Or, An Opinion Piece on the Anti-Vax movement by an Autistic
I’m seeing a lot of Anti-Vax bullshit today so I’m gonna do this post that’s been rolling around my head for a while.
I rarely see anyone address one of the main root causes of this “movement”. This is that, the stage of development (18-24months) during which a child receives important vaccinations and boosters coincides with when parents often notice the first signs of autism.
When I got diagnosed at age 25 in 2010, my mother (and I; like many autistics I have vivid memories from before and around age 2) recalled that around age 2 I suddenly stopped eating several foods I’d previously liked. I also was walking on my tiptoes all the time. My mother brought these things up to the pediatrician who waved them off as in the realm of normal. This was the mid-80s; nobody was talking about autism and my mother was old enough to remember older kids in her elementary school who’d had polio and needed iron lungs or been paralysed. Getting vaccinated was a no brain Er.
Then, when I was 3, my younger sister had one of her boosters and that night, got a high fever abd went into convulsions. My parents called 911 and sister was OK. She was one of the 1 in 10000 who have this response to vaccines. It’s scary when your baby has a seizure, but less scary than your baby dying of a preventable disease.
Fast forward to 1999. I am 14, my sister about to turn 12. In early March she catches chicken pox (the vaccine for it was a few months away from release and somehow neither my sis nor I had caught it earlier). It progressed typically, and my family headed out of province for a planned March break trip while she was still recovering. The day we arrived in our hotel my sister could not get out of bed, and any movement made her vomit. We went to a country Dr, then a clinic, and finally the children’s hospital in the city. They looked at her and said “She needs to be at Sick Kids (Hospital) in Toronto” (where we are lucky to call home). That night we drove the 8 hours back to Toronto and she went straight to the HSC, where she stayed for 10 days in a coma. She had encephalitis as a complication of chicken pox.
The doctors told my mom she would probably come out of it brain damaged. I remember when my mom said she might never be the same.
Thankfully, my sister pulled through. She did not have cognitive brain damage but did have permanent effects to her balance, and most interestingly, her personality changed. She became much more outgoing and social, which probably influenced her career as an adult (artist).
I came down with chicken pox on my 14th birthday, and nursed it myself with my dad at work and my mom at the hospital. It was unpleasant but not at all the ordeal my sister had.
Two weeks before she got chicken pox, my sixth grade sister had had a session with her reading buddy at school, a little girl getting over chicken pox. Even back in 1999 inequality was bad enough that her parent/s probably sent her to school instead of keeping her home, so they could go to work.
I tell these stories because the Anti-Vax movement is so insulting to my whole family. It’s completely clear to me my autism came from my parents’ genes, not inert virii (anyone with autism in the family or who has worked with autistic families knows this). One family refusing to take a so-called “childhood disease” seriously resulted in a child from another family being comatose for a week and a half, and with permanent changes after recovery to boot.
In case I haven’t been loud and clear enough: YOUR CHILD WAS AUTISTIC AS SOON AS THEY WERE BORN. The first signs show up *at the same time as the first booster shot*. Correlation =\= causation. Stop spreading uninformed anti-vax attitudes and insulting autistic families and survivors of serious childhood diseases.
janainaart
areudirty
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
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