To MMR or Not?

Yesterday was a big day. Dad was in the doghouse for not being able to attend Scott's MMR jab but, with or without him, the jab went ahead with a full booster too.

This was after twice postponing the jab as Scott was not in chipper health on both of the previous two appointments, which we were told was essential. The wee one was very brave and took his injections stoically and with little fuss. Afterwards he was his usual self and we then attended our eldest's nephew's 18th birthday do. Scott was the life and soul of the party, crawling around persistently and making everyone smile with his antics. He even fell asleep on the way home which augured for a normal evening.

That's where reality and the hopeful fiction of 'he may show a few symptoms' differed. He had a most unrestful night. Having gone to sleep at around 9pm, which was late for him, he was awake again before we went to bed, then again at midnight, and every hour after. At around 2.30pm, after administration of Calpol and it's ibuprofen equivalent, we sat playing with him on the bed sipping cups of tea. That's how awake he was.

We did get him back to sleep but he was up at 7am prompt and is slightly grumpy and weary - just like his dad. This is all bad enough but then there is the MMR furore to deal with.

MMR has got a very dodgy history. In Japan, having the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine together, or MMR, has been banned and they are now done separately.

It all started when the MMR vaccine was mandated in 1994 for all children. Since then, unequivocally, there has been a spike in the instances of autism diagnoses. Many of the diagnoses occurred just months after the administration of the MMR jab - so was there a connection?

The situation was not helped when a gastroenterologist (Dr. Andrew Wakefield) made some pretty profound claims in the Lancet where he proposed from his study of MMR immunisation, bowel disease and autism that there was an interaction between the viruses (as they are administered live in the MMR serum) which could 1) have an impact on a child's immune system, 2) lead to persistent infection in the gastrointestinal tract and 3) lead, in the long run, to possible brain damage and autism.

He caused a massive scare. Since, he has left his post after it was discovered his work was 'fatally flawed'. The fact that all the patients he did his study on already had gastrointestinal illness made his subjects non-random anyway but that group sampled was ridiculously small too. From that, no real conclusion could be made despite the fact that the measles virus was found in the gut in all cases.

The controversy remains. Our goddaughter had quite serious bowel illness when she was young - I have no idea if this was on or around when she had her MMR jab. But all parents question most things in relation to their child's safety and this is a very hot issue.

We have made the plunge and we are watching our little one like a hawk. We expected him to show symptoms of illness - they say for up to two weeks - but we had not expected him to be so 'rough' so soon after the jab.

The household is on high alert.


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