Vaccination

Yesterday I took Sam to get his H1N1 vaccination. I sometimes find vaccinating Sam a hard thing to do, and with this one, I really did a lot of research to help Kris and I make our choice.

The more I hear and look into these things, though, the more I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for modern medicine. I often think about mothers in developing countries who don't even have the option to protect their children in these ways... and how they would do absolutely anything to have that option. To not worry if their child was going to make it through the night.

The nurse said something really interesting to me. She said that pneumonia, and some of the other illnesses we vaccinate against nowadays, were the cancers that were taking peoples' children 50 years ago. She talked about how many parents buried their children because of those diseases that we now can be protected against. Then she made the comment, "as a parent, if you could give your kid a vaccine against cancer or leukemia, even if there was the smallest possible risk to it, wouldn't you give it?" That really made me think. And made me thankful that with all the unpreventable illnesses out there, that a lot of them are preventable, and treatable. I guess it hits me particularly hard because Sam had pneumonia when he was 2 months old. How many ever years ago, he wouldn't have survived.

Anyways, I know a lot of people who also choose, and have chosen with H1N1, not to vaccinate. I know everyone has their reasons, and I don't mean for this to be an offense to those people in any way. I'm just feeling really good about our choice, and am so thankful that we have that option.