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A Doctors Powerful Personal Story About Vaccines

ANDREW CRONYN, MD | PHYSICIAN | MARCH 9, 2014
The tests came fast and furious. The diagnosis didnt.
One doctor was certain it was psychosomatic. My twin younger brothers had
been born a few months earlier, and I, seeking attention, was refusing to
walk. My mother kept looking.
Another doctor couldnt figure it out but gave a piece of advice. You have
other children, right? Be grateful. Take this one home, keep him comfortable,
and when he is gone take comfort in the others. She ran out of that office
(in tears, I imagine).
Eventually, a doctor found the answer. I had an autoimmune disease called
dermatomyositis. My bodys immune system was attacking my muscles and
leaving me weakened. The disease normally affects older women, but in rare
cases will strike children. How rare is it? Two to three cases per million
children in the United States. The cause was unknown, but some of the
doctors guessed that it had something to do with an immunization I had right
before the symptoms started. My parents were cautioned against further
vaccines.
The doctors put me on prednisone (a steroid that blocks the immune system),
and I began the long, hard road back to walking, running, fighting with my
brothers and becoming a normal child again. As years passed I learned to
play tennis (not well, but passably), ride a bike (rode from Boston to New York
for a fundraiser) and live a normal life.
I saw a lot of doctors in my childhood. A lot. Surgeons, neurologists,
rheumatologists.Some probably shouldnt have been doctors. (At eight years
old, I learned swear words from my older brother and used them on a
surgeon. My mother didnt discipline me. Years later she told me why. You
were right, she said.).
But some of the doctors were great. They made a really scary time less
scary. They were honest and told me when something would hurt and what
they could do to help me. They inspired me to do what they were doing.
From about six years old on, I wanted to be a doctor.
The year before I went to medical school, I worked in an urgent care center. I
needed to be vaccinated against anything I hadnt been vaccinated against
as a child. I went to my mother for my shot record and heard, again, that
vaccines had caused my childhood illness. She reminded me that we had
been warned I shouldnt get any more immunizations.

So I took my records to an immunologist to consult on what I should do. He

went through my records, reviewed the current literature and came up with a
remarkable conclusion. First, because of advancements in science we knew
my illness was unlikely to have been caused by vaccines. Second, I hadnt
had a vaccine reaction. You see, I hadnt had a vaccine for six months before
the disease struck.

This was stunning to me. Doctors had said, I had thought, my family had
known, for years that vaccines caused my disease. We all knew what had
happened. I was a normal child who had gone to his pediatrician and, shortly
thereafter, been struck with a disease related to my immune system. We
blamed vaccines for years of fear and pain and the loss of many childhood
experiences. And it wasnt true.
After this revelation, I completed my recommended vaccine series with an
MMR, polio and DTP. I also was vaccinated against hepatitis A and hepatitis
B. The only consequences I suffered were sore shoulders. Since then I have
had tetanus and pertussis boosters as well as my annual flu shot.
I have told this story to many families who tell me their children wont be
vaccinated because a friend, a cousin, an acquaintance told them about their
child who died or developed a horrible illness right after she got her shots.
This interpretation is not a malicious one. People didnt set out to blame
vaccines. It is the intersection of two phenomena.
First, much of the first two years of life is right after vaccines. Kids at this
age are doing all sorts of wonderful things first words, first steps,
developing personalities. And when we think of something that was wrong,
that made them cry we will often remember the days we left the doctors
office with a crying child who had been stuck. Statistically speaking, most
maladies that afflict children in the first two years will be right after a shot.
Second, many of the horrible diagnoses that happen to children in the first
two years of life are without reason. With few exceptions, we cant say that
their diet gave them diabetes or that smoking gave them lung cancer, like we
can with adults. So if I have to come into the exam room and give bad news,
I often dont know why this child is sick while another one isnt. I used to tell
my patients that we may never know why, but today, with the advancing of
genetics, we are finding that more and more of these diseases are caused by
tiny flaws in the human genome, flaws we are only just discovering and are
still years from treating.
I hope my story, of why I went to medical school and why it was not the
vaccines that made me sick, will help a scared new parent (and what new
parent isnt worried about the new life they are responsible for?) make the

decision to vaccinate their child. As a father, I make sure my son gets all his
shots on schedule, for his benefit and the health of all the people around
him. Rather than avoiding vaccines because of family stories and urban
legends, they can be given to prevent diseases that definitely exist and
definitely can make our children desperately ill.
Andrew Cronyn is a pediatrician who blogs at Parents for Vaccinations.
SOURCE:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2014/03/doctors-powerful-personal-storyvaccines.html