In 1987, 4-year-old Garret Frey was admitted to the ER where I worked for almost 20 years. His dad put him on the back of his motorcycle, warmly wrapped up because it was a cold Iowa day. Garret’s blanket got caught in the motorcycle gears and he was tossed off the bike like a rag doll.
He was wearing a helmet which preserved his brains, but he had a broken neck and was now paralyzed from neck down. Garett spent 11 months in the hospital while his parents tried to learn how to take care of a quadriplegic child with a permanent ventilator.
Garret had to learn the simplest tasks like how to get a drink of water and more complex ones like learning how to control his wheelchair with his breathing. When he was discharged home, he had home care nurses, including one from the ER where I worked. Who knows how many of these people had their flu shots before coming to the home of a very sick little boy.
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In 1968, the influenza A (H3N2) emerged as the dominate strain of flu. About 100,000 people died in the U.S. and 1 million worldwide. In the 1970s, the swine flu outbreak began (H1N1) and there now were overlapping strains of flu. Several cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome occurred which were associated with the current swine flu vaccine.
Although 25% of the U.S. population had been vaccinated by then, many people were afraid of this apparent side effect. After all, who wants to take a chance of having an ascending paralysis starting at your feet and moving up to your head? In an online report, the CDC estimated there were 16 million cases of flu in children up through age 17, leading to 71,000 hospitalizations and 1,090 deaths. This flu was reported in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Every year a new vaccine becomes available, based on the flu types generally starting in China and moving around the world, eventually getting to the U.S. These vaccines are not “sure cures” as some of the flus mutate by the time they get to America. But they were the best we had to protect ourselves, our aging parents and especially our children.
There were many people, including nurses, who should have known better, who did not want to take the flu shot. They offered many selfish reasons, just as people today say exactly the same things about the COVID-19 vaccine. My hospital told the employees, you take the flu shot or you don’t work here. Period.
Can you imagine how devastating it would have been for Garret’s parents to watch their child suffocating with the flu because some nurse who took care of him, some radiology tech who took his chest X-rays, or some housekeeping staff who mopped the floor had refused the shot and brought the virus into the hospital? After all, staff did not want to be docked their pay just for a what seemed like a few little cold symptoms.
Now think about your family. Do you want your children, nephews or nieces or grandchildren to get COVID-19 because you refuse to get the vaccine to protect others from a dreadful and deadly virus? And if your child becomes a “long hauler” he may be damaged for life. What if you had a sister who had breast cancer and was on chemo? How about a parent in a nursing home with chronic lung disease? How about your best friend whose husband had a kidney transplant, and he gets COVID from you?
This seems stupid and foolish to me. Wake up people. Get the vaccine. You are not living on an island … protect those around you who can’t protect themselves!
Barbara Allen spent 10 years as a respiratory therapist, 20 years as an emergency department RN, and has been a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner since 2005. She works part time as a WHNP, and is nationally certified.