Disqus - Friends of jeshyr

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 20:46:28 -0000

As long as we're throwing around anecdotes, In my 16 years of being a parent I've lived in 10 different states and had 12 different primary pediatricians for my kids. I've never *not* had a doctor or nurse go over the information leaflet, even when I was bored to tears with it, particularly by the third kid.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 21:06:50 -0000

I'm probably a weird candidate for "rabidly pro-vaccine". I have three kids. They were all preemies, including one born at a whopping 504 grams at 24 weeks gestation. My oldest child was awarded compensation from the vaccine courts after a several week ICU stay from nearly uncontrollable seizures after his first MMR shot. The same child also has an egg allergy. Go figure. In spite of all that, I still chose to get all my kids fully vaccinated, including the egg-allergic, vaccine injured child (that child gets his vaccines in an office a few hundred feet from an ER and is observed for a long time afterwards because of his history). The risks of the disease, to me, was far greater than the risk of the vaccine. They are all fully vaccinated. In spite of that, the same eldest offspring still got whooping cough last summer. Unfortunately for us, we spent a lot of time with a friend who is medically contraindicated from vaccines. It was a scary time for everybody. Thank goodness she didn't get sick, as she was immediately put on antibiotic therapy just in case, but it could have all been avoided if so many people at my son's school weren't unvaccinated.

All that to say this: I have lived through both vaccine injury and nursing my kids through vaccine preventable illness (in spite of my best efforts to prevent that). The ICU stay when my child was a year old was far less scary than watching him struggle through whopping cough. I'm angry at the selfishness of the people who decided that my child's health and life was less important than a minuscule risk of injury form an inexpensive shot.

Re: Leaky Bowel

BeatriceC — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 21:33:55 -0000

We have a Jiff Creamy vs. Peter Pan Crunch war going on in this house. It gets ugly sometimes.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 21:38:37 -0000

As a California resident and the parent of a child who got a vaccine preventable illness last year, in spite of being fully vaccinated himself, I thank you for your efforts.

Re: Leaky Bowel

BeatriceC — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 22:46:03 -0000

My boys' MHE team includes just about everybody but a social worker. I think you're right in that it would be a great benefit. MHE causes bony growths that can deform the skeleton and are often easily visible from the outside, and as such can create self-image issues. I'm on my own navigating the insurance maze (and right now fighting a battle for an appropriate wheelchair. UGH!). I wish our hospital would think to include somebody like that.

Re: Leaky Bowel

BeatriceC — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 22:49:35 -0000

We are currently at a truce. I let him keep his crunchy Peter Pan in the cupboard but I won't buy it. It's funny, when we got together many people thought the 22 year age difference would be a deal breaker. We're too different, from different generations. Yet our biggest "fight" if you can call it that is our disagreement over peanut butter. Yup, we must be all wrong for each other.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 00:03:43 -0000

I know it's just a personal story, but sometimes I feel like these people need to hear the personal stories to see the real harm done by their refusal to vaccinate their children. My kids already have a lot of strikes against them. They were all preemies (36, 32 and 24 weeks), and two of them have a genetic bone disease that's disabling. They really didn't need to to get sick with something that's so horrible yet so very preventable. Though only one child got sick (the whole household and the one friend we spent a lot of time with were all put on pre-emptive antibiotics), watching their brother struggle to breathe was not exactly fun for the two that didn't get sick. These decisions people make under the guise of "personal choice" cause real and lasting harm. Given a choice, I'll take the vaccine injury. As I said before, it was much less scary than the actual disease.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 00:36:33 -0000

Multiple Hereditary Exostoses/Osteochondromatosis (depending on what region you live in, it has a few different names). In a nutshell, they grow dozens of osteochondromas all over their skeletons. The severity of the disease can vary wildly, even within families. Depending on where they grow, they can be anything from a cosmetic annoyance to extremely painful and completely disabling. My little one uses a wheelchair as a result of deformities in his hips and knees and may lose a couple toes, plus, in the words of his doctor his right wrist and forearm is "all kinds of messed up". My oldest has intermittent and temporary paralysis episodes in his arms (nerves hooking on the growths), but has had only moderate problems in his legs. They both have other, smaller issues we just keep an eye on. My life is spent driving kids to doctors appointments and hospitals, preparing for surgery or recovering from surgery. Whooping cough was just something that we did not need at all.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 00:57:42 -0000

They do keep me busy, but despite the challenge, I have an amazing family. They really are great kids, and I truly enjoy being their mother. We all have our difficulties in life, but I chose to focus on the positive stuff. My house is full of love and laughter, and that's really the best we can hope for.

Oh, and I should add that kids will be kids, regardless of disability. I frequently have to remind the little one that a wheelchair is not an off road vehicle and there's an official ban in my house on wheelchair jousting. Wheelchair jousting, by the way, is when you take a long stick, like a broom or mop handle and a few zip ties and attach it to the side of your chair. Then you back it up to the end of the longest hallway in the house, in order to have enough space gain speed, and when your brother comes around the corner, you fly at him with all the speed you can muster in order to knock him down with the stick. Sword fighting with canes or crutches is also a banned activity in my house.

In other words, my kids are perfectly normal kids in every other way.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 12:59:52 -0000

Well, I suppose there's a chance that we're wrong, but the fact remains that my child's school has a large population of unvaccinated children, and one of those children, who sat next to my son in Algebra class, got sick first. The assumption made by the school and the county health department was that my son caught it from his unvaccinated classmate who coughed his way through a few days of school before being diagnosed and kept home.

Re: Aging and Longevity: Science for Spring Chickens

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 13:45:00 -0000

Another factor to look at is stress relief from physical exercise. I enjoy running, and I find that my stress levels go through the roof during the times I can't get out for my runs on a regular basis. There seems to be a downward spiral on my general health and mood during those times. I'm sure there are studies linking good stress management to overall health, but I'll have to hunt those down later, as I'm heading out the door for an appointment in just a few minutes.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:35:45 -0000

I know in most cases answering that question is pure conjecture, but in this case, because teenagers blab to each other, the answer is quite clear. Actually, the classmate in question came back to school bragging about his mother told him he was much better off now that he'd had the actual disease and his immune system was better off that way than with the vaccine. It's the one and only time my kid's gotten in trouble for fighting at school, and honestly, I can't say I blame him (not that I condone my son's actions, but I do understand them).

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:51:27 -0000

"Further, it doesn't matter if it was a vaccinated or unvaccinated person who gave BeatriceC's kid pertussis - vaccination is essentially the sole protection against pertussis, which can and has killed babies and can lead to you coughing yourself a broken rib"

I'd add to that you just never know what the history of the person is you've just given the disease to. An added complication in my son's case is that he has a couple osteochondromas on the inside of his ribs, which could have led to damage to the internal organs. It didn't, but it was something we had to worry about. This "natural" disease could have easily killed my child, even though he's not in the typical high risk groups (infants, elderly, immunosuppressed).

Again, this is just one anecdote, but I feel like it's important for people to understand the real world affects of their "personal" decisions.

Re: Leaky Bowel

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 15:47:55 -0000

My state calls it children's medical services, and because I am broke enough to qualify for Medicaid, it's free for me. They just don't have a social worker assigned to my family. I made a note to ask about that tomorrow at out next Ortho appointment. As for groups, it's a rare enough condition that there aren't many out there, and I parted ways with the one I was a part of a while back for reasons that I don't want to post about.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:04:25 -0000

Creative, yes. That kid is an interesting one. He's also the one that managed to build a gun out of Legos that actually fires projectiles. It was really hard not to laugh when the nearly 6 foot 13 year old comes flying into the kitchen yelling about how the little one was shooting Lego bricks at him and it hurt. Yeah, serves you right for picking on your little brother. But I digress.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:38:41 -0000

This is exactly the sort of thing I told my students about when they whined about having to take statistics. I always replied that the purpose was not to turn them into statisticians, but to give them enough familiarity with the subject so the could recognize BS when they saw it.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 19:18:30 -0000

Well, I do try to avoid violence if at all possible, so while I couldn't exactly approve of my kid punching another kid, I also didn't punish him at home more than the bog-standard "try to avoid punching people" lecture.

As for the other kid, I have a hard time blaming him, as he's just a kid parroting what his parents are telling him. As a high school freshman (at the time), he just doesn't have enough of a background in science, or the maturity to effectively challenge the "lessons" his parents are teaching him.

Speaking of which, that's another thing that scares the daylights out of me regarding the current anti-vaccine movement: the idea that the children of these parents are going to grow up with these ideas and the percentage of unvaccinated children could potentially grow ever larger as the next generation grows up and starts having their own kids. At what point will the percentage of unvaccinated kids reach critical mass and move past "outbreak" to "epidemic", and kill not just a handful, but hundreds or even thousands of kids again? I'm not an epidemiologist (just a statistician), so I don't really know how likely that scenario might be.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 19:33:44 -0000

You're preaching to the choir here! In slightly different words, that's almost exactly what I told my kid when he told me what had happened.

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 20:09:36 -0000

And I'm pretty sure you just ruined all thoughts of productiveness I might have had for the rest of the day. Now I'm sitting here reading through the rest of that site with no intention of stopping. Maybe my SO will cook dinner tonight...

Re: The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

BeatriceC — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 23:13:28 -0000

When you are. 4'10", 90 pound, wheelchair using 12 year old and your 13 year old brother is a 5'11", 160 pound football player (the one kid that doesn't have the bone disease), you have to do something to effectively play the role of annoying little brother. He has chosen physics and engineering as his weapons of choice.

Re: Homeopathic industry and its acolytes make poor showing before FDA

BeatriceC — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:09:29 -0000

I find it amusing that the woo peddlers scream "greedy big pharma!" at every chance, but the second they get put into a position where they might actually have to spend some of their own profits to show the actual effects of their products, they fight like cats and dogs. Imagine how much more money the real pharmaceutical companies would make if they didn't have to pay for all those RCT's they have to do before bringing a drug to market!

Re: Homeopathic industry and its acolytes make poor showing before FDA

BeatriceC — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 19:32:34 -0000

The food babe moron claims that screaming "Hitler" at water will make it bad for you, supposedly. *eyeroll*

Re: The Windi: Revolutionary Relief for Colic or a Pain in the Butt

BeatriceC — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 14:19:30 -0000

Add a little slider and you can make it an ass trombone.

Re: The Windi: Revolutionary Relief for Colic or a Pain in the Butt

BeatriceC — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 14:21:46 -0000

I was a young mother in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where there are large Cuban and Haitian populations. Sucking the snot out of babies' noses by mouth was a pretty common thing in those cultures as well. Me? I preferred just taking my snotty babies into the bathroom with me while I showered. The warm, moist air seemed to get their little noses running freely and let them breathe a little easier. At least it seemed that way.

Re: The Windi: Revolutionary Relief for Colic or a Pain in the Butt

BeatriceC — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 14:24:48 -0000

I preferred rum. For me. One shot of a good sipping rum and it was amazing how much better I felt.