Member-only story
Parenting The Chronically Ill: Vaccines
Vaccines are such a hot button issue, I always debate on sharing our story. Bit is mostly vaccinated, we stopped when she turned 5. We now rely on herd immunity and isolating her when others near us are sick. It isn’t my ideal strategy, but it is the safest. Vaccines are supposed to save kids lives, not almost take them. When you have immune system problems though, vaccines can be dangerous, we were never told this, and honestly even if we were I would have still tried, because to me, it is important. Protecting her from suffering is my job as her parent, so giving her vaccines was my job.
With Bit’s diagnoses we always felt vaccinating was very important, her immune system struggles to function, so anything we could do to give her a leg up was great. We did all the shots on the normal schedule, she had minor reactions to them. She had localized swelling at first, then a fever, then small hives, then larger hives. So when she was 5 we split her vaccines up for the first time, she missed the cut off date for school, so we had another year before they were required. Her pediatrician recommended we split them as her reactions had been worsening. So we pre-medicated her with benadryl and tylenol and hoped for the best. She had some significant hives, and we thought that was the worst of it, but we were very wrong.
