm. 

I learned the true extent of such a miracle from my grandfather who described an outbreak of smallpox in his town. His descriptions were so vivid that they made me shudder as I remembered how icky that sore on my arm had been. Grandpa spoke of his father’s face being so infected with pus ridden sores that it looked as though he would surely die. Even the town doctor essentially told my grandfather who was just a teen at the time to prepare for the worst outcome. Miraculously my great grandfather eventually recovered but the marks of his illness were indelibly left on his face, his arms and his chest. Somehow my own minor experience with the smallpox vaccine helped me to imagine the true horror of contracting that often fatal disease and I was quite happy that my mother and millions of mothers on the earth had helped to wipe out the horrific illness with those shots.

I was also one of the first group of youngsters to take part in the historical vaccination effort to protect people from polio. I knew all about the disease. There was a little boy at my school who walked with crutches and iron braces on his legs. Mama explained to me that he had polio. So too did the father of one of the boys that I knew from our church. My mother even told me the story of President Franklin Roosevelt and his polio when I was only five years old. She would often chide me if I ran barefooted through water standing against the curb in front of our home, telling me that I might get polio that way. I could see that she was very worried about my welfare so it did not surprise me at all when she signed me up to get some of the very first polio vaccines.

Six year old me was terrified as I stood in line waiting for my turn but I soon learned that the jab was not so bad, a good turn of events because I needed more than one dose. I remember how happy my mother was when I had completed the cycle of shots and how she would follow up those with vaccines for other diseases as well. I became almost professional at taking those pricks without even flinching even though I silent said a prayer or two each time the needle got near my skin. Best of all I did not end up like the girl who lived down the street whose polio was so bad that she spent most of her days breathing inside an iron lung. 

There were no vaccines for measles or mumps or chickenpox when I was a child so I caught every single one of those things. The chickenpox were annoying but the mumps really hurt. I can still recall how hard it was to swallow. I did okay with those illnesses but the measles did a number on me. I was sick for over a week and at times my fever was so high that I thought I was going to die. I was eight years old by then and my imagination was vivid. Little did I know that measles can sometimes be quite devastating to some people. I remember my mother checking me constantly with a worried look on her face. She would not let my brothers near me because she did not want them to contract the illness. That was one of the clues that old me that measles were way more serious than I had thought. 

When my daughters came along I gladly gave them all the usual vaccines plus a few more that had been developed over time. I must have missed giving them the chicken pox vaccine or maybe it wasn’t even available then because they each had an irritating and itchy round. By then smallpox did not even exist on the earth thanks to vaccines so my girls never experienced that crusty scab followed by a scar. I never had to worry that they might contract polio or any number of terrible things. it was a good feeling to protect them and it made me think of my mother who purchased no luxuries but always made sure that we got our proper vaccines no matter what they cost. 

I think of these things today because there seems to be such a backlash against vaccines that I frankly do not understand. Maybe it is because so many young mothers have never seen or even heard about the horrors of diseases that once changed or even ended lives so dramatically. The vaccine movement has been so successful that they did not have a neighbor in an iron lung or men at church in wheelchairs. They did not see or hear about people being permanently disfigured by smallpox or spend a week fighting a battle against measles. Surely if they had experienced such things they would be as eager to take advantage of the modern methods for avoiding horrific diseases as my mother had been for me and my brothers. 

I understand the concerns and even the right to freedom of choice but I would challenge everyone to do some research before turning away from the life changing vaccines that are more and more often being rejected for reasons that have not been proven to be facts. As more and more choose to walk away from vaccines the herd immunity that they have created will wane and we may once again see devastating illnesses plaguing our children. As someone who witnessed both testimony and the actual illness I can say that we should think about the risk of to take chances that might result in terrible illnesses. It’s a matter of caring about each other just as my mother did with me and my brothers. I will always be grateful to her for protecting me. My hope is that we can protect each other as well.