my childhood vaccines

[redbird]

I've been wondering whether I was properly vaccinated against measles, so after picking up my new glasses today, I went the the bank that has our safe deposit box and looked for the records I remembered putting in there. I found a list of vaccines, with a note advising my parents to save it because it's important, in an envelope labeled "Vicki's birth certificates*. I copied everything into my notebook, and have now added it to my list of relatively recent vaccines.

I had one dose of measles vaccine in 1965 (before there was a vaccine for mumps or rubella), and I remember a dose of either measles vaccine or the MMR when I was in college. (There was at least one case of measles in one of the dorms, and we were told to either provide proof of immunization or go to the dining hall and get vaccinated; getting the shot seemed quicker and easier than asking my parents to find the paperwork and mail me a copy.) Someone posted a few days ago that they'd had their blood tested and were immune to measles but not mumps or rubella; if you're as old as I am you probably got the measles vaccine early and then nobody went back to give you the others. So, I'm not going to go to the pharmacy and ask for a(nother) dose of the MMR, but am going to ask my doctor what if anything she thinks I should do, when I see her next.

I am also very thoroughly vaccinated against polio: four doses of [I assume injected] polio vaccine in 1964 and '66, followed by doses of "oral polio" vaccine in 1967 and 1968. The paperwork also confirms that I was vaccinated against smallpox (I don't have a scar from that) but doesn't list the BCG anti-tuberculosis vaccine I remember my parents telling me about at some point.

When I asked Mom about my vaccines recently, she didn't remember specifics, just that they got me all the recommended childhood vaccines, and that I had chicken pox when I was five.

*yes, plural. There's one from the hospital and one from the City of New York.

Comments

[otter]

I have to dig up that info, too. I also had a thoroughly miserable case of chicken pox when I was five.

[minnehaha]

Yes, getting the update on MMR is terribly important for us at our age. I did it a few years ago, after getting tested. I don't recall if it was measles or rubella I was susceptible to, but I've had the mumps and cannot get them again. They don't break up the vaccine into individual disease protection, unfortunately. So, I've been vaccinated for the mumps, too.

I also got the shingles series, on doctor's advice, even after having shingles. I recommend not getting shingles by any means necessary.


K.

[tim]

It sounds like you got both the Salk polio vaccine and the Sabin polio vaccine. I guess folks still weren't messing around back then! (The oral (Sabin) vaccine is no longer used in the US because of the (very low) risk of getting polio from the vaccine. There's no chance of that with the Salk vaccine, because it uses killed virus.)

I checked on this too lately because apparently, some people who were born before 1989 only got one MMR dose. Not me! I got one dose as a baby and one dose when I was 13, so I should be covered for life, at least if I believe the CDC. (And I'm grateful that I kept my paper immunization record from college that included the dates for all my childhood vaccines, which I had to supply to them in order to go to college.)

[gatheringrivers]

The Sabin and Salk combo - Yea, I got both of them as well. :) I apparently got Sabin's first and one of my docs tut-tutted a lot about that because she worked with Salk, so that's how I got both. Or at least that's what my egg donor told me growing up, anyway.

I've recently gotten mine updated, and I think they might be recommending 2 of the MMR versions now for anyone who got them before *1985* last I heard?

I should ask about a TB vax next time I talk to them...

[minoanmiss]

One of the wee benefits of taking the hospital job was getting a MMR booster. In another few years I need to remember to get my titers done again...

[bibliofile]

I'm glad that so many people are paying attention to this even as adults.

The only shots I've had in recent memory are TDAP (first since childhood) and tetanus (which I/we already knew required periodic updates). With those, I'm up to date on everything.

[erik]

I recently realized I might not have been vaccinated properly as a child. So I had a titre test and yes, I was not vaccinated properly as a child. Zero mumps antibodies. Zero rubella antibodies. Plenty measles antibodies; so apparently I had actual measles at some point.

Getting that remedied ASAP.

[carbonel]

I am just old enough that the MMR wasn't available when I was a child, though it must have been right on the edge, since I believe my younger brothers were able to take advantage of it. I had a nasty case of measles, and I also had mumps and chicken pox. My mother sent me to stay with a friend who had rubella, but I didn't come down with it. In college, I had a rubella titer drawn -- apparently the vaccine was scarce enough that they only wanted to use it on people who really needed it, and it was easy to have a subclinical case -- and the result came back as ambiguous, so I didn't get it.

I had all the other standard childhood vaccines, including smallpox (I have the scar), DTP, and polio. There were a couple of rounds of the oral vaccine (in a sugar syrup), and then the injections later, which I was rather indignant about. It occurs to me that the polio vaccine in sugar must have been part of a community program, because we went to a church and stood in line to get it instead of the usual doctor's office visit.

When I went to Kenya a few years ago, I had to have yellow fever vaccine, and the travel clinic ended up giving me a bunch of others: polio (again) and Hepatitis C are the ones I remember for sure, plus oral typhoid and malaria prophylaxis.

I had the shingles vaccine (both of them) recently. No one said anything to me about scarcity, and I'm heard enough about shingles that I'm happy to up my chances of avoiding it.

I make sure to keep my tetanus booster up to date, because I engage in high-risk activity for that particular disease -- I work with raw sheep fleece in the presence of pointy objects. Everything else I'm a lot more casual about.