Somehow, as a child, I dodged several diseases (and their effects) that are now considered horribly dangerous.  For example, I had chickenpox when I was six.  It wasn’t the most comfortable week of my life.  I remember being itchy and my mother covering my hands with socks so I couldn’t scratch.  I was dotted with mountains of calamine lotion that couldn’t hide the chickenpox eruptions.  Mostly, though, I remember the ice cream.  I got lots of ice cream when I had the chickenpox.

I took Dom to the pediatrician a few days ago.  While we were there, the doctor tried again to convince me of the horrors of chickenpox.  See, I’m one of those delayed-vaccination parents.  I’m not anti-vaccination.  I just think we inject kids with way too many diseases at once, way too early.  Dom will get all of his shots (except flu, which is useless some years, anyway).  But we’re behind on the AAP schedule, and I’m just fine with that.

The nurse read me a list of chickenpox dangers.  Rash, flu-like symptoms, death.  Death?  I never knew anyone who died from chickenpox.  No to the chickenpox shot.

Then I was faced with another decision – the Hepatitis A vaccine.  Put on the spot, my thought process was:  “Hepatitis is bad.  It can kill you.  He needs this shot.”  No time to research (this one wasn’t even on my radar screen!), completely unfamiliar with Hepatitis A, I let them give him the shot.

I know better.  I’m educated about vaccine ingredients, combinations, and dangers.  I have alternative schedules drawn up.  I know not to blindly trust doctors – an incompetent one cost Dom’s big brother his life.  Yet I caved.  And if it’s that hard for me to say no – with all of my knowledge – how can a regular parent resist the vaccination PR machine?

That is how they get us.  They bank on parents being too busy to research.  They count on fear to bring us into line.  Nine times out of ten, I’m not given the vaccine fact sheet before Dom’s given a shot.  I’m sure mine isn’t the only doctor who lets this legal requirement slip.  It doesn’t help that the vaccine “dangers” on those fact sheets are incomplete, that the ingredients aren’t listed, or that the disease dangers are typed in a font five times larger than the vaccine dangers.

Lest I sound like an anti-government wacko, let me say that I don’t think vaccinations are a bad thing, and I don’t fault any parent for following the AAP schedule.  Vaccines have saved lives, and all parents need to make the decisions that are right for their families.  I’m just saying that all of the facts would be nice when parents are faced with a needle…and that we need to educate ourselves, since the “machine” isn’t.