Writing from quarantine, and surrounded by sick kids, Tara Hills wrote she is emotionally, a bit raw. Mentally a bit taxed. Physically Im fine, before admitting that not only are her own kids sick, but they may have exposed her five-month-old niece who is too young to be fully vaccinated.
What began with a cold brought into her home by her brother-in-law, turned into coughing by her kids leading to full-blown whooping cough in all seven children.
My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. Id never seen anything like this before, she wrote. Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus I had heard of this before somewhere. My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into something is WRONG mode.
Jumping onto her computer, she discovered her childrens symptoms matched almost perfectly all the symptoms of whooping cough in a household that was woefully under-vaccinated.
We had vaccinated our first three children on an alternative schedule and our youngest four werent vaccinated at all. We stopped because we were scared and didnt know who to trust, she explained. Was the medical community just paid off puppets of a Big Pharma-Government-Media conspiracy? Were these vaccines even necessary in this day and age? Were we unwittingly doing greater harm than help to our beloved children? So much smoke must mean a fire so we defaulted to the do nothing and hope nothing bad happens position.
Hills explained that she had a hard time overcoming her biases and mistrust of Big Pharma, asking herself, Could all the in-house, independent, peer-reviewed clinical trials, research papers and studies across the globe ALL be flawed, corrupt and untrustworthy?
Now Hills says that years spent frozen out of fear of vaccinating her kids has the whole family frozen: confined to their home by a quarantine.
She said she hopes her mea culpa will make other families who have held back from getting their children vaccinated rethink what they are doing.
Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyones sake, by getting them up to date. We cant take it back but we can learn from this and help others the same way we have been helped.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/04/anti-vaxx-mom-abandons-movement-after-all-seven-her-of-her-kids-get-whooping-cough/
My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. Id never seen anything like this before, she wrote. Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus I had heard of this before somewhere. My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into something is WRONG mode.
Shoulda snapped into 'something is WRONG' mode' a lot earlier...
Apparently vaccination isn't the only thing she's ignorant about.
jwc,
Even more than the 7 kids, is the fact that these parents feel entitled to get everyone else's kids sick because they are against vaccinations.
So selfish.
I'm glad that people are finally waking up to vaccinate their kids. Matthew was vaccinated for everything, and frankly, I considered it a gift that we could. If he could avoid all those things that I had as a child, I was all for it, and still am for it!
When I was a kid, there were all kinds of people who had had polio, wheeling themselves around in wheelchairs or trying to walk, encased in heavy braces. The polio vaccine was considered to be a miracle, and the doctor who developed it, a God among men. People's distrust of big pharma led them to actually accuse responsible parents of poisoning their children with vaccines. Instead, many lives were saved!
I could talk to my Grandpa about how it felt to nearly die of typhoid, read Mrs. Mike, and learn how it felt to watch your children die of diphtheria, or visit the cemetery at a small local church to see the seven little graves with lamb headstones and see that all seven of them died before the age of 3.
Vaccinations save lives, which is the whole purpose of them.
jwc... You can't fix stupid....
She and her husband are just ignorant.....not thinking of the health of others!
So selfish. Well, now Karma has reared her angry head.
Uninformed, selfish, etc...
All true but props for her bravery in going public with her "come to jesus" moment. At least she's willing to take her lumps for being so wrong in her attempt to help others not be as dumb as she had been in the past.
(Snark on)
If all we do is bash her because she was once so wrong on a subject and then offer her no praise for having the courage to publicly acknowledgingsaid error,then others might take note of how she's being treated and we'll never hear from the climate change deniers, the Obama care haters, the "American poor are all moochers" factions, the "all Muslims are rabid killer" set, etc, once they too reconise the error of their ways.
(Snark off)
So very true Dear Dowser! Thank you!!
At least Jenny McCarthy has the excuse that she is a blond ...
So am I, but, I would NEVER think of doing anything like that!!!
A very valid point there, AH. While she rates a butt-kick for prior goofiness, there evidently was an epiphany of sorts, so a