#MicroblogMondays: A shot in the dark?

Measles -- made rare in recent decades, thanks to vaccines -- has recently (sadly) been staging a comeback -- in the U.S., but also here in Canada, (no) thanks to the spread of misinformation by anti-vaxxers, plus the recent covid pandemic, which left some children well behind schedule on their routine vaccines. 

Margaret Renkl -- one of my favourite New York Times columnists -- wrote today about the growing spread of measles -- and "Why I Got the Measles Vaccine at Age 63." (Gift-linked article.)  I'm 64, and I've recently been having similar thoughts as Margaret. Do I need to get a measles shot?  

I got every vaccine that was available at the time as a matter of routine when I was a kid -- at the doctor's office, and sometimes at school (we'd line up for them in the school gymnasium). Apparently when I was a toddler, I had a bad reaction to the oral polio vaccine and was quite sick from it. This did NOT turn my mother against vaccines: she simply made sure that my doctors and schools were aware (and that I was aware too, from a young age) that I was NOT to have the oral polio vaccine -- and when the time came for boosters, I was called aside and got a shot in the arm, while my classmates lined up for their vaccine-doused sugar cube. (Thanks, Mom... I think...)(lol)   

There WAS a measles vaccine newly available in the early 1960s -- although it might have taken a while to reach the small towns in rural northeastern Saskatchewan where we were living then. I vaguely remember getting a shot at the doctor's office in the late 1960s for the "red measles" -- one of the first shots of its kind, I believe -- but the distinctions between "red measles," "German measles," plain old measles and rubella are rather hazy in my mind, and Dr. Google did not clarify the matter to my complete satisfaction. 

But I have no recollection of having had measles in any form. (Tangent:  I do vividly remember having chicken pox and mumps, pre-vaccines for those. I had one in the spring of Grade 1 and the other in the fall of Grade 2 ( = 1968) -- although don't ask me which one I had when. I *think* the chicken pox came first and then mumps in the fall, but don't quote me on that.  But I do remember they both went through my class at school like wildfire. We sat in rows of desks, and I remember an entire row of Grade 1 classmates was absent at one time. My poor sister had the chicken pox worse than I did, including sores in her ears. We were both covered with pink calamine lotion for days on end.)  

I can't rely on my medical records to tell me, either. This was (obviously) pre-computerization -- plus we lived in five different towns in two different provinces before I graduated high school, 45 years ago. Even if those doctors' records still exist and are easily attainable (which I rather doubt...), rounding them all up would be quite a task. 

I have a couple of handwritten cards recording some of the vaccinations I had and when I had them, as a kid -- one stuck in the pages of my baby book, another in a pile of papers my mom left in "my" room for me to look at when we were there at Christmastime. But there are certainly gaps. In summary, the medical records from that time of my life are far from complete.  

So I did the next-best thing I could think of -- I called Mom (lol) and asked her if I'd ever had measles, or a shot for them.  She said my sister & I did have the measles, but she wasn't sure which variety. "It was the less serious kind," she said helpfully. 

When I was trying to get pregnant in the mid-1990s (and NOT telling my parents about it -- hence, I wouldn't have asked them then...!), I was very conscious about protecting myself against the chances of getting measles/rubella, however slight. I told my family dr I was not sure whether I was immune, and he had me tested. The results showed I was immune to rubella. Again, whether that clears me for all forms of measles, I'm not sure. 

I need to have that conversation with my current family doctor the next time I see him. 

(Dh should probably have that conversation too. Both of his parents are gone, and he has absolutely no memory of having any of the prevalent childhood illnesses of our era.) 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.