Jess talks about vaccinations
In January 2013 I did one of the bravest things I could think of at the time. The nurse’s room, for all its pictures of boats and flowers, was cramped and clinical, the dark green bed a flashback to a history of medical horror stories. She asked if I would like to lie down. I would. She referred me to the pictures of the boats, asked me what I did as I rolled up my sleeve. I babbled something vaguely relevant, fixed my eyes on the ceiling. “This may hurt,” she warned me. Needle in, needle out, exclamations from both her and the woman who had come to hold my hand. I blinked, had been expecting to cry. “Was that it?” I asked.
Standard story, I imagine, of many parents in many countries taking their children for their booster vaccinations. Except I didn’t get a sticker or a lollipop, and I was coming up to 24 at the time.
My mother was, and remains, a fervent anti-vaxxer, quite convinced that vaccines are unnatural, dangerous, and autism causing. Family legend (whether true or not is doubtful- my father wasn’t present) has it that I had my first round of vaccines and started screaming. “Those so-called experts assured me it would be fine to do another round” my mother says, and so infant me was duly and humbly and very much Against My Better Wishes Jessica, handed back over for a second round, turned bright red, and screamed my head off. I was snatched away out of there, never to be sullied by the touch of a needle again.
When my brother came along, almost 6 years later, my mother wasn’t taking any chances- no vaccinations, not today, not tomorrow. By this point she’d found out about the purported link to autism - somewhat ironic, really, as my brother somehow managed to end up in that bandwagon without the help of the evil doctors.
As it turns out, the doctors I’ve spoken to think it was possible that I was either a) over sensitive (which sounds familiar) or b) mildly allergic to something involved, and would have been fine coming back for a second round. The problem was if anyone was telling my mother this at the time, she wasn’t listening.
I understand where she was coming from. I am dreading the day that I have to hand over my flesh and blood to a near stranger to be poked and prodded and stabbed with scary sharp devices. I can barely do it with the cat, and he doesn’t even complain. But my mother’s fear of vaccinations is something else, something I can never allow myself to indulge in.
The thing was, as a kid, I was proud of my unvaccinated status. It made me special, different, above the common horde. It was my very own You’ll Never Believe What I’m Allergic To, envied by my friends who came home with (I assume exaggerated) horror stories about trips to the doctors and what they do with needles. I didn’t know that I couldn’t go to the local public school because of it, or that it meant that stepping on a nail meant panic and concerns about tetanus. All I knew, in a hazy sort of way, was that vaccinations were evil, and my brother and I were very special, and that the doctors wouldn’t give me any injections if I threw a big enough tantrum.
I don’t know what my father was doing during all of this. His and my mother’s marriage was breaking down at this point, and for all I know it was something that helped. It’s never talked about.
There’s a whole bunch of things that they don’t tell you about not having vaccinations. They don’t mention how many times you have to ask for ‘religious reasons’ to by-pass requirements that you be vaccinated. They don’t tell you how many school trips it will overly complicate, or that it will affect your visas if you want to study abroad, or that you will have to explain it to multiple doctors, or that mumps crises will confine you to your house.
When I was 11, my best friend’s little sister was diagnosed with leukaemia, and suddenly I wasn’t allowed to go play at her house or help her pick them up from school any more. I didn’t understand that it was because I might give a three year old child the disease that killed her. I thought it was because I had done something to upset her parents.
When I was in my early teens my brother and I caught whooping cough, a disease that rightly belongs in the Victorian era. The doctors were flummoxed, unable to prescribe anything other than that we let it pass. All I got from the experience was an ‘all natural’ immunity to a disease that should have been wiped out years ago, and the knowledge of what it feels like when you can’t breathe.
So why did I wait almost 6 years from the age of medical autonomy to getting it sorted? Because, more than anything, not being vaccinated instilled in me a sense of fear as to the unknown, a subliminal belief that to be vaccinated was to put myself at risk. I was terrified, terrified that my mother was right, terrified that this leap of fate might kill me.
I’m not a stupid woman. I understand the principle of vaccinations. I would vaccinate my own children in a heartbeat. And yet this fear, this false propaganda, had wormed its way into my head and taken root there, had made me a walking breathing health hazard with no grounds and confused messages. I could and can understand where my mother was coming from, why she had been too scared to take the risk. It still makes me angry, this false fear planted in good, trusting people who only want to care for their children.
It took a partner who was willing to talk through all of this, who was kind and understanding and absolutely clear in her stance to drive me to the doctors. It was her who held my hand, who told me stories and laughed and my complaints, who took me to the corner shop and bought me a lollipop when I had my last round. It took an adult understanding of my own responsibilities in the world, a knowledge of the people around me. It took bravery to overcome what I had been taught and take the risk.
Don’t get me wrong. Injections hurt about as much as I thought. They lie about the MMR. It hurts much more than the others. It takes a long time to get them all, and sometimes the nurses give you an odd look when it turns out that your age isn’t just a system error. But if I could I would go back and get them all done again.
We are all in some ways the people our parents made us. But it is important to look past our parents’ fears, to take responsibility for their choices, to right their wrongs. Alas, there won’t always be a lollipop, but at least we can find a new form of smugness.
