…As an RN, I have administered numerous vaccines…I brought my fourth baby in for her 6-week well child visit and the first round of immunizations. Within four hours, my healthy, alert baby was unresponsive to all stimuli and she was completely white. She remained unresponsive for twelve hours. I held her in my arms all night long, praying fervently that she would be ok.
My husband and I then began researching and asking questions of many medical professionals. My daughter’s reaction was not rare.
Your daughter’s reaction was VERY rare. You infer so yourself by stating you are an RN who has administered numerous vaccines. It is SO rare that there are SO few kids who have these reactions that it is VERY difficult to determine if this was caused by the vaccination, or by some other unknown etiology. You associate your daughter getting sick with her getting vaccinated, but that doesn’t mean the vaccination caused it.
When I have patients tell me about the times they “got sick” after the flu shot, I tell them that if they get into a car wreck leaving my clinic, they cannot say that coming to the Doctor made them get into a car wreck. Association does not equal causation.
Every adverse event that occurs AROUND THE TIME of a vaccination is reported by your Doc to the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System). Most of these events are simply redness or irritation at the injection site. Also common are mild fever’s, fussiness, and fatigue for a few days after immunizations. This makes sense biologically since the vaccine is activating your immune system’s response.
A few vaccines do have some relatively serious side effects, but again these are incredibly minor. The rotavirus vaccine has an estimated 1 in 30,000 chance of causing an intusussception (a kind of distortion of the bowel) that can be serious, but is easily treatable by your Doc.
The more serious side effects, like death, paralysis/guillain-barre syndrome, etc, are so incredibly rare that despite decades of reports to the VAERS, we simply cannot even measure the risks because they are sooooooo low.
For some correct information on the medical risks of vaccinating your children, see these web-sites below:
cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#Vaccinescause
cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm
Bottom line: There IS a risk to getting your children vaccinated, but that risk PALES in comparison to the risk of them getting a serious (and entirely preventable) childhood disease.