imagine that you have your second child. you do exactly what the doctor tells you to do (like you did with your first child) - you get your newborn all of the shots you are required to have before he leaves the hospital, you breastfeed (okay, if you are a guy reading this, adjust the story as necessary to not be disgusting or unnatural), you go back for all the check ups and get the required immunizations, etc. but after one set of immunizations, your child gets sick with a fever and there is swelling at the site of the injection. you don't think much about it - this is normal, right? you did exactly what you were supposed to do to protect your child. so you go about your business and everything seems fine.
but then you start to notice that your child's behavior is a little off. he stares at objects a little too intensely. you don't worry too much about it - all kids are different, right? but then, time goes on and the behaviors increase and you realize he isn't really talking like other kids his age. and he doesn't seem to do the things that other kids his age do and he seems to have a lot of tantrums. so you take him to see a developmental pediatrician and she diagnoses him with autism. you start researching like crazy because you want to help your child. somewhere during all of this, you realize that both of your neighbors with boys the same age, who had the same pediatrician (and presumably got the same batch of vaccines as your child) also have developmental disorders. you don't know if it was the vaccines or maybe something environmental or just a crazy coincidence, but you wonder.
you take him to therapy - occupational, speech, psychological..... whatever therapy you can find, because you want to do everything you can to help your child. and as you are researching, you start seeing articles connecting autism and vaccines. you hear that the science isn't there (the one study was thrown out) - but you keep reading about parents who swear that their child's symptoms started right after their vaccines. you join online groups and find lots of people whose kids have these issues and lots of people whose kids reacted in one way or another to vaccines. you know that vaccines are good for society, but you worry that your child just doesn't handle them well. your biggest fear is that you will take your child to get a shot and all of your progress that you have made will be gone - your child will regress or react adversely in some other way. you tell your pediatrician your fears and ask if you can separate the vaccines and spread them out just in case they overload your child and he says to you "i can, but i think that it is unnecessary and cruel to give your child so many shots." so you decide your pediatrician is a bit of a dick and you look for a new one. the next two that you go to tell you that they don't support any altering of the vaccine schedule and they don't want to see you unless you agree to get all the remaining vaccines asap. so you decide you will have to do it and you go online and look for everything you can find to reassure you that vaccines are safe. only the more you research, the more you find that there are no guarantees of safety. and in fact, there are lots of reported injuries from vaccines - many credible, acknowledged and compensated for by our government. so then you decide you just want to avoid the whole issue because it is scary. so you develop a religious/personal belief (arguably that you believe in a god that doesn't want you to harm your child) that allows you an exemption from the school requirements so that you can figure this out later.
so while taking a break from worrying about vaccines, you go to therapy still, you hire tutors to help with school and the ADD issues. you battle the school about your son's IEP and services. you change schools, you homeschool, you go back to public school. you try your best to help him have friends, but it's middle school and there isn't much you can do about that. you worry that you aren't doing enough for him.
then you hear that pertussis (whooping cough) has made a comeback and can kill babies and you start worrying that while your not-fully-vaccinated-school-aged kid might survive it, you don't want to spread it to some baby who might not. so you reluctantly go to yet another pediatrician and you tell him that you want to get the DTAP booster because you worry about spreading disease and he tells you that you need all of the immunizations and he doesn't really care what your story is or why you are afraid or that you have done tons of research or that your husband is a doctor too. so you get your son the DTAP booster on a friday. on saturday, his arm is swollen from the elbow to the shoulder and it is hard as a rock and scorching hot. on sunday, it is the same. on monday, you decide you need to go see the pediatrician again because it still isn't better. so you call but your pediatrician is on vacation so you have to see the on-call doctor from another practice and it happens to be the dick you have already seen. by the time you see the doctor at 3pm on monday, the arm looks better and the doctor tells you that he has had a local reaction ("no shit," you think). and you worry that your child doesn't handle vaccines like everyone else.
at this point, you are an MMR booster and a chicken pox booster away from fully vaccinated and there is a measles outbreak and every single news website you visit has an article blasting parents for not vaccinating, many calling them selfish or ignorant. you fear the MMR the most because you know that it is one of the ones he has reacted to in the past. it is also the most discussed in the context of autism.
next you talk nonstop about it to your friends who all get sick of hearing about it. and then you remember that you have a blog!
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