A mother has posted a powerful plea on Reddit about how vaccinations, or a lack thereof, left her mourning the loss of her eight-month-old daughter.
User throwaway44321424, made a heartfelt and emotional plea to parents on the platform, writing about her own experience losing her baby and why vaccinations are so important not just for the health of your children, but for the people around you too.
“Three years ago I had a baby girl, her name was Emily and I loved her more than anything,” she began.
“I planned things out and did everything to make sure I could afford her and we wouldn’t be living in poverty.”
After dedicating everything she had to her baby, within eight months Emily had fallen ill.
“I did everything I could for my baby with doctors visits and medicine and working a sh*t retail job at 8 months pregnant all by myself…
“I’d messed up a few things in my life but I wasn’t going to mess up with her if I could help it.”
“She was sick for a while and I’d never seen anything like it. I took her to the doctor. She was in the hospital and she looked so bad, she was crying and coughing and there was nothing I could do. I felt like the worst mother in the world. After I got her to the hospital she got worse, got something called measles encephalitis, where her brain was inflamed. I hadn’t believed in God in years but you better believe I was praying for her every day,” she wrote.
User throwaway44321424 went on to write that after a week in hospital, her little girl passed away, being too young for the MMR vaccine.
More than that, she alleges that shortly after Emily’s death, she found out her neighbour –who had babysat the eight-month-old from time to time — was an anti-vaxxer and had recently posted photos of her own sick child.
Understandably, the mother was furious, and had an impassioned message for others.
"Please vaccinate your kids, so other mums like me don't have to watch their baby die. It's not just your choice only affecting your kid, you are putting every child who for some reason hasn't gotten vaccinated in SO much danger.
"Please please please for the love of God please vaccinate. My kid was DEAD because she made that choice."
The post garnered a strong response from the Reddit community, with some readers sharing their own painful stories of losing children, and others sharing their frustration with anti-vaxxers.
"To me, being an anti-vaxxer is a lot like being a drunk driver," wrote one user. "It's usually not you that ends up hurt the worst."
Another reader expressed the fundamental issue with those who refuse to vaccinate themselves or their children.
"The problem is.. that if someone is an anti-vaxxer they aren't going to believe that your story is at all related to vaccination.
"If they believed that vaccinations worked they wouldn't be anti-vaxxers."
"Please please please for the love of god please vaccinate." Image via iStock.Others shared their own stories of being affected by the anti-vax community. One woman wrote:
"I caught whooping cough during the 2010 outbreak in Los Angeles because I babysat for a family with two unvaccinated children. They caught it at their posh preschool, then it passed on to me — two months before my college graduation."
Another wrote:
"When my mother was a young teacher (long before the vaccines lead to autism thing) she had a kid in one of her classes who was being treated for Leukaemia. Another of the classmates was unvaccinated because their mother didn't believe they were safe. He ended up bringing measles to school, and while the unvaccinated kid was fine, the boy with leukemia ended up catching it and passing away. It's been many many years since this and my mum still tears up about the incident. Herd immunity is a social responsibility you owe to those who are unable to vaccinate."
The stories were heartbreaking, but ultimately, several users thanked the woman for sharing the devastating story of losing her baby daughter. Maybe her story, they said, could inspire others to take their decisions around vaccinations more seriously.
Top Comments
This is less about the fact that the neighbour was an anti-Vaxxer, and more about the fact that the neighbour was an incredibly selfish ignorant person who didn't consider that her sick child might make other people sick. Vaccinate or don't vaccinate. I don't care. Vaccinated people (that includes adults) spread diseases just like unvaccinated But people need to stop going out in public when they are sick.
It is all about "acceptable risk". There are rare adverse reactions to vaccines.
PRIORIX®
Rare ≥ 0.01% and < 0.1%
Immune system disorders: Allergic reactions
Nervous system disorders: Febrile convulsions
During post-marketing surveillance, the following reactions have been rarely reported additionally in temporal association with PRIORIX® vaccination:
Infections and infestations: meningitis, measles-like syndrome, mumps-like syndrome (including orchitis, epididymitis and parotitis)
Blood and lymphatic system disorders: thrombocytopenia, thrombocytopenic purpura
Immune system disorders: anaphylactic reactions
Nervous system disorders: encephalitis, cerebellitis, cerebellitis like symptoms (including transient gait disturbance and transient ataxia), Aseptic meningitis, transverse myelitis, Guillain Barré syndrome, peripheral neuritis
Vascular disorders: vasculitis (including Henoch Schonlein purpura and Kawasaki syndrome)
Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders: erythema multiforme
Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders: arthralgia, arthritis Accidental intravascular administration may give rise to severe reactions or even shock. Immediate measures depend on the severity of the reaction (see section “WARNINGS AND PRECAUTIONS”).
Number of US measles cases by year since 2010
Year Cases
2010 63
2011 220
2012 55
2013 187
2014 667
2015 188
2016* 70
Taking the worst year 2014. 667 is 0.0002% of 318,900,000 the pop of the US.
If everyone in the US had been vaccinated in 2014 the potential number of Rare adverse reactions would have been 31,890!
0.0002% verus 0.01% If you are going to risk your childs life which number would you pick? So almost 32,000 children and pregnant women need to suffer Rare and deadly adverse reactions so 667 children are protected against measles?
The numbers don't add up.
I suffered febrile convulsions that were caused by the fever from a vaccine as a child. I now suffer from adult onset epilepsy. But, my children are all fully vaccinated. Why? Because whooping cough kills. Because measles encephalitis kills.
But if we don't vaccinate at all, the number of measles cases will rise. Keep vaccinating, and we can eliminate measles all together, and then no one will suffer from adverse reactions OR measles (which can send you blind or deaf, and in severe cases cause death).
Please investigate herd immunity. Very important to contain the spread of infectious diseases.
Um. .....the reason the measles cases are that low is BECAUSE most people vaccinate. If everyone stopped vaccinating altogether your numbers would look a whole lot different. You cannot use a vaccinated population in your equation. GO back to before the measles vaccine was invented and use the number of measles cases per annum back then......then come back and tell us the numbers don't add up.