letting her get sick and missing the last week of summer vacation and the first
two weeks of the school year.
Thanks to the immunoglobulin shot, Aspen developed a much milder case
of measles. She still had a high fever and was miserable but recovered with no
complications. She also missed two weeks of school. Fern, Jan, and Rob never
got sick.
The public health department contacted the O’Connors. Fortunately, the
school year had not started, so Piper had not spread the disease to her class-
mates. The health department tracked down everyone who was on the flight
back from Ireland with Piper. In the end, she had spread the disease to only
nine people who were on the plane with her. These people spread the disease
to another 47 people.
Jan was left pondering whether she had made the right decision in having
Piper and Aspen skip MMR vaccination. She felt guilty for Piper’s and
Aspen’s ordeal and worried about all the people on the plane Piper had made
sick. When she had made the decision for her daughters to skip the vaccine,
Jan truly believed the risk of side effects were greater than the risk of getting
sick. Now that she had seen what measles was like, she was not so sure.
That Rob, Fern, and Jan did not get sick was proof that the vaccine worked
and that Piper’s and Aspen’s illness could have been avoided. Jan was thankful
that both girls recovered without any permanent disabilities and that school
had not been in session when they got sick. If they had spread the disease to
their classmates, the outcome could have been much worse.
Jan remembered that her first Ashland pediatrician had told her that
people no longer got measles because almost everyone was vaccinated.
She had counted on herd immunity to protect her children, but that had
failed. Jan still believed parents should have the right to decide if and when
their children should be vaccinated, but after seeing first-hand how sick mea-
sles had made Piper and Aspen, she resolved that she would no longer try to
persuade other parents to forgo vaccination. She also concluded that the pru-
dent thing would be to put Piper and Aspen on a catch-up schedule for the
vaccines they had missed.
6 Vaccines
