THE AGONY OF CHOICE
NOTE TO READER: We’ve all become so black and white. It’s easier that way. We blanket our opinions over everything so we don’t have to look again, question our thinking, dig in. I think my title, “The Agony of Choice,” is on point in deep and difficult ways. We want someone to decide for us. It’s easier than doing it for ourselves. There is no excuse in this information economy to say, “I didn’t know.” Yet, even as we search for answers “out there,” it is our own experience, even our own bodies, that are the most powerful and poignant teachers.
One of my rules as a writer is to speak from personal experience. Sometimes this vulnerability isn’t easy, particularly when extremely personal information is shared. It is rare that I talk about certain health concerns and never in public. But it was necessary here.
Most often, our only way out…is through.
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October 11, 1963.
Like most four-year-olds, I loved bath time more than just about every other thing.
It was nearly always a struggle to end the fun, but this particular evening I was feeling unusually drowsy so when Mama held up the towel and said, “it’s time to get out,” I was ready. Wrapping me up and drying me off, Mama took the towel away and where she had rubbed my long little arms, streaks as black as oil were running down to my fingers.
I remember my mama carrying me down a long corridor and then handing me to a stranger as I kicked and screamed. Other than these little flashbacks that still pop up out of nowhere now and again, this is the last solid memory I have of a month-long ordeal, the ravages of which have followed me for a lifetime.
That same morning [just eight hours before being rushed to the emergency room where I was diagnosed with childhood leukemia and given multiple blood transfusions], my pediatrician with my mother’s permission, unknowingly administered something more deadly than anyone expected—
The DTP vaccine.
I’m not certain my mama received a pamphlet outlining the potential side effects. And I wonder if she would have read it, even if she had. I do know that scientists who developed the vaccine were well aware of potential deadly adverse reactions. These were deemed “acceptable,” even necessary, for the “greater good.”
[DPT vaccinations lowered the annual pertussis deaths from about 1000 annually to less than ten. Unfortunately, as reported by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), the form of the vaccine used and sanctioned by the Centers for Disease Control also kills as many as 900 children per year and leaves one of every 62,000 children immunized with permanent brain damage.] Are those acceptable risks? And if yes, for whom?
After a week in the hospital of which I have no recollection, it was confirmed that what was originally thought to be leukemia was, in fact, acute thrombocytopenic purpura, brought on by the DTP vaccination I received. In essence, something in the inoculation cocktail had eaten nearly every one of my platelets, wreaking havoc on my immune system and bringing me to near-death.
[In the US by the mid-1980s, lawsuits related to vaccine safety led several manufacturers to withdraw their DTP vaccines and paved the way to the US National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986. This act provides funds to compensate for adverse events following immunization]
I survived my childhood ordeal with very little “mind memory” of the details. But my body remembers everything.
In fact, my entire life has been plagued with blood disorders, irregular bleeding, varicosity and circulation issues, and autoimmune disorder which has increased and expanded in recent years. My immune system simply never recovered from what was introduced to my body in 1963.
We all see life through our own lens. That’s why over the past several months I have often found it troubling when people advocate for mandatory vaccines. As a collective group, we sacrifice on behalf of our “most vulnerable,” claiming it’s for the greater good. And yet, when it comes to our children and vaccines, we seem to have a difficult time making room for their individual considerations and need.
Of all our most vulnerable, the children are the only ones for which we have no history, no context. When we introduce a foreign substance into their bodies, we simply cannot predict with certainty how each little onboard system will react.
It’s one thing to have an emergent and temporary response to a vaccine—
We are warned that our children may experience side effects such as soreness, fever, and lethargy hours or even days after.
It’s quite another thing to have a response that follows the child through an entire lifetime—creating traumas and changes within the system that are immediate, and inducing long term and far-reaching alterations to the body that last [and even progress] through the years.
Did you know that in the 1960s a child was inoculated with 18 viral and bacterial strains, delivered in 28 vaccine doses. That same child today will receive 234 bacterial and viral strains delivered in 72 vaccine doses.
In the 60s, life was simpler in so many ways. A pamphlet and a doctor’s input—no internet, no chat sessions, no zoom. My mama did the best she could with the limited information she had. I honestly wonder whether she even had a second thought about whether to vaccinate her little girl. It’s safe to say that my mama trusted scientists and doctors. “Trusted,” there’s the key word.
[Today, the motivation behind developing any new vaccination is not as easily defined. Billionaires in the business sector [not scientists and researchers] drive the efforts to bring vaccines to market, not with the motivation to seek cures and reduce suffering, but seemingly to raise generations of people who become psychologically and physically reliant upon drugs and not on their own profoundly miraculous immune systems.]
When I’m asking questions, the underlying motivation of anything is always where I start. I have to ask, who do you trust? Yourself? If the answer is “no,” why not?
Your own health history is the most reliable source of information for you and your [biological] child.
There are so many reasons this topic is a priority for me now, not the least of which is my own personal story that includes this interesting twist—
Last week my beautiful son and daughter-in-law shared that it would be necessary to receive the adult Tdap vaccine before meeting my new grandson. I was devastated. After all, vaccinations [particularly this one] and I have a deadly history that changes the framework of nearly every conversation surrounding the issue of whether to introduce a foreign substance into the body. I was prepared not to see my own grandson until his mama and daddy deemed it safe. Not because of some high and mighty “opinion,” but out of necessity and safety for us both.
After consulting with three separate doctors, all of whom wholeheartedly rejected the idea of inoculating me, our grandson’s pediatrician shared that it wouldn’t be necessary after all. Still, had the parents’ concern remained, I would have honored them even if it meant delaying meeting my grandson.
Not a day goes by that I don’t wish my mama was alive, mainly to thank her for always supporting my decisions with my own three boys through many years. Above all, I want to be that grandma and compassionately support the convictions my son and daughter carry for their own child.
Our ability to discern the difference between belief and opinion, necessity and compromise is the most breathtaking part of our humanity…and our compassion.
“The Agony of Choice.” Along with a right to “decide” comes great responsibility and the increasing obligation to become educated and even enlightened.
I guess, what I am trying to say is that personal choice must be the overarching consideration as we move forward in this new day. That choice comes with a solemn duty to invest and engage—
1. Understand your own body—listen to the signals it gives you and watch for signs of reaction or deficiency surrounding substances and for God’s sake food
2. Be aware of your own health history—keep a personal file of all doctor’s reports/visits/surgeries/interactions in chronological order, interview your parents, relatives, friends to find out what they know or have observed about you
3. Research everything—there is no excuse for ignorance in this information economy
4. Find a doctor who is educated and who you trust
5. Interview your living family relatives—find out about prevailing health issues, vaccination interactions, causes of death
6. Demand [demand, demand] specific information about anything before you agree to put it in your own body, or especially in the body of your children
NOTE: this includes not only “active ingredients” but all fillers/carriers/additives included in the vaccine [oral or inoculated]
7. Refuse to receive anything from anyone who is not willing to provide explicit information about who developed it, how it was developed, how it was tested, what it contains
It’s extraordinary we live in a time when information is at our fingertips if we are willing to open our minds.
With much love and respect,
Janene
