From Charlie’s Baby Book
When my almost-sixty-year-old son wrote “Did I have measles vaccinations?” the other day, I have to confess that I didn’t know for sure. But I was pretty certain that the answer was “No, but I think you did have the actual measles – both kinds.” Operable words in that response: “I think.”
I did a bit of research and found that the measles vaccine didn’t come out until 1963. Charlie was seven. We lived in California and belonged to Kaiser then and, as I recall, I took him in (at the very least) for an annual check-up before school started each autumn. My assumption is that the doctor would have offered the vaccination if Charlie hadn’t had the actual disease. I idly wondered if his medical chart was still around somewhere in Kaiser’s archives and whether or not it could be accessed. What does happen to all that stuff they write down, anyway?
I also checked out his Baby Book. I had dutifully recorded the dates for his immunizations against smallpox and diphtheria and typhoid, as well as his DPT shots and administration of the polio vaccine – which was given on a sugar cube that first time in June 1957. But there were no notations about measles. There was also a page in the Baby Book called “Record of visits to the Doctor” where I wrote about his first checkups, an ear infection when he was three months old, etc. but recorded absolutely nothing after his first birthday.
From Sydney’s Baby Book
It seems incongruous that I have a clear memory of my own childhood illnesses. I’ve ‘always’ known that I had measles, mumps and chicken pox – all before I was school age. In fact, I think it was common practice in those pre-vaccination years for parents to deliberately expose their kids to those diseases to ‘get them over with’ early on. I don’t think my folks did that, but my cousin Cheryl remembers that her mother did, in fact, expose her to the measles.
For fun, I took a look in my own Baby Book to see what my folks had recorded about me. The “Health Record” page is blank. In fact, in the entire book there is little more than a record of my weekly weight gain for my first 20 weeks and a notation that my birthstone is amethyst and my birth flower is the carnation. But – and why does this not surprise me? – the “Family Tree” page is completely filled out.
Well, so much for record keeping, at least baby-wise. I keep better records these days, though mostly in an Oscar Madison sort of way. Remember that episode of “The Odd Couple” TV series when Oscar is audited by the IRS and presents his receipts in a box full of bits and pieces including paper napkins and notes written on an old football? My record keeping style is more like that than in the minimalist style of Charlie’s Baby Book years. One thing is certain, though: relying on memory is not the best record-keeping method. Not in this household, anyway.
Hummmm….I think I had all the childhood “conditions” caught from my little sister. Whooping cough in 9th grade. Only one I did not have was chicken pox although ‘lil sis did, and my daughters, grandkids and the greats all did and I was exposed many times. Measles happened when I worked with kids as an adult. Amazing that we all survived…are we the most fit?