BRATTLEBORO — When I was 7 years old, my sweet, funny, smart cousin Madeline, just my age, got the measles. We were all getting the measles back in those days, like we got the German measles, also known as rubella (a milder form of regular measles), chicken pox, and the mumps.
Spotty, itchy, and miserable, most of us got better in a week or so and then had the antibodies inside us so we'd never get them again. Good thing.
The measles was well known to be a highly contagious and dangerous childhood disease. Scientists worked for decades to produce a vaccine and finally succeeded in the 1960s. The vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, came in the early 1970s.
Madeline and I got the measles in 1958. While mine ran its course, Madeline's took the sharp turn every parent dreaded: impossibly high fever, which led in her case to measles encephalitis.
Encephalitis is inflammation of the brain, and Madeline's brain became so severely inflamed she suffered profound and irreversible brain damage. She was utterly lost to us that day, although she lived for more than a decade after. The devastation to my aunt and uncle, and to Madeline's two sisters, is a story without end.
I cannot believe that parents would deny their children protection from the misery of measles and the serious consequences that are possible. Measles encephalitis is no less a threat in the new measles outbreaks than it was in the old.
Parents: to prevent the possibility of your child suffering seizures and losing all cognitive brain function forever and living long lives in a non-responsive state - vaccinate.
I have seen the catastrophic consequences.