When I was a kid, there were shots for things that kids get...so I got my measles, my mumps, and my rubella. I never had to deal with any of those, and no one I knew ever did either. They didn't exist to me, and I never knew really what they were until I was an adult, and people stopped getting shots, and these diseases started to reappear in some people.
Once I saw a YouTube video of a small child with whooping cough, and whether or not to vaccinate my kids was no longer a question I seriously considered. They got them all.
But...the chicken pox vaccine...the varicella vaccine...did not exist yet when I was a kid.
When someone got the chicken pox, your parents did the responsible thing, and exposed you to it right away. Because getting it as a child was infinitely preferable to getting it as an adult.
We were living on Quince Street at the time, and our friends the Shirts got the chicken pox from somewhere.
What did my mother do? She sent us to go play with them. Not that we needed any encouragement - she didn't even have to announce the reasons, probably.
We went to play with the boys, who had a few spots at the time and a light fever. We didn't care. We were kids.
Then my brothers got it. Both of them down for the count.
I couldn't believe my great good fortune. They were sick, laid up in bed...and I was immune. I felt bulletproof. I teased them about being sick. My mother took me to the store, and for once, I got to pick out the cereal for breakfast. Anything I wanted. It was a dream I'd never dare imagine would come true.
I picked out the Booberry Ghost Puffs - the ones my brothers would never pick. They were always getting Count Chocula or Frankenberry or something like that. For once in my life, I didn't have to fight my brothers to get what I wanted.
That night, I was taking a bath, and my mother walked in to sit by the tub.
I heard her say, "Uh-oh!"
I had it on my back. Not as bulletproof as I hoped.
My brothers and I spent about a week or two in quarantine - apparently we didn't have any other friends that needed infecting, and we were too sick for school. Sores all over us, itching, fevers. We discovered for ourselves that calamine lotion was a complete rip-off; didn't work at all.
And then we recovered and were fine.
Recently I found my mother's journal she kept during that period, and she said that my father went away when that happened so that he wouldn't be exposed. I was surprised, and searched my memories, but I couldn't remember seeing him at all during that time. Apparently, my dad was never exposed as a child, so whenever it happened as an adult, he was at risk, and had to stay away from any outbreak himself.
Shingles
I wish I could say that was the end of the story...but once you've had chicken pox, it's not over. The virus lays dormant in your body, waiting to revisit you at the worst, most stressful possible time, unless you get the shingles shot, which I still need to do at some point here.
But to this point, I haven't.
When I was in my early twenties, during a period of time when I was financially bankrupt (literally), morally spent and once again forced to live with my parents in order to survive, I got shingles. Here's approximately what it looked like:
Mine was a line of blisters that extended from the center of my spine, clear around to right underneath my right breast...and I'd never experienced such pain in my life. A constant burning and itching that wouldn't even let up to let me sleep.
Thankfully, by this time the Internet also existed, and finding out what to do about shingles was as easy as asking Jeeves.
I found out I shouldn't take regular pain relievers for it, but capsacain works on the pain and itching. I tried it, both topically and internally, and it worked like a charm. Finally I could rest and let it heal.
However, when it healed, the nerve along which it had traveled was numb - completely dead. And so it remains even today. The visible scars are gone, but when I touch that area, it's as though it's been wrapped in gauze or something - can't feel it at all.
I'm not going to jump into the whether-or-not-to-vaccinate debate. To me, that's something everyone needs to research and decide for themselves. For me, it was the right thing to do. These may have been childhood diseases, but there was nothing childish or cutesy about them. They hurt, and they left permanent damage. Give me the shot any day.
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