It states on the "fact sheet" given to me by my pediatrician, 6 out of 10,000 Children will seize from their vaccinations. According to the government this is an acceptable amount. On this page, I would like to introduce them to you.
"Our beautiful son, Ryan, was born on June 1, 1993. He was 20 inches long and weighed 7 lbs., 2 oz. Right from the beginning, Ryan was extremely fussy. He didn't sleep...at all. The hospital Ryan was born in advocated 'rooming in' with your baby, but with Ryan, they made an exception. They knew I needed my rest and insisted that I not have Ryan in the room with me. I tried rooming-in with Ryan one of the two nights I was in the hospital, but he just cried and cried, so they took him away. Even then, I started wondering if something was wrong. He just wouldn't stop crying. I'm Rh-negative...and I'd had one shot of Rho-Gam while Ryan was still in utero and one shot after the birth. I'd also had a minor cat scratch while playing with my pet cat, and a nurse decided that I should 'play it on the safe side' and vaccinated me with a Tetanus booster. Little did I know that these two shots would cost our son dearly.
We brought Ryan home after two nights in the hospital. He wouldn't sleep unless we held him. He also cried horribly during his feedings. I had no breast milk and thus had to use an infant formula. As soon as I would start feeding Ryan, he would cry and arch his back. It was horrible. He was so hungry but yet he seemed so uncomfortable as he fed. After I called my mother and told her what was going on with Ryan, she explained my sister had the same thing happen to her children as well. She found out her children had severe milk allergies and switched their formulas to a soy milk based formula. We switched Ryan to a soy based formula and it worked. No more crying during his feedings...at least we had that problem solved.
Ryan also ran a low-grade fever his first week of life. Our pediatricians could find no reason as to why Ryan was running a fever. Luckily, the fever dissipated after one week, but we always wondered what caused it. I had no way of knowing he was then reacting to his first Hepatitis B vaccine, which was administered to him at 12 hours of age.
Ryan seemed to be progressing well. We took him for his first well-baby check-up. He had his first round of shots. I was horrified to see Ryan immediately fall into a very deep sleep right after his round of shots. He was sleeping before I left the pediatrician's office and proceeded to sleep for the next day and a half. I couldn't awaken him for a feeding, nor for a diaper change. This somnolence bothered me...after all, this was an infant that, by nature, didn't sleep much, and yet I now had an infant that I couldn't awaken for over a day. I was terrified something was really wrong but yet, our pediatrician told me this was a normal reaction to his vaccines and pooh-poohed my motherly instincts.
Ryan went in for his two month checkup. Another round of shots with the same results...complete somnolence, only for a longer length of time. He was also extremely fussy and wouldn't eat much. Finally, he seemed to perk up and all was well, until the fourth month check-up. Another round of shots (the whole cell Pertussis component of the dpt vaccine was still being used at this time), with the same exact results...complete somnolence. Ryan was, again, passed out in my arms before I exited the pediatrician's office.
Within 12 hours of Ryan's vaccines, he awakened from complete somnalence to a high-pitched scream. I will never, ever forget that. Nothing could console him. My husband paced with him, back and forth, nothing comforted Ryan. He took his little fists and banged them into his forehead. He lurched forward in my husband's arms and banged his little head on Jeff's chest...it was apparent to both my husband and I that Ryan had one terrific headache. I called our pediatrician's office in an absolute state of panic. He asked that I hold out the phone so that he could listen to Ryan. I did so...and when I got back on the phone, the pediatrician was extremely quiet. He asked that I give Ryan more Tylenol and if Ryan didn't stop screaming in 15 minutes, to bring him into the office. Thankfully, Ryan quieted down.
I knew as a mother that SOMETHING was wrong with our son...and something was dreadfully wrong with him every time we had him vaccinated. He would seem to recover after each episode, but then the next round of shots, the somnolence would start all over again, only now he was experiencing something far worse.
We started digging...we researched material at the medical library and at my husband's law firm. We read and read anything we could get our hands on. Then, by chance, I heard about Barbara Loe Fisher's book, "DPT - A Shot In The Dark." When I sat down and started reading this book, I cried. Ryan was in that book! All of his reactions...everything. The milk allergies, the somnolence, the high-pitched screaming. It was all in there. My God, I thought...what have we done to our son? I'd been 35 years old when I had Ryan. I wanted this baby more than anything else in the world. I was SO CAREFUL before I even became pregnant. I'd had a complete physical, I was in great shape. I started taking prenatal tablets before I conceived...I did everything I was supposed to do. I wanted to have a healthy baby.
After our son was born, I did everything my pediatricians told me to do. But yet, our son seemed so sickly. He was always sick after he had his round of vaccines. I had already been warned about vaccines from a friend of mine. But this was when I was still single. By the time I'd met my husband and became pregnant, I was too swayed by the medical establishment that vaccines were THE best way to prevent disease...little did I know what they would do to our son.
We decided to quit vaccinating Ryan at the age of six months. The pediatrician fully acknowledged that Ryan's last reaction was a severe reaction to a vaccine. He determined that Ryan's reaction was to the pertussis component of the dpt vaccine and wouldn't allow Ryan to have any more dpt shots. When I asked him how he KNEW that it was the pertussis that Ryan had reacted to, he replied that this was the more 'reactive' of the components in any of the vaccines Ryan had had. But I was still uneasy...and I STILL allowed this pediatrician to give Ryan one more shot...a DT shot. Ryan didn't experience the high-pitched screaming, but the somnolence reared its ugly head all over again.
After I read "DPT - A Shot In The Dark," I knew in my heart that Ryan was reacting to each and every vaccine he'd been given. In fact, the more I researched, the more I realized, with absolute dread and horror, that Ryan had already been exposed to vaccines while in utero and was subjected to more vaccines before he was even 24 hours old. My poor baby was reacting to the vaccines he'd been bombarded with and for some reason, he wasn't able to tolerate them. I felt terrible, terrible guilt over what had happened to our son. I struggled with this guilt for many years to come.
Ryan is now, thankfully, a healthy, happy 11 year old boy. He has severe learning disorder issues and is developmentally delayed in some areas, but we are starting to see some improvement. He's under the care of a homeopathic physician as well as a mainstream pediatrician, who, by the way, fully endorses our decision to not vaccinate Ryan any further.
We share Ryan's story in the hopes that this won't happen to anyone else's child. It could have been worse...our son could have died. That may have been the outcome, if I hadn't listened to my instincts.
Sincerely,
Kim Ii
Blackhawk, California
We brought Ryan home after two nights in the hospital. He wouldn't sleep unless we held him. He also cried horribly during his feedings. I had no breast milk and thus had to use an infant formula. As soon as I would start feeding Ryan, he would cry and arch his back. It was horrible. He was so hungry but yet he seemed so uncomfortable as he fed. After I called my mother and told her what was going on with Ryan, she explained my sister had the same thing happen to her children as well. She found out her children had severe milk allergies and switched their formulas to a soy milk based formula. We switched Ryan to a soy based formula and it worked. No more crying during his feedings...at least we had that problem solved.
Ryan also ran a low-grade fever his first week of life. Our pediatricians could find no reason as to why Ryan was running a fever. Luckily, the fever dissipated after one week, but we always wondered what caused it. I had no way of knowing he was then reacting to his first Hepatitis B vaccine, which was administered to him at 12 hours of age.
Ryan seemed to be progressing well. We took him for his first well-baby check-up. He had his first round of shots. I was horrified to see Ryan immediately fall into a very deep sleep right after his round of shots. He was sleeping before I left the pediatrician's office and proceeded to sleep for the next day and a half. I couldn't awaken him for a feeding, nor for a diaper change. This somnolence bothered me...after all, this was an infant that, by nature, didn't sleep much, and yet I now had an infant that I couldn't awaken for over a day. I was terrified something was really wrong but yet, our pediatrician told me this was a normal reaction to his vaccines and pooh-poohed my motherly instincts.
Ryan went in for his two month checkup. Another round of shots with the same results...complete somnolence, only for a longer length of time. He was also extremely fussy and wouldn't eat much. Finally, he seemed to perk up and all was well, until the fourth month check-up. Another round of shots (the whole cell Pertussis component of the dpt vaccine was still being used at this time), with the same exact results...complete somnolence. Ryan was, again, passed out in my arms before I exited the pediatrician's office.
Within 12 hours of Ryan's vaccines, he awakened from complete somnalence to a high-pitched scream. I will never, ever forget that. Nothing could console him. My husband paced with him, back and forth, nothing comforted Ryan. He took his little fists and banged them into his forehead. He lurched forward in my husband's arms and banged his little head on Jeff's chest...it was apparent to both my husband and I that Ryan had one terrific headache. I called our pediatrician's office in an absolute state of panic. He asked that I hold out the phone so that he could listen to Ryan. I did so...and when I got back on the phone, the pediatrician was extremely quiet. He asked that I give Ryan more Tylenol and if Ryan didn't stop screaming in 15 minutes, to bring him into the office. Thankfully, Ryan quieted down.
I knew as a mother that SOMETHING was wrong with our son...and something was dreadfully wrong with him every time we had him vaccinated. He would seem to recover after each episode, but then the next round of shots, the somnolence would start all over again, only now he was experiencing something far worse.
We started digging...we researched material at the medical library and at my husband's law firm. We read and read anything we could get our hands on. Then, by chance, I heard about Barbara Loe Fisher's book, "DPT - A Shot In The Dark." When I sat down and started reading this book, I cried. Ryan was in that book! All of his reactions...everything. The milk allergies, the somnolence, the high-pitched screaming. It was all in there. My God, I thought...what have we done to our son? I'd been 35 years old when I had Ryan. I wanted this baby more than anything else in the world. I was SO CAREFUL before I even became pregnant. I'd had a complete physical, I was in great shape. I started taking prenatal tablets before I conceived...I did everything I was supposed to do. I wanted to have a healthy baby.
After our son was born, I did everything my pediatricians told me to do. But yet, our son seemed so sickly. He was always sick after he had his round of vaccines. I had already been warned about vaccines from a friend of mine. But this was when I was still single. By the time I'd met my husband and became pregnant, I was too swayed by the medical establishment that vaccines were THE best way to prevent disease...little did I know what they would do to our son.
We decided to quit vaccinating Ryan at the age of six months. The pediatrician fully acknowledged that Ryan's last reaction was a severe reaction to a vaccine. He determined that Ryan's reaction was to the pertussis component of the dpt vaccine and wouldn't allow Ryan to have any more dpt shots. When I asked him how he KNEW that it was the pertussis that Ryan had reacted to, he replied that this was the more 'reactive' of the components in any of the vaccines Ryan had had. But I was still uneasy...and I STILL allowed this pediatrician to give Ryan one more shot...a DT shot. Ryan didn't experience the high-pitched screaming, but the somnolence reared its ugly head all over again.
After I read "DPT - A Shot In The Dark," I knew in my heart that Ryan was reacting to each and every vaccine he'd been given. In fact, the more I researched, the more I realized, with absolute dread and horror, that Ryan had already been exposed to vaccines while in utero and was subjected to more vaccines before he was even 24 hours old. My poor baby was reacting to the vaccines he'd been bombarded with and for some reason, he wasn't able to tolerate them. I felt terrible, terrible guilt over what had happened to our son. I struggled with this guilt for many years to come.
Ryan is now, thankfully, a healthy, happy 11 year old boy. He has severe learning disorder issues and is developmentally delayed in some areas, but we are starting to see some improvement. He's under the care of a homeopathic physician as well as a mainstream pediatrician, who, by the way, fully endorses our decision to not vaccinate Ryan any further.
We share Ryan's story in the hopes that this won't happen to anyone else's child. It could have been worse...our son could have died. That may have been the outcome, if I hadn't listened to my instincts.
Sincerely,
Kim Ii
Blackhawk, California
Hello Mrs. Callahan. I just became aware of your website and I wanted to tell you thank you for putting out the truth and hidden dangers of vaccines that so many other people seem to be " in denial " over what is happening with vaccines and our children being harmed by them. I wanted to tell you about my 8 year old son, Maurice, who is now permanently disabled from taking the Flu Shot here in San Antonio, TX. He can't talk anymore, he now has epilepsy, I have to puree his food in a blender before feeding it to him because he can't chew anymore, he is now in pull-ups and he has other numerous problems as well now such as not being able to control his emotions anymore and how he no longer can blow his nose, whistle, or perform any activities of daily care for himself. He is walking again and he does understand everything that you say to him. He was on Life Support 40 days and nights after the Flu Shot made his brain swell. He had to undergo a brain biopsy and have a shunt placed in his brain to drain fluid. The doctors kept telling me he would never survive but I knew it was in Gods hands. I am a single mom with 4 children and we live with my dad. I just want to get his story out to as many people as possible so they can make an informed decision on whether to give their child the Flu Shot or not. I have a newspaper article that was wrote on his story , pictures of his rehabilitation and a lot of medical records as well. I wake up every morning wondering if I will ever hear him talk to me again and I just cherish every second I have with him and my other children. Thanks for taking the time to read this. This picture is Maurice before the shot.
Sincerely,
Michelle M.
Sincerely,
Michelle M.
Hello and thank you for reading my story about my precious son XXXX who was born on 8/11/99, which happened to be very close to the same time Smith Kline Pharma sent a letter to the CDC telling them they were ready to go with mercury free infant vaccines. He was a beautiful baby boy that was very content with life. People would comment about how laid back and happy he was. Even strangers would comment on how alert XXXX was. Everyone thought he was an easy baby to care for because of his sweet nature.
He seemed to always get sick after the shots he received at the well baby visits. The doctor told me that this was normal. I trusted her.
When XXXX was 15 months old his life changed forever. Ten days after getting his Hib (25 mcg of Mercury) and MMR he was never happy after that. Nothing his family did for him would consol him. He cried for several weeks after these shots. The doctor told me that sometimes" it just does that to boys" and noted in his chart “possible reaction to MMR and Hib”.
XXXX ‘s health continued to go down hill day after day. He suffered from stomach aches all the time, ear and sinus infections for two years. He was on antibiotics for two years straight because of sinus infection. We realized that his behavioral symptoms were not normal even for a child who did not feel well. We gradually realized that XXXX was suffering beyond what we understood.
After XXXX’s brother XXX was born we realized that XXXX had to do everything in “twos”. He had to give his brother 2, 4 or 6 kisses…not 1, 3 or 5. He had to have two forks, two drinks, etc for meal time. He was very rigid and often times would get”stuck” in his mind.
With the help of a dear friend, we finally obtain advice of a DAN! Doctor and realized that XXX probably has mercury poisoning.
He will soon begin TD-DMSA treatment for toxic heavy metals. We have failed to get rid of his parasites. Last month there was a claim filed for XXXX in Vaccine Court in Washington, D.C.
XXXX is on the long road to recovery. Our family will stop at nothing to get our son the treatment that he needs no matter the monetary costs.
Last week his pediatrician sent me a certified letter stating that she will no longer treat him because his parents refuse to give him another MMR and seven other vaccines, some of which contain mercury. Her policy is more important than my children’s medical history and health.
God has blessed us with another son and we are protecting him from mercury poisoning. He is in perfect health had has never been sick... He celebrated his 1st birthday on May 16, 2006. We know that what XXXX has been through has helped his brother because we now have awareness on this issue. We pray that XXXX has not suffered in vane and that his suffering will help prevent other children from suffering. Our family strongly feels that God will bring good from XXXX’s Story. We also pray for God’s people to join us in the battle to protect our children from poison.
I have a beautiful 3 year old Daughter, She had her Hep b at birth and then developed a fever on the day We took her for Her two month shots so We put them off. Upon our return to the health dept she was injected 4 times, Two shots in each leg, She reacted almost immediately with a high fever, shakes and becoming listless. When We called the health dept. and her pediatrician They told us that she would be fine, We realized that We would never allow Them to do another "double" immunization again. The next round of shots were the "normal" amount of shots but she again reacted with a fever.
We again called the health dept and pediatrician and were told Tylenol The last set of immunizations We gave her were at 12 months, after the shots She again reacted like she had when she had received the huge dose She had a 104 temp screamed through the night and the next two days, We called the pediatrician and scheduled an appointment, She decided that all further immunizations should be delayed until our Daughter was 5 years old, We were relieved....
2 months later at a routine well baby check up our pediatrician warned us that the flu was expected to be deadly that year and that We needed to get our Daughter a flu shot, So We did what We thought all "good" parents do, We held down our Daughter for that last blow.
Within 48 hours our typically developing Daughter who was speaking and engaging and delightful deteriorated in front of our eyes, We knew there was something severely wrong but when We went to the Pediatrician and were frantic and saying She does not talk anymore, She does not
hear us anymore, she stares off into nothingness for hours, They said that toddlers typically temporarily give up skills to gain other skills. We knew this was not what was going on but we took the referral to the audiologist and left.
After a few more frantic trips to this pediatrician along with a normal hearing test, I was told by the pediatrician that she felt that I wanted something to be wrong with My Daughter, that immunizations do not cause the symptoms I was stating...... We have since switched pediatricians and have been on a frantic search for help for our Daughter, We will be seeing Dr. Demio in Cleveland Ohio this coming Wednesday and are hoping that chelation may be the key.
I do not know how the vaccine theory will play out, I obviously have reasons to believe that it will in the end be proven to be a huge factor. I lay awake at night and stare at My Daughter sleeping and wonder "where will she be in 20 years" Will she be happy?, Will she live independently? and I am angry that We live in America and that She was not protected now if I lived in some third world country maybe "probably not" I could excuse the fact that My country did not have the monies to manufacture a vaccine for the greater good without putting a known nuerotoxin into it that might affect a portion of the children, but AMERICA?
But where were My Daughters rights on the day that She received all of those shots at once? The nurse acted as though it were routine, They said nothing about mercury. I always related autism to rainman, I had a pretty much perfect life , the "American dream" some might say. Now I have the life of someone who tries to figure out how I can swing the mortgage and groceries as well as mounting medical bills ($80,000) last year alone.
Lois Smith
Elkton,Michigan
Last year (2007), I was suffering from severe preeclampsia and delivered my baby via c-section 6 weeks early. I was feeling wonderful two days after delivery and was ready to be discharged. A doctor entered my room and informed me that I needed a rubella vaccine. Within one hour after receiving it, I began to feel funny. I still left the hospital with the intention of driving an hour to my home to pack a bag and return to be with my infant. I never made it back to this same hospital for another 4 days. I had suffered from a relapse with my severe preeclampsia and was rushed to the nearest hospital less than 24 hours later with blood pressure of 182/128 and severely swollen with fluid (to the point that I was unrecognizable). Deep down I knew that the vaccine was to blame, but I bought the theory that relapses occur within a few days after delivery due to hormonal changes when your milk comes in (a few doctors told me this).
It is standard practice now for premature infants to be screened for any possible delays. My baby was screened just prior to his 2 mo. vaccines (he did not receive the Hep B at birth). Easter Seals was amazed by how far advanced he was during his screening. While his corrected age was only 2 weeks, he was holding his bottle on numerous occasions (among other things). In many areas, he was accomplishing tasks equivalent to that of a 6 mo. old. Shortly after this screening, my infant suffered from high-pitched screaming and a low-grade fever from his 2 & 4 mo. vaccines over the course of 3 days. He also suffered from congestion daily for several months following his 2 mo. vaccines (it would clear later each day). He then went on to have convulsions accompanied with a low-grade fever following his 6 mo. vaccines. I noticed that after he received his 2 mo. vaccines, he no longer held his bottle. Later on he began showing delays in his motor skills (holding his head, crawling, sitting, etc) and did not even start babbling until 10 ½ months old. Despite my fears, his pediatrician was not even concerned. She even went as far as to tell me that she sees many infants (especially premature ones) “regress” in milestones! My son still hasn’t held his bottle in over 11 months either. I still had him reassessed and although he has “caught up” in many areas in such a short time, the true extent of his neurological injuries (if any) will not be evident until he is in school. By then, the statue of limitations will elapse. During this ordeal I also began to notice that I was having problems with my hearing (partial hearing loss). Some alarming facts surrounding my personal ordeal are as follows:
1. I never should have received this rubella vaccine while suffering from severe preeclampsia. Informed consent was not practiced. I was not advised that the virus may pass to my infant while breastfeeding (I was encouraged to breastfeed), there is a chance of catching a blood-born virus through the vaccine itself, and I was also not told to avoid pregnancy for at least 3 months. The doctor also did not take into account that I just received a large dose of steroids to boost my infant’s premature lungs. The vaccine literature also states that it may not be effective if patient is administered a blood transfusion. What if I went on to develop HELLP syndrome and needed a blood transfusion? These are all Warnings, Precautions, and Contraindications with Merck’s Meruvaxx II vaccine. This vaccine is now given to every new mother. My vaccine information was never recorded by this medical teaching facility (Dartmouth-Hitchcock aka Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, NH). When I called to obtain the lot# and manufacturer, I was simply told that many patients’ vaccines were never recorded during this time-frame due to “system changes”. I do have an itemized list of hospital charges showing the vaccine administration date and a copy of the doctor’s order to administer it. I have yet to find a government or state agency that will hold this hospital accountable either. This has been a law since 1986 to record this information?
2. The day that my son received his 2 mo. vaccines, his doctor simply told me that many babies tend to tolerate the vaccines better with age. I now see why – one size fits all dosage for every vaccine. She went on to say that he may be “a little fussy” – nothing more. If I do have any concerns, please call her office though. I was also given a “nice booklet” regarding how important vaccines are (written by the CDC). Once again, informed consent was not practiced.
3. Despite my panicked phone call after my baby’s 2 mo. vaccines, the call was never recorded by the nurse. I was simply told over the phone that he must be crying continuously for 3 hours or more or be suffering from a high fever for there to be cause for concern. (I did explain that he was screaming, not crying for well over 3 hours off and on over the course of 3 days). I was also told that his chest must “sink in” while breathing in order for there to be a concern with his congestion.
4. Despite my panicked phone call after my baby’s 4 mo. vaccines, my fears were dismissed again. This call was logged by the nurse and read “child is very fussy” – nothing more.
5. After his reaction to his 6 mo. vaccines, I pulled out the CDC’s literature (booklet given to me by my pediatrician). His convulsions are not considered severe according to the CDC unless there is a high fever also (febrile seizure). Even then, while it may appear alarming, the child is hardly ever “harmed” by it.
6. I did file a complaint against the second nurse with the State of NH Board of Nursing citing that she was placing many babies in harm’s way with her lack of knowledge regarding adverse reactions. She never informed the doctor of what transpired either. When the doctor learned of his reactions, I was simply told that his “risks” outweigh his benefits at this time. I never could report the first nurse because she never even recorded the phone call!
7. I did file a complaint with the State of NH Board of Medicine regarding my rubella vaccine. A complaint was filed against the doctor who ordered the vaccine and another one against the other doctor who administered it. I cited that informed consent was not practiced, the vaccine information was not recorded, and that neither doctor read the vaccine literature supplied by the maker of the vaccine.
8. I did file a complaint with the Joint Commission regarding Dartmouth’s blatant disregard for the law by lack of recording vaccine information. They have acknowledged receipt, but have not returned my calls.
9. I did inform the major newspapers in my state (rubella vaccine incident). I cited the hospital, date that I was there and the fact that many patients’ vaccines were not recorded. I also stated that this information should be made public in the event that someone else has an adverse reaction that cannot be reported due to this hospital’s negligence. The news agencies refuse to publish this information
10. I did file 3 separate Adverse Reaction Reports with VAERS for my infant
11. I have contacted a vaccine-injury related attorney regarding my hearing loss. Unfortunately, I do not have a case if I did not have a comprehensive hearing exam prior to this vaccine (unless administration of this vaccine resulted in total deafness). Why would I have a hearing exam prior to this vaccine if my hearing was perfect?
12. I have also contacted the Governor of NH, my Congresswoman and the Immunization Program Manager for Health & Human Services. Nobody can tell me who will hold this hospital responsible for their actions. Nobody cares.
Now, I will tell you the story of my 14 yr old. I have referred him 5x for Special Education (IEP) over the years through all different schools in NC, CA, and NH. He cannot add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate simple fractions, or comprehend much of what he reads. Yet, all five times he tested “average or below” average in the Special Education screening process? One cannot imagine how hard it is for a child to qualify for an IEP. I was told repeatedly that he is just lazy and unmotivated. Within the past year, I have learned that he is suffering from ADHD-Inattentive type, a Visual Processing Disorder, and a Math Disability. Despite the fact that he was evaluated by a neuropsychologist last year, the school dismissed the findings and still found him ineligible. Had I not hired an Advocate to fight for placement this year, he would not have qualified (for a 5th time) because of his test results. I have since learned that Vision Damage/Vision Problems are actually listed as an adverse reaction to many vaccines. ADHD runs on both sides of the family too. I have recently been made aware of his “greater” risk factor for ADHD if vaccinated too. Based on his “within average range” test scores tells me just how alarming this national problem really is because they were comparing his scores to others his age. There isn’t a problem? Hello? Looking back at his baby book, he too, was congested daily for several months following his 4 mo. vaccines. I now know that both of my babies were exposed to large quantities of formaldehyde in their vaccines. I have also read of the CDC’s actions recently regarding formaldehyde in the FEMA trailers. They demoted their own expert when he concluded that it was toxic. The EPA is now considering it a possible carcinogen. Every vaccine on the market today has the following disclaimer: Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, and Impairment of Fertility: No studies have been done. Yet, we are told that they are quite safe? How do they know if no studies have been done in these areas?
http://vaers.hhs.gov/pdf/PackageInserts.pdf (to view all vaccines)
http://us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_infanrix.pdf (page 7 to view ex. of new warning)
1 in 4 children are currently diagnosed with Learning Disabilities. After speaking with countless families in similar situations such as mine, I am estimating that as much as 80% of our children are learning disabled. Private assessment may cost thousands (usually not covered by insurance), parents may need to hire an advocate (mine charges $75.00 per hour), and may even need an attorney to fight the school system. Litigation may cost up to $100,000. I have also learned that the SATs have repeatedly been “dumbed down” since the 1970’s to accommodate society too. There were also concerns 14 years ago with developmental delays with my son. Yet, his different pediatrician at a different practice also dismissed my fears. In recent studies it was concluded that roughly 80% of pediatricians do not recognize developmental delays unless they are severe. The problems are not seen until the child enters school. The school system then also “fails” our children by their overwhelming desire to further mask this alarming problem.
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/m/meruvax_ii/meruvax_ii_pi.pdf (page 6 for common adverse reactions with Ears/Eyes – these can definitely attribute to many learning disabilities to include the following: Dyslexia, Visual Processing Disorders, Auditory Processing Disorders, Speech/Language Impairments, etc)
My brother was vaccinated against meningitis while he was stationed in the Coast Guard. A few years later (2004), he contracted viral meningitis. He then developed encephalitis as a secondary complication (this is what the hospital told my family). He was hospitalized for three months and wasn’t expected to live. His hospital bill totaled over 1 million dollars. Thankfully, due to alternative treatments administered, he recovered. He did suffer from brain damage in the area of memory though. His case was scrutinized by the Center for Infectious Disease Control. After tracing his steps, there were no other reported cases that they were aware of. We were simply told that he could have picked it up anywhere. I now know that after exposure (such as live-virus vaccination), the virus can lay dormant and later resurface. However, it also doesn’t take 5 spinal taps to determine such a diagnosis or a brain biopsy either. My family was lied to. They didn’t know quite what he had. They even called him a “miracle” and wanted to perform a study on him because they couldn’t quite figure out how he lived through it. It truly sickens me though that the CDC and doctors tell patients that despite febrile seizures, there is no permanent damage though. Many researchers believe that febrile seizures are a “milder form” of encephalitis. My brother was instructed to return for a comprehensive neurological exam to assess the damage to his brain after this illness. Does any pediatrician do the same?
What is even more disturbing is just how ignorant society can be. I recently spoke with a mother of a 7 year old brain damaged child. When he was an infant, he contracted bacterial meningitis from one of his two older vaccinated siblings. Who does this mother blame? She blames an unvaccinated child who attended the same school as her children because the doctors told her to. Apparently, this unvaccinated child’s father was traveling to another country. He was vaccinated against meningitis, “silently carried” the germ home to his unvaccinated daughter. She then gave the germ to other classmates (who were vaccinated). They in turn, “silently carried” it home to their new baby brother. What she doesn’t realize is that her own children are to blame for this mess. Furthermore, had this unvaccinated child been vaccinated, they never would have known the source or even known what they were dealing with, and her child’s treatment would have probably been delayed even further (possibly death).
Last month my infant (who is now 13 months old) was scheduled for surgery for an undescended testicle (not uncommon with premature infants). The night before his surgery I received a phone call from the registration nurse while I was en route to the hospital (we were staying over the night prior due to the long drive). I was asked if he was exposed to chicken pox within the last 30 days. I did not have access to a computer to view the vaccine literature, but I did state that he came in close contact with his aunt 7 days prior who was vaccinated with the live virus vaccine. She then checked with her nurse manager who told me that I need not worry and to bring him in anyways. The next day, I was asked the same question by the anesthesiologist. He too, did not see a problem. You can imagine my guilt after we returned home and I read the vaccine literature on the internet. I learned that his aunt is considered a “risk” to all around her for up to 6 weeks. She is an extreme risk to people suffering from compromised immune systems. My son was playing with an 18 mo. old suffering from cancer at the hospital. When I called the hospital to inform them of their “lack of knowledge” amongst the staff, they were quite upset that I brought him in for his surgery. They were angry with me? By the way, his aunt works in the fast food industry handling food. You cannot imagine the amount of customers that she handles on any given day. Again, informed consent was not practiced.
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/v/varivax/varivax_pi.pdf (page 7)
Believe me, after everything that I have gone through, this is one person who has done her homework. I have spent days, weeks, even months researching every vaccine, every disease statistic reported from the CDC over the years (before/after each vaccine was introduced), viewed VAERS, etc. I am 100% convinced that vaccines are to blame for the majority of society’s problems. My entire family is living proof that they do more harm than good. Come to think of it, I honestly cannot find any true benefit either when I am told that none of them are 100% guaranteed. Very rarely were any of these diseases that we are vaccinating against ever fatal. Vaccines are not responsible for eradication of disease. Yes, our grandparents witnessed many deaths back in their day, but how often did they bathe or even wash their hands for that matter? Didn’t many of them place their infants in unsafe sleeping conditions (SIDS) too? I believe the majority of SIDS cases are vaccine induced these days. Why did the CDC only report 1,806 flu deaths in 2005 (the majority in the elderly)? Yet, they tell the public there are 36,000 deaths annually? Lies, lies, lies are exactly how every vaccine became mandated. It’s not too hard to find the truth if you really want to find it. Shame on journalists for not doing so!
If we truly were at risk for massive outbreaks, we would have seen it long ago in the adult population. Think of the millions of adults whose vaccines have worn off long ago, millions of American people that travel to foreign countries where many vaccines are not required to do so, millions of unvaccinated illegal immigrants living in this country, and we also have millions of legal immigrants that are not required to be vaccinated prior to entering this country (my brother’s new wife informed me of this because she is from Romania and her vaccines were optional unless she sought citizenship). I believe that if we were to mandate vaccines among the adult population, mass hysteria would ensue after countless individuals realized all of the “risks” by experiencing them personally. BABIES CANNOT TELL US THIS MUCH NEEDED INFORMATION THOUGH!
Why do Hannah Poling’s court documents remained sealed despite the family’s request to make them public? WHO THE HECK DOES THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT THINK THEY ARE? Who stands to profit from the sale of vaccines and the chronic diseases they cause? It is not just about Autism anymore.
Thank you,
Dawn Crim
He seemed to always get sick after the shots he received at the well baby visits. The doctor told me that this was normal. I trusted her.
When XXXX was 15 months old his life changed forever. Ten days after getting his Hib (25 mcg of Mercury) and MMR he was never happy after that. Nothing his family did for him would consol him. He cried for several weeks after these shots. The doctor told me that sometimes" it just does that to boys" and noted in his chart “possible reaction to MMR and Hib”.
XXXX ‘s health continued to go down hill day after day. He suffered from stomach aches all the time, ear and sinus infections for two years. He was on antibiotics for two years straight because of sinus infection. We realized that his behavioral symptoms were not normal even for a child who did not feel well. We gradually realized that XXXX was suffering beyond what we understood.
After XXXX’s brother XXX was born we realized that XXXX had to do everything in “twos”. He had to give his brother 2, 4 or 6 kisses…not 1, 3 or 5. He had to have two forks, two drinks, etc for meal time. He was very rigid and often times would get”stuck” in his mind.
With the help of a dear friend, we finally obtain advice of a DAN! Doctor and realized that XXX probably has mercury poisoning.
He will soon begin TD-DMSA treatment for toxic heavy metals. We have failed to get rid of his parasites. Last month there was a claim filed for XXXX in Vaccine Court in Washington, D.C.
XXXX is on the long road to recovery. Our family will stop at nothing to get our son the treatment that he needs no matter the monetary costs.
Last week his pediatrician sent me a certified letter stating that she will no longer treat him because his parents refuse to give him another MMR and seven other vaccines, some of which contain mercury. Her policy is more important than my children’s medical history and health.
God has blessed us with another son and we are protecting him from mercury poisoning. He is in perfect health had has never been sick... He celebrated his 1st birthday on May 16, 2006. We know that what XXXX has been through has helped his brother because we now have awareness on this issue. We pray that XXXX has not suffered in vane and that his suffering will help prevent other children from suffering. Our family strongly feels that God will bring good from XXXX’s Story. We also pray for God’s people to join us in the battle to protect our children from poison.
I have a beautiful 3 year old Daughter, She had her Hep b at birth and then developed a fever on the day We took her for Her two month shots so We put them off. Upon our return to the health dept she was injected 4 times, Two shots in each leg, She reacted almost immediately with a high fever, shakes and becoming listless. When We called the health dept. and her pediatrician They told us that she would be fine, We realized that We would never allow Them to do another "double" immunization again. The next round of shots were the "normal" amount of shots but she again reacted with a fever.
We again called the health dept and pediatrician and were told Tylenol The last set of immunizations We gave her were at 12 months, after the shots She again reacted like she had when she had received the huge dose She had a 104 temp screamed through the night and the next two days, We called the pediatrician and scheduled an appointment, She decided that all further immunizations should be delayed until our Daughter was 5 years old, We were relieved....
2 months later at a routine well baby check up our pediatrician warned us that the flu was expected to be deadly that year and that We needed to get our Daughter a flu shot, So We did what We thought all "good" parents do, We held down our Daughter for that last blow.
Within 48 hours our typically developing Daughter who was speaking and engaging and delightful deteriorated in front of our eyes, We knew there was something severely wrong but when We went to the Pediatrician and were frantic and saying She does not talk anymore, She does not
hear us anymore, she stares off into nothingness for hours, They said that toddlers typically temporarily give up skills to gain other skills. We knew this was not what was going on but we took the referral to the audiologist and left.
After a few more frantic trips to this pediatrician along with a normal hearing test, I was told by the pediatrician that she felt that I wanted something to be wrong with My Daughter, that immunizations do not cause the symptoms I was stating...... We have since switched pediatricians and have been on a frantic search for help for our Daughter, We will be seeing Dr. Demio in Cleveland Ohio this coming Wednesday and are hoping that chelation may be the key.
I do not know how the vaccine theory will play out, I obviously have reasons to believe that it will in the end be proven to be a huge factor. I lay awake at night and stare at My Daughter sleeping and wonder "where will she be in 20 years" Will she be happy?, Will she live independently? and I am angry that We live in America and that She was not protected now if I lived in some third world country maybe "probably not" I could excuse the fact that My country did not have the monies to manufacture a vaccine for the greater good without putting a known nuerotoxin into it that might affect a portion of the children, but AMERICA?
But where were My Daughters rights on the day that She received all of those shots at once? The nurse acted as though it were routine, They said nothing about mercury. I always related autism to rainman, I had a pretty much perfect life , the "American dream" some might say. Now I have the life of someone who tries to figure out how I can swing the mortgage and groceries as well as mounting medical bills ($80,000) last year alone.
Lois Smith
Elkton,Michigan
Last year (2007), I was suffering from severe preeclampsia and delivered my baby via c-section 6 weeks early. I was feeling wonderful two days after delivery and was ready to be discharged. A doctor entered my room and informed me that I needed a rubella vaccine. Within one hour after receiving it, I began to feel funny. I still left the hospital with the intention of driving an hour to my home to pack a bag and return to be with my infant. I never made it back to this same hospital for another 4 days. I had suffered from a relapse with my severe preeclampsia and was rushed to the nearest hospital less than 24 hours later with blood pressure of 182/128 and severely swollen with fluid (to the point that I was unrecognizable). Deep down I knew that the vaccine was to blame, but I bought the theory that relapses occur within a few days after delivery due to hormonal changes when your milk comes in (a few doctors told me this).
It is standard practice now for premature infants to be screened for any possible delays. My baby was screened just prior to his 2 mo. vaccines (he did not receive the Hep B at birth). Easter Seals was amazed by how far advanced he was during his screening. While his corrected age was only 2 weeks, he was holding his bottle on numerous occasions (among other things). In many areas, he was accomplishing tasks equivalent to that of a 6 mo. old. Shortly after this screening, my infant suffered from high-pitched screaming and a low-grade fever from his 2 & 4 mo. vaccines over the course of 3 days. He also suffered from congestion daily for several months following his 2 mo. vaccines (it would clear later each day). He then went on to have convulsions accompanied with a low-grade fever following his 6 mo. vaccines. I noticed that after he received his 2 mo. vaccines, he no longer held his bottle. Later on he began showing delays in his motor skills (holding his head, crawling, sitting, etc) and did not even start babbling until 10 ½ months old. Despite my fears, his pediatrician was not even concerned. She even went as far as to tell me that she sees many infants (especially premature ones) “regress” in milestones! My son still hasn’t held his bottle in over 11 months either. I still had him reassessed and although he has “caught up” in many areas in such a short time, the true extent of his neurological injuries (if any) will not be evident until he is in school. By then, the statue of limitations will elapse. During this ordeal I also began to notice that I was having problems with my hearing (partial hearing loss). Some alarming facts surrounding my personal ordeal are as follows:
1. I never should have received this rubella vaccine while suffering from severe preeclampsia. Informed consent was not practiced. I was not advised that the virus may pass to my infant while breastfeeding (I was encouraged to breastfeed), there is a chance of catching a blood-born virus through the vaccine itself, and I was also not told to avoid pregnancy for at least 3 months. The doctor also did not take into account that I just received a large dose of steroids to boost my infant’s premature lungs. The vaccine literature also states that it may not be effective if patient is administered a blood transfusion. What if I went on to develop HELLP syndrome and needed a blood transfusion? These are all Warnings, Precautions, and Contraindications with Merck’s Meruvaxx II vaccine. This vaccine is now given to every new mother. My vaccine information was never recorded by this medical teaching facility (Dartmouth-Hitchcock aka Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, NH). When I called to obtain the lot# and manufacturer, I was simply told that many patients’ vaccines were never recorded during this time-frame due to “system changes”. I do have an itemized list of hospital charges showing the vaccine administration date and a copy of the doctor’s order to administer it. I have yet to find a government or state agency that will hold this hospital accountable either. This has been a law since 1986 to record this information?
2. The day that my son received his 2 mo. vaccines, his doctor simply told me that many babies tend to tolerate the vaccines better with age. I now see why – one size fits all dosage for every vaccine. She went on to say that he may be “a little fussy” – nothing more. If I do have any concerns, please call her office though. I was also given a “nice booklet” regarding how important vaccines are (written by the CDC). Once again, informed consent was not practiced.
3. Despite my panicked phone call after my baby’s 2 mo. vaccines, the call was never recorded by the nurse. I was simply told over the phone that he must be crying continuously for 3 hours or more or be suffering from a high fever for there to be cause for concern. (I did explain that he was screaming, not crying for well over 3 hours off and on over the course of 3 days). I was also told that his chest must “sink in” while breathing in order for there to be a concern with his congestion.
4. Despite my panicked phone call after my baby’s 4 mo. vaccines, my fears were dismissed again. This call was logged by the nurse and read “child is very fussy” – nothing more.
5. After his reaction to his 6 mo. vaccines, I pulled out the CDC’s literature (booklet given to me by my pediatrician). His convulsions are not considered severe according to the CDC unless there is a high fever also (febrile seizure). Even then, while it may appear alarming, the child is hardly ever “harmed” by it.
6. I did file a complaint against the second nurse with the State of NH Board of Nursing citing that she was placing many babies in harm’s way with her lack of knowledge regarding adverse reactions. She never informed the doctor of what transpired either. When the doctor learned of his reactions, I was simply told that his “risks” outweigh his benefits at this time. I never could report the first nurse because she never even recorded the phone call!
7. I did file a complaint with the State of NH Board of Medicine regarding my rubella vaccine. A complaint was filed against the doctor who ordered the vaccine and another one against the other doctor who administered it. I cited that informed consent was not practiced, the vaccine information was not recorded, and that neither doctor read the vaccine literature supplied by the maker of the vaccine.
8. I did file a complaint with the Joint Commission regarding Dartmouth’s blatant disregard for the law by lack of recording vaccine information. They have acknowledged receipt, but have not returned my calls.
9. I did inform the major newspapers in my state (rubella vaccine incident). I cited the hospital, date that I was there and the fact that many patients’ vaccines were not recorded. I also stated that this information should be made public in the event that someone else has an adverse reaction that cannot be reported due to this hospital’s negligence. The news agencies refuse to publish this information
10. I did file 3 separate Adverse Reaction Reports with VAERS for my infant
11. I have contacted a vaccine-injury related attorney regarding my hearing loss. Unfortunately, I do not have a case if I did not have a comprehensive hearing exam prior to this vaccine (unless administration of this vaccine resulted in total deafness). Why would I have a hearing exam prior to this vaccine if my hearing was perfect?
12. I have also contacted the Governor of NH, my Congresswoman and the Immunization Program Manager for Health & Human Services. Nobody can tell me who will hold this hospital responsible for their actions. Nobody cares.
Now, I will tell you the story of my 14 yr old. I have referred him 5x for Special Education (IEP) over the years through all different schools in NC, CA, and NH. He cannot add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate simple fractions, or comprehend much of what he reads. Yet, all five times he tested “average or below” average in the Special Education screening process? One cannot imagine how hard it is for a child to qualify for an IEP. I was told repeatedly that he is just lazy and unmotivated. Within the past year, I have learned that he is suffering from ADHD-Inattentive type, a Visual Processing Disorder, and a Math Disability. Despite the fact that he was evaluated by a neuropsychologist last year, the school dismissed the findings and still found him ineligible. Had I not hired an Advocate to fight for placement this year, he would not have qualified (for a 5th time) because of his test results. I have since learned that Vision Damage/Vision Problems are actually listed as an adverse reaction to many vaccines. ADHD runs on both sides of the family too. I have recently been made aware of his “greater” risk factor for ADHD if vaccinated too. Based on his “within average range” test scores tells me just how alarming this national problem really is because they were comparing his scores to others his age. There isn’t a problem? Hello? Looking back at his baby book, he too, was congested daily for several months following his 4 mo. vaccines. I now know that both of my babies were exposed to large quantities of formaldehyde in their vaccines. I have also read of the CDC’s actions recently regarding formaldehyde in the FEMA trailers. They demoted their own expert when he concluded that it was toxic. The EPA is now considering it a possible carcinogen. Every vaccine on the market today has the following disclaimer: Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, and Impairment of Fertility: No studies have been done. Yet, we are told that they are quite safe? How do they know if no studies have been done in these areas?
http://vaers.hhs.gov/pdf/PackageInserts.pdf (to view all vaccines)
http://us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_infanrix.pdf (page 7 to view ex. of new warning)
1 in 4 children are currently diagnosed with Learning Disabilities. After speaking with countless families in similar situations such as mine, I am estimating that as much as 80% of our children are learning disabled. Private assessment may cost thousands (usually not covered by insurance), parents may need to hire an advocate (mine charges $75.00 per hour), and may even need an attorney to fight the school system. Litigation may cost up to $100,000. I have also learned that the SATs have repeatedly been “dumbed down” since the 1970’s to accommodate society too. There were also concerns 14 years ago with developmental delays with my son. Yet, his different pediatrician at a different practice also dismissed my fears. In recent studies it was concluded that roughly 80% of pediatricians do not recognize developmental delays unless they are severe. The problems are not seen until the child enters school. The school system then also “fails” our children by their overwhelming desire to further mask this alarming problem.
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/m/meruvax_ii/meruvax_ii_pi.pdf (page 6 for common adverse reactions with Ears/Eyes – these can definitely attribute to many learning disabilities to include the following: Dyslexia, Visual Processing Disorders, Auditory Processing Disorders, Speech/Language Impairments, etc)
My brother was vaccinated against meningitis while he was stationed in the Coast Guard. A few years later (2004), he contracted viral meningitis. He then developed encephalitis as a secondary complication (this is what the hospital told my family). He was hospitalized for three months and wasn’t expected to live. His hospital bill totaled over 1 million dollars. Thankfully, due to alternative treatments administered, he recovered. He did suffer from brain damage in the area of memory though. His case was scrutinized by the Center for Infectious Disease Control. After tracing his steps, there were no other reported cases that they were aware of. We were simply told that he could have picked it up anywhere. I now know that after exposure (such as live-virus vaccination), the virus can lay dormant and later resurface. However, it also doesn’t take 5 spinal taps to determine such a diagnosis or a brain biopsy either. My family was lied to. They didn’t know quite what he had. They even called him a “miracle” and wanted to perform a study on him because they couldn’t quite figure out how he lived through it. It truly sickens me though that the CDC and doctors tell patients that despite febrile seizures, there is no permanent damage though. Many researchers believe that febrile seizures are a “milder form” of encephalitis. My brother was instructed to return for a comprehensive neurological exam to assess the damage to his brain after this illness. Does any pediatrician do the same?
What is even more disturbing is just how ignorant society can be. I recently spoke with a mother of a 7 year old brain damaged child. When he was an infant, he contracted bacterial meningitis from one of his two older vaccinated siblings. Who does this mother blame? She blames an unvaccinated child who attended the same school as her children because the doctors told her to. Apparently, this unvaccinated child’s father was traveling to another country. He was vaccinated against meningitis, “silently carried” the germ home to his unvaccinated daughter. She then gave the germ to other classmates (who were vaccinated). They in turn, “silently carried” it home to their new baby brother. What she doesn’t realize is that her own children are to blame for this mess. Furthermore, had this unvaccinated child been vaccinated, they never would have known the source or even known what they were dealing with, and her child’s treatment would have probably been delayed even further (possibly death).
Last month my infant (who is now 13 months old) was scheduled for surgery for an undescended testicle (not uncommon with premature infants). The night before his surgery I received a phone call from the registration nurse while I was en route to the hospital (we were staying over the night prior due to the long drive). I was asked if he was exposed to chicken pox within the last 30 days. I did not have access to a computer to view the vaccine literature, but I did state that he came in close contact with his aunt 7 days prior who was vaccinated with the live virus vaccine. She then checked with her nurse manager who told me that I need not worry and to bring him in anyways. The next day, I was asked the same question by the anesthesiologist. He too, did not see a problem. You can imagine my guilt after we returned home and I read the vaccine literature on the internet. I learned that his aunt is considered a “risk” to all around her for up to 6 weeks. She is an extreme risk to people suffering from compromised immune systems. My son was playing with an 18 mo. old suffering from cancer at the hospital. When I called the hospital to inform them of their “lack of knowledge” amongst the staff, they were quite upset that I brought him in for his surgery. They were angry with me? By the way, his aunt works in the fast food industry handling food. You cannot imagine the amount of customers that she handles on any given day. Again, informed consent was not practiced.
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/v/varivax/varivax_pi.pdf (page 7)
Believe me, after everything that I have gone through, this is one person who has done her homework. I have spent days, weeks, even months researching every vaccine, every disease statistic reported from the CDC over the years (before/after each vaccine was introduced), viewed VAERS, etc. I am 100% convinced that vaccines are to blame for the majority of society’s problems. My entire family is living proof that they do more harm than good. Come to think of it, I honestly cannot find any true benefit either when I am told that none of them are 100% guaranteed. Very rarely were any of these diseases that we are vaccinating against ever fatal. Vaccines are not responsible for eradication of disease. Yes, our grandparents witnessed many deaths back in their day, but how often did they bathe or even wash their hands for that matter? Didn’t many of them place their infants in unsafe sleeping conditions (SIDS) too? I believe the majority of SIDS cases are vaccine induced these days. Why did the CDC only report 1,806 flu deaths in 2005 (the majority in the elderly)? Yet, they tell the public there are 36,000 deaths annually? Lies, lies, lies are exactly how every vaccine became mandated. It’s not too hard to find the truth if you really want to find it. Shame on journalists for not doing so!
If we truly were at risk for massive outbreaks, we would have seen it long ago in the adult population. Think of the millions of adults whose vaccines have worn off long ago, millions of American people that travel to foreign countries where many vaccines are not required to do so, millions of unvaccinated illegal immigrants living in this country, and we also have millions of legal immigrants that are not required to be vaccinated prior to entering this country (my brother’s new wife informed me of this because she is from Romania and her vaccines were optional unless she sought citizenship). I believe that if we were to mandate vaccines among the adult population, mass hysteria would ensue after countless individuals realized all of the “risks” by experiencing them personally. BABIES CANNOT TELL US THIS MUCH NEEDED INFORMATION THOUGH!
Why do Hannah Poling’s court documents remained sealed despite the family’s request to make them public? WHO THE HECK DOES THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT THINK THEY ARE? Who stands to profit from the sale of vaccines and the chronic diseases they cause? It is not just about Autism anymore.
Thank you,
Dawn Crim
J.R Alexander Sydney Rebecca
J.R. 9 years
Alexander 7years
Sydney 6 years
Kiera-Anne 5 years
Rebecca 2 years
JR was born August 9th 1992. In December 1992 we took JR in for his health check and shots. Within several days of that shot he was deathly ill, vomiting and diarrhea, so bad if he had not gained a pound in one day he would have to be hospitalized. He gained the pound and within 24 hours he was "twitching". I was at the pediatricians often due to his asthma. And would mention at every visit he is still wheezing and still twitching. At the time I was thinking it might be connected to the medicines for the asthma. The Doctor said he was growing into his nervous system. This went on until Feb 9th,1993. JR had a series of Complex partials. We were at home with him and had no idea what was happening to him. He would look at me, then his head would crane over to the right. Smile when he heard his name and then cry when he could not move his head. The doctor said to wait 30 minutes then call back. We waited 3 minutes. Of course when we walked in to the doctors office JR was smiling and fine. So we got the oh, first time parents. However in the doctors office he did it again and the doctor saw it. I remember this day like it was yesterday. I said "There, there that is it"; and the doctor arm stretched out behind him onto my arm and softly touched it as he turned and said, "He is having a seizure"...Oh my gosh I felt like I was hit by a freight train. How could this be happening to my son. He then went onto explain that in hind sight all of those twitches were seizures. .....sigh......sent us home with Phenobarbital. All I knew is I wanted to do whatever it takes to stop these things. The rest of that week was spent at the neurologist for an EEG, and then an appt.....he told us he did not have epilepsy he had a seizure disorder and he would be fine and would outgrow it. We did an MRI and CT Scan and all was normal. He just had a horrendous EEG. During this time everyone said oh he'll be fine, he'll out grow it , they are probably wrong. I felt so invalidated. And so we went, we had second opinions and such all agreeing with this drug therapy. We switched drugs many times throughout his little life.
In late 1993, I found out that I was pregnant with Alexander. We did genetic counseling and we were told that the odds of having another child with epilepsy would be astronomical, so go ahead and have your family (now we were going to have Alex, but I wanted to know as far as future kids and what Alexander's risks were). All was clear. We preceded to have Alex, Sydney and Kiera-Anne. They were all beautiful and healthy. Kiera-Anne was 8 weeks early, but she was fine, we came home the next day..all 5 pounds of her. JR had drug changes, seizure changes and they began to get worse. He was having one day a month where he was totally unconscious the entire day. He was having about 30 seizures a day that we saw, however he was also having absence seizures so I know we missed many. Now we are at February 1997. And I see Jim and Nancy Abraham's talking about &";First Do No Harm&"; I told my entire family to watch it, it was about a child with epilepsy. My husband sat down and watched it the next evening ( he was at work) at the end he said, so are you going to Baltimore? And I said just wait, And our local news did a segment on Dr Sutherling and the Epilepsy and Brain Mapping Program. I looked in our insurance book and there was his name.......so I called the next day. JR started the Ketogenic diet 5 weeks later. Monday morning we started the diet. I will never forget wheeling my son into the hospital the last week due to a horrible seizure, and now walking into the hospital praying that this was the answer for my son. Right away the seizures reduced. 5 in the first 5 weeks. Then off all medicines within 5 months, never realized all the 5's. JR's little light was so bright after the diet. That is when he became JR.,we used to call him Jimmie, he chose JR. FAST FORWARD to August 31, 1997. The whole family was napping and then I felt a nudging on my back, thought one of the kids wanted me, I turned around and SYDNEY not JR ,SYDNEY was in a grand mal seizure. Turned out to be a febrile seizure, his temp was 105.8. He had no temp an hour earlier when I laid him down. So off to the hospital we go cause it hadn't stopped. This was 2 weeks after his 2 year old shots. They sent us home later..no meds......he had one more seizure 2 weeks later. Now it is October 1st 1997 a month later.......I get a call from Jim, he broke his arm at work. And he is going to the hospital , While I am waiting for him to get back to work from the hospital........Alexander had a seizure. yes ALEXANDER. I thought he was ignoring me because he was in trouble, I had actually chased him around the table and he went into this corner. He wouldn't look at me or answer me. So I picked him up and as soon as I saw his eyes at my level right in front of me, I recognized that look all too well. He was in the middle of a seizure. I stood him up. One leg was limp one leg was stiff as a board. so I laid him down, then he came out of it. I called and ordered EEG's on both of them. Alex's was abnormal and Sydney's was normal . Alex had seizures every couple of weeks. In March of 1998 we started him on the diet since the seizures did not go away. He has never had a seizure again. It is now August 29th 1998. We were told if Sydney went a year without seizing we would be out of the woods....so to speak. Well, he seized that day. And continued to seize several times daily. He was put on the diet September 21, 1998. Kiera's 2nd Birthday. He had seizures only when sick. NOW......it is December 1998. I find out I am pregnant with Rebecca. I cried for days. What does this mean for this baby. If it is a boy is he doomed to have seizures, since only our sons have been affected to date. . Whew. we found out it is a girl...what??? there is a spot on her heart??? Okay she should be okay and we'll watch it. At 32 weeks I started contracting...so on bed rest I go. after several times to the hospital to stop labor, Rebecca was born at 37 weeks....5 pounds 4 ounces....and beautiful and healthy. Rebecca was jaundiced after birth, significantly, we were at the pediatricians daily for the first 4 weeks. She developed asthma related symptoms (would not diagnose until she is two) when she was 4 months old. Now in April 2000 Alexander came off the diet. And is doing beautiful . No seizures. No medicines and No diet and No delays. In June of 2000, Rebecca started having seizures.2 months after her last shots. 2 weeks before her first birthday. We watched her, not ready to treat her. September 2000.....we are now homeschooling. Felt it was the right thing to do for our family. In November Rebecca was placed on the diet. Her seizures would not stop. April 2001, Sydney came off the diet. No return of seizures. Not even when sick. And is doing very well..No Delays. Rebecca has done beautifully. So on Sept 10, 2001, I go into the doctors and say.....My dear dear JR. is still struggling with the diet. Only seizes when he cheats which he unfortunately does often! We have had a status event while on the diet and his seizures continue to change and evolve every time he has a seizure. The doctor has agreed with me after 4 years that JR. probably falls somewhere on the Autistic spectrum. We have not made that official diagnosis, however, I was just hoping there may be some methods of teaching and such that might be used with autistic kids that will help him. Not like I really need a title, I just wanted some validation of what I was seeing and perhaps there might be some answers out there I do not know. He has a lot of struggles, behaviorally and developmentally. We work with him every single day using Brain Gym and regimen. meaning routines and such. That is our story in a nutshell. I must say that without the Ketogenic Diet I would have 4 kids who were zombie out on drugs and seizing all day (based on Jar's history) and that I think would be too much for me to handle, however, that is not our life. And I am very thankful.
Jen
J.R. 9 years
Alexander 7years
Sydney 6 years
Kiera-Anne 5 years
Rebecca 2 years
JR was born August 9th 1992. In December 1992 we took JR in for his health check and shots. Within several days of that shot he was deathly ill, vomiting and diarrhea, so bad if he had not gained a pound in one day he would have to be hospitalized. He gained the pound and within 24 hours he was "twitching". I was at the pediatricians often due to his asthma. And would mention at every visit he is still wheezing and still twitching. At the time I was thinking it might be connected to the medicines for the asthma. The Doctor said he was growing into his nervous system. This went on until Feb 9th,1993. JR had a series of Complex partials. We were at home with him and had no idea what was happening to him. He would look at me, then his head would crane over to the right. Smile when he heard his name and then cry when he could not move his head. The doctor said to wait 30 minutes then call back. We waited 3 minutes. Of course when we walked in to the doctors office JR was smiling and fine. So we got the oh, first time parents. However in the doctors office he did it again and the doctor saw it. I remember this day like it was yesterday. I said "There, there that is it"; and the doctor arm stretched out behind him onto my arm and softly touched it as he turned and said, "He is having a seizure"...Oh my gosh I felt like I was hit by a freight train. How could this be happening to my son. He then went onto explain that in hind sight all of those twitches were seizures. .....sigh......sent us home with Phenobarbital. All I knew is I wanted to do whatever it takes to stop these things. The rest of that week was spent at the neurologist for an EEG, and then an appt.....he told us he did not have epilepsy he had a seizure disorder and he would be fine and would outgrow it. We did an MRI and CT Scan and all was normal. He just had a horrendous EEG. During this time everyone said oh he'll be fine, he'll out grow it , they are probably wrong. I felt so invalidated. And so we went, we had second opinions and such all agreeing with this drug therapy. We switched drugs many times throughout his little life.
In late 1993, I found out that I was pregnant with Alexander. We did genetic counseling and we were told that the odds of having another child with epilepsy would be astronomical, so go ahead and have your family (now we were going to have Alex, but I wanted to know as far as future kids and what Alexander's risks were). All was clear. We preceded to have Alex, Sydney and Kiera-Anne. They were all beautiful and healthy. Kiera-Anne was 8 weeks early, but she was fine, we came home the next day..all 5 pounds of her. JR had drug changes, seizure changes and they began to get worse. He was having one day a month where he was totally unconscious the entire day. He was having about 30 seizures a day that we saw, however he was also having absence seizures so I know we missed many. Now we are at February 1997. And I see Jim and Nancy Abraham's talking about &";First Do No Harm&"; I told my entire family to watch it, it was about a child with epilepsy. My husband sat down and watched it the next evening ( he was at work) at the end he said, so are you going to Baltimore? And I said just wait, And our local news did a segment on Dr Sutherling and the Epilepsy and Brain Mapping Program. I looked in our insurance book and there was his name.......so I called the next day. JR started the Ketogenic diet 5 weeks later. Monday morning we started the diet. I will never forget wheeling my son into the hospital the last week due to a horrible seizure, and now walking into the hospital praying that this was the answer for my son. Right away the seizures reduced. 5 in the first 5 weeks. Then off all medicines within 5 months, never realized all the 5's. JR's little light was so bright after the diet. That is when he became JR.,we used to call him Jimmie, he chose JR. FAST FORWARD to August 31, 1997. The whole family was napping and then I felt a nudging on my back, thought one of the kids wanted me, I turned around and SYDNEY not JR ,SYDNEY was in a grand mal seizure. Turned out to be a febrile seizure, his temp was 105.8. He had no temp an hour earlier when I laid him down. So off to the hospital we go cause it hadn't stopped. This was 2 weeks after his 2 year old shots. They sent us home later..no meds......he had one more seizure 2 weeks later. Now it is October 1st 1997 a month later.......I get a call from Jim, he broke his arm at work. And he is going to the hospital , While I am waiting for him to get back to work from the hospital........Alexander had a seizure. yes ALEXANDER. I thought he was ignoring me because he was in trouble, I had actually chased him around the table and he went into this corner. He wouldn't look at me or answer me. So I picked him up and as soon as I saw his eyes at my level right in front of me, I recognized that look all too well. He was in the middle of a seizure. I stood him up. One leg was limp one leg was stiff as a board. so I laid him down, then he came out of it. I called and ordered EEG's on both of them. Alex's was abnormal and Sydney's was normal . Alex had seizures every couple of weeks. In March of 1998 we started him on the diet since the seizures did not go away. He has never had a seizure again. It is now August 29th 1998. We were told if Sydney went a year without seizing we would be out of the woods....so to speak. Well, he seized that day. And continued to seize several times daily. He was put on the diet September 21, 1998. Kiera's 2nd Birthday. He had seizures only when sick. NOW......it is December 1998. I find out I am pregnant with Rebecca. I cried for days. What does this mean for this baby. If it is a boy is he doomed to have seizures, since only our sons have been affected to date. . Whew. we found out it is a girl...what??? there is a spot on her heart??? Okay she should be okay and we'll watch it. At 32 weeks I started contracting...so on bed rest I go. after several times to the hospital to stop labor, Rebecca was born at 37 weeks....5 pounds 4 ounces....and beautiful and healthy. Rebecca was jaundiced after birth, significantly, we were at the pediatricians daily for the first 4 weeks. She developed asthma related symptoms (would not diagnose until she is two) when she was 4 months old. Now in April 2000 Alexander came off the diet. And is doing beautiful . No seizures. No medicines and No diet and No delays. In June of 2000, Rebecca started having seizures.2 months after her last shots. 2 weeks before her first birthday. We watched her, not ready to treat her. September 2000.....we are now homeschooling. Felt it was the right thing to do for our family. In November Rebecca was placed on the diet. Her seizures would not stop. April 2001, Sydney came off the diet. No return of seizures. Not even when sick. And is doing very well..No Delays. Rebecca has done beautifully. So on Sept 10, 2001, I go into the doctors and say.....My dear dear JR. is still struggling with the diet. Only seizes when he cheats which he unfortunately does often! We have had a status event while on the diet and his seizures continue to change and evolve every time he has a seizure. The doctor has agreed with me after 4 years that JR. probably falls somewhere on the Autistic spectrum. We have not made that official diagnosis, however, I was just hoping there may be some methods of teaching and such that might be used with autistic kids that will help him. Not like I really need a title, I just wanted some validation of what I was seeing and perhaps there might be some answers out there I do not know. He has a lot of struggles, behaviorally and developmentally. We work with him every single day using Brain Gym and regimen. meaning routines and such. That is our story in a nutshell. I must say that without the Ketogenic Diet I would have 4 kids who were zombie out on drugs and seizing all day (based on Jar's history) and that I think would be too much for me to handle, however, that is not our life. And I am very thankful.
Jen
I weighed my son yesterday, he has finally hit 20 pounds! This is a big milestone for us, as Noah will turn 3 on Feb 11th, he just turned 33 months Nov 11th. You see, at one time, Noah was gaining steadily, about 1.5 to 2 pounds a month, until he hit 7.5 months. He weighed in at 14.5 pounds. Then he received his 3rd round of vaccines, the 3rd DTP and the 1st hep B. Does it matter that my oldest son received his first Hep B at the age of 12 years, and that my younger son received his first He B at the age of 4 years? I don't know. As you have found, doctors turn a deaf ear when anything negative is said about vaccines. By the 3rd day after getting his shots, (after crying on and off for two days) Noah began a slight whistle sounding wheeze. I took him to the doctor, they weighed him, and he had lost a few ounces in just the 3 days that had passed. He didn't gain any more weight for several months, just flat lined on the charts, when previously he was following the curve to the T! He began to refuse all solids, when just a few weeks before, he was trying everything offered, and liking most of it. Now he would only nurse, nothing else. The pediatrician suggested I skip the morning feeding to try and prompt him to eat. I suggested I didn't feel the nursing was the issue here, he was refusing ALL food, and none of my other breastfed (3 of them) have ever outright refused food, they always ate IN ADDITION to nursing, eventually replacing the nursing with a regular diet. So now, 26 months later, my son has only gained 5.5 pounds. He seems to be fine in every other way, (once the respiratory problems resolved, after about 12months). When I realized that the only change in his environment had been the vaccines, I sickly made the connection. I filed a report with VAERS, and they continue to follow up to inquire if my son is still suffering adverse events. It is a horrible thing to watch a child never grow out of size 12 months, even as he approaches his 3rd birthday. I am thankful that aside from his grossly stunted growth, that he seems to okay, but how do you explain to anyone why your child is not growing? Why do all the doctors refuse to listen when I tell them he was FINE BEFORE THE VACCINES? I told our doctor no more shots until I can find out what caused Noah's problems, since according to our doctor, although he has no idea what happened to my son, he is sure that the vaccines had nothing to do with it. Interesting. If he doesn't know what caused the problem, how can he possibly rule out vaccines right off the bat? So, at 33 months, Noah has had no further shots. In fact, after researching, I made the decision that no vaccines will ever be administered to any of my children ever again. My 6 yr old didn't get the boosters required for kindergarten, it would be over my dead body. I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone in your struggle against the world when it comes to having a child damaged by the very vaccines they claim are supposed to protect.
Sincerely,
Christine Ewton
Jax, FL
Sincerely,
Christine Ewton
Jax, FL
Katie has a condition called Rett Syndrome. She is considered an atypical case, because she was not afflicted as severely as a classic Rett case. I do question the effects of shots however, just because, up until about her third set of shots, she seemed like she was just going to be delayed. She didn't talk, but she played, and she was trying to catch on to things, like pretend play, babbling, etc. But as time went on, and that third set of shots was given, she went into more of an autistic stage. This is very typical for Rett girls to do, but how many are given the shots at this age? I wonder, does it push some over the edge? My real frustration comes however, from this hep. b shot that I was told she needed two years ago. I was told it was harmless. The first one went ok, the second one sent her into a grand mal seizure, within a half hour of returning home from the doctor visit and we have never regained control. Katie is doing well for having Rett Syndrome. Now, every visit we make to the ped, I am asked about that third shot in the series, and I just tell them NO, sorry, second one caused grand mals, next one could do worse, so NO THANKS.... I hate these professionals telling us that things are harmless, and only go by the book, rather than looking at the true stories from families. UGH. She has a lot of skills, and has not been physically afflicted like so many of the classic girls have been. Wendy, I hope this is enough background. Thank you for letting me share.
Take care! Kandy
Take care! Kandy
My daughter, Sarah, who is 9, is epileptic.
My daughter, Sarah, who is 9, is epileptic. She started having seizures when she was six months (petit mal, then grand mal at seven months). I always believed it was from her vaccinations, but the doctors would always say, "Oh, we don't know that." Jerks.
I just recently found out she has long-term chronic Mercury poisoning from her vaccinations. I did not want to vaccinate her any more, but was pushed into it by a new pediatrician when she was five. Within two weeks she began having seizures twenty four hour per day, a week at a time, recovering for maybe a week, and then starting all over again. This went on for a year and a half. She barely made it to school at all that year. Only in the last two years has she not been having seizures (only when sick for a while, now only when I tapered her seizure medicines too quickly). I have absolutely refused to allow my children to be vaccinated since then, and I can honestly say that they are only better because of my refusal.
There is no such thing as a safe vaccine. Period.
Tracy
My daughter, Sarah, who is 9, is epileptic. She started having seizures when she was six months (petit mal, then grand mal at seven months). I always believed it was from her vaccinations, but the doctors would always say, "Oh, we don't know that." Jerks.
I just recently found out she has long-term chronic Mercury poisoning from her vaccinations. I did not want to vaccinate her any more, but was pushed into it by a new pediatrician when she was five. Within two weeks she began having seizures twenty four hour per day, a week at a time, recovering for maybe a week, and then starting all over again. This went on for a year and a half. She barely made it to school at all that year. Only in the last two years has she not been having seizures (only when sick for a while, now only when I tapered her seizure medicines too quickly). I have absolutely refused to allow my children to be vaccinated since then, and I can honestly say that they are only better because of my refusal.
There is no such thing as a safe vaccine. Period.
Tracy
Jonathan
My husband and I live in East Texas in a town about 125 miles NE of Houston. My husband works for the Texas Forest Service and has been there for 23-24 years. I owned my own medical transcription business until my son became sick and I had to shut it down in order to care for my child. When we married we decided that we would wait 2 years before starting our family. When I found out I was pregnant after 2 years of marriage we were so excited and began reading everything about pregnancy. I read everything I could lay my hands on regarding healthy eating, nutrition, and giving the baby the best start in life that I possibly could. I gave up all chemicals in foods, aspartame and saccharin, caffeine, etc. so that the baby would be getting only the best source of nutrition. I read everything I could about each stage of pregnancy and I exercised each day. I felt great and my blood work was the best they had seen in a pregnancy in a long time. I then researched methods of delivery and after participating in several classes and reading a bunch of books, I decided that the best would be for me to go through labor and delivery naturally. My husband and I had a private tutor who instructed us on the Bradley Method of childbirth, which taught you how to breathe and focus. I didn't want the epidural drugs in my son's bloodstream and thought it would probably be uncomfortable for me but it would be better for him. I had absolutely no complications during my pregnancy. When the day finally arrived that my water spontaneously ruptured at 41 weeks, my experience with labor began. I went through 19 hours of labor and the last couple of hours were the most intense since they had to initiate Pitocin. Finally at 8:19 PM on 07/31/97 my little son arrived into this world weighing 9 lbs and 7.6 oz. He was 21 inches long and let out a robust cry. There were no complications during labor or delivery. He started to breastfeed within 10 minutes of birth and was 9/9 on the APGAR scale.
I researched and read everything I could lay my hands on while I was pregnant so that I could make informed choices. The one thing that I was never told about was the hepatitis B vaccine that my son would be given in the hospital just before going home. If I had the opportunity to research this vaccine prior to him getting it, he would have never received it.
He was given the federally recommended and state mandated hepatitis B vaccine when he was 3 days old just before we left the hospital. This vaccine was given without our consent or knowledge. Within 4 hours he began screaming at the top of his lungs and we couldn't get him to stop. We called the hospital nursery and they told us that he was probably just scared not being in the hospital environment that he had become accustomed to in the hospital (with the sound of incubators humming etc.). My little boy never slept and screamed a high pitched blood curdling scream all his waking hours.
He only slept for short periods (10-15 minutes) at a time and never slept for more than 4 hours in a 24 hour period. We took him to the pediatrician and we were told that it was colic and he would out grow this. Since this was our first child, we didn't know what was normal and what wasn't. We made many calls to the hospital staff during those early hours. Since the pediatrician told us that this was colic and that he would outgrow it by three months of age, we waited.
Jonathan continued screaming and we couldn't take him into public because we couldn't control his screaming and certainly couldn't stop it once it started. His screaming was so intense that his face would become blood red and he had a look of "panic" on his face that I could do nothing to help. I felt very helpless and felt that I was a bad mom, unable to console my own child. He would wake up screaming even if he only slept for 10 minutes, in fact his screaming would start before his eyes opened. He lost most of his baby hair, it came out in clumps. We later found out that the jerking that he was doing was infantile seizures and not gas pains. This type of seizure is often misdiagnosed as gas.
He got his 2nd hep B shot and three others, one of which was the DTaP when he was 2 months old and the screaming worsened. We recently found out that his DTaP was a HOT LOT. A Hot Lot is a batch of vaccine that killed a bunch of kids and injured a bunch of kids. His batch was one the Hottest Lots in US History. He was horribly constipated too and we ended up in the pediatrician's office several times with this so they could "stretch his sphincter". He had problems having a BM and was in the pediatrician's office at 8 days of age. From that point onward he had to have glycerin suppositories and digital manipulation in order to eliminate.
We thought we were going to go nuts with the continual screaming because we spent all our days and nights trying to console him and make him feel better to no avail. We had to hire some help so that we could get some sleep, we were so exhausted. This screaming literally went on for 18-20 hours a day.
When he was 4 months old he woke up after an unusually long sleep and I got him out of bed to breastfeed him at about 9 am. I could not get him to nurse. Every time I tried to nurse him, he started crying and rubbing his little eye with his fist. He had always been a very good nurser and I thought maybe he was teething and I gave him a little orajel on his gums. This did not help his crying. I tried to give him a little taste of Tylenol, sometimes a taste would distract his crying for a moment. This did not do anything. I then called the pediatrician's office and requested that we come in. I called about 9:30 am and said that we needed to come in "this morning". I really thought it was an earache as I heard that most kids seem to get them but I wanted him to be looked at. They told me to be there at 10:40 and the doctor would see Jonathan before lunch. While I was getting Jonathan ready he threw up and was heaving. He had not eaten anything since the night before. He became very pale. Our pediatrician was out of town and we were seen by her partner (who had never laid eyes on my child). This doctor actually saw Jonathan by 11:00 and did not like the way he looked. He did some labs in his office, which were all negative. He sent us to the local hospital for blood cultures and a chest x-ray which were both negative. He asked us to return at 2:00 and he had a gut instinct that he wanted to do a lumbar puncture. He explained to us that in med school they told him that if he ever thought LP for one second, then DO IT. He said that he wanted to do it. The LP revealed 3 vials of bloody fluid, just like a blood draw and he told us that this should look like water. He sent us immediately to the hospital for a CT scan of the head. The radiologist read the CT as a mass in the brain that had hemorrhaged. (Later determined to be a ruptured aneurysm within the next week). He was rushed off to ICU and air transportation was arranged while he was intubated. My baby was on death's door in a matter of moments.
He was life flighted by helicopter to Shreveport, Louisiana (Schumpert Medical Center) and he died in the helicopter and was resuscitated and began having seizures. Once he got to the PICU he died two more times and they resuscitated him. They worked on him for over an hour and his brain went without oxygen for a total of approximately 30 minutes. He was on total life support in a coma and was given no chance for survival through the night. They did a lot of testing to try and find the source of the bleed. He eventually had an arteriogram which showed the images of the aneurysm. He survived and 10 days later his aneurysm ruptured a 2nd time. They said that there was 3 times as much blood this time and they didn't know how he survived the first bleed. They gave him less than 24 hours to live this time and said that his brain was already herniating. We were praying all the time and believing for miracles. They had us planning his funeral.
He survived and we found that there was only 1 doctor in the country who could deal with our situation in a child so young and he was in San Francisco. One doctor in Shreveport (pediatric neurosurgeon) told us to just let Jonathan die and that it would be wrong for us to do anything to save his life. He said, "He is damaged goods, nothing but damaged goods and to do anything about it is inappropriate" and then he went on to say "There are things worse than death". We were not going to sit back and let our child die once he had already survived what he had. We then went to California where he was going to have embolization of the aneurysm with interventional radiology. Nine doctors were in there with my son and it was going to take 8 hours (they had to do the procedure through an arteriogram in through a vein at the groin, weaving a catheter up into the brain into a vessel the size of 4 hairs), but after only 2 hours the main doctor doing the procedure came out and said, "Well, we're done. We can't explain it but the aneurysm is gone". We said that we could explain it because we had been praying so hard. All the other doctors came out scratching their heads saying that they couldn't explain it either.
My son had to have a shunt emergently placed the very next day because his intracranial pressure had become too high. His shunt then worked too good and caused a bleed on the opposite hemisphere of his brain from where the aneurysm had ruptured (subdural hematoma/effusion) which had to be drained externally with a tube. He then had to have surgery to place his G-tube because his stomach was anatomically behind his rib cage and couldn't be placed endoscopically like most. He was diagnosed with cortical blindness, severe reflux and high risk for aspiration pneumonia. He has severe global developmental delay, has a mixture of hypotonia and does have some spasticity. He is 24 hour care for 2 people at any given time.
Jonathan was recently diagnosed with the following as well: spastic quadriparetic cerebral palsy with microcephaly, cortical blindness, and marked dysphasia. He had global developmental delay secondary to hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy as a result of spontaneous rupture of a left MCA aneurysm. Intractable, symptomatic mixed seizure disorder secondary to rupture of left MCA aneurysm. He appears to have infantile spasms, partial seizures, myoclonic seizures, generalized tonic seizures and grand mal. These are improved on the ketogenic diet.
We saw a physician in Houston who specialized in Hepatitis B adverse reactions and he did a battery of tests. His name is Andrew Campbell, MD. He told us that Jonathan definitely did have an adverse reaction to the hep B vaccine. We had a SPECT scan by Richard Neubauer, MD in Ft. Lauderdale who also stated that Jonathan had toxic anoxic encephalopathy directly related to the hepatitis B vaccine and this was not the first time he had seen it and unfortunately would not be the last time he would see it. We were also told that Jonathan's intracranial pressure was so intense for such a long period of time from his prolonged horrific screaming that the vessel couldn't handle the pressure and ruptured. I was told that brain vessels are the thinnest vessels and are not built to withstand intense and prolonged pressure.
My son is now 4 years old. He was in the hospital for a total of just over 4 months before we were able to bring him home. Hospital dates were 12/11/97 through 04/08/98. We initially went to Shreveport then we were transferred to San Francisco and then back to Shreveport before coming home. We never returned home during that entire four month hospital course. My husband and I remained at Jonathan's side.
My son requires 24 hour nursing care, which is provided by myself (as I had to quit my career), my husband (who has to work to support us), and a nurse. We have no help on the weekends at all. We have no family close by and our church family has stood behind us for a long time.
Jonathan has a compromised immune system and cannot be around other kids or anyone that is sick. We are basically homebound. He was having 100-200 or more seizures a day, every day. We started the ketogenic diet for seizures and changed his medications and he now is having 30-90 or so a day now. He is g-tube fed every four hours and because of his reflux he must be held upright during feeding (which lasts for one hour) and for 1hour afterward to prevent aspiration. With the ketogenic diet, because it is compromised of 90 percent fat, if even one teaspoon were to get into his lungs, it could be deadly. He has medications that must be given throughout the day and must be crushed and put into a syringe, then into his feeding tube. He cries a lot and requires full attention because of his gagging. He stays very constipated and the ketogenic diet makes this worse. He gets Milk of Magnesia every day, and sometimes this doesn't help him. We end up having to use BabyLax and Baby Fleets enemas. We must monitor his ketones, seizures, urine output, and stool to ensure that everything is in balance. If he has an imbalance in any of these areas, his seizures can increase in frequency and intensity. He still does not sleep just a whole lot. Lack of sleep can also increase his seizure frequency and intensity. He goes to bed around 2 am each "night" and sleeps until 6:30 or 7 am. He will wake up anywhere between 2-6 times each night. Sometimes he will go back to sleep for a little while. He will usually take a 1 hour nap during the day and a 30 minute nap in the evening. Someone must be with him, holding him, consoling him, feeding him,caring for him during all his waking hours. That would be myself and his father. He must also sleep in an inclined position in his hospital crib and we must position him and turn him each time he wakes up.
In the past he had been sick with the virus that was around. He needed breathing treatments every 3 hours around the clock. He literally did not shut his eyes for 4 days and 4 nights. He had fever that lasted for 7 days. We were bathing him with a cool cloth, he had no clothes on except his diaper and we were monitoring his temperature to make sure that it didn't continue to rise. My husband ended up sick and I had to be the nurse around the clock.
We do all that we physically can, but when we get sick from getting no sleep, not eating right, and not taking care of ourselves...what will happen to Jonathan? We don't want to get to that point.
My son was injured by the hepatitis B vaccination and it was a federally recommended vaccine which was mandated by the State of Texas. Where is the government now that we need help in dealing with the repercussions of this vaccine injury? Even Dr. William Reynolds Archer, M.D., the former Commissioner of Health for the State of Texas said that all Texas kids had to have this vaccine, exempted his own children. When I called him and had a conference call with him and his Assistant he confirmed that he indeed exempted his own children because he was concerned with its safety. He said his children had allergies and asthma and didn't want to give it to them. He could write his own exemption since he is a physician, we couldn't do that.
Tammy
My son was nearly killed then rendered autistic because of this shot; it has triggered lupus in me. We both focus on recovery and are doing very well. Waiting for the government or our physicians to listen was a waste of time in our cases, time we didn't have. I had to abandon, jettison our pediatric care providers to find ways to address my son's injury because indeed, no doctor would listen or believe that something had gone wrong. We've used many aggressive tools since he was just a week old to rescue him, but one of the key things I did was refuse further shots after he was 4 mos old. Thank goodness I did. He is now 5 years old and doing great. There are many many resources out there for recovery or better quality of life – if you don't get them from your current providers, look elsewhere.
Even though I think it is a waste of time to pester politicians and physicians with closed minds, I've done my share of that, and have testified before my state legislature and before a Congressional hearing to get the message across. Gradually it will happen, but many lives will be needlessly lost or shattered before it does happen.
Since this vaccine triggers a cascade of events in many newborns, which culminates in autism, the autism community has created some very effective tools for recovery from vaccine injuries. The injury systemically injures adults and kids just the same, but when it happens to newborns, they are also robbed of typical development as a side effect. Though injured adults on this list are developmentally in tact, the recovery tools used for injured children may well apply anyway, and it might be worth a visit to sites, which describe and offer these tools in detail.
Some 250 MDs (physicians) are on board with these tools around the world. They are specific for addressing vaccine injury. I encourage everyone to check it out. What's important is to have a provider experienced in treating vaccine injury assess what it has done to you before you are treated. This vaccine has 12.5 micrograms of Hg (mercury) per dose and the usual series for adults is 3-4 shots. Though the shot is now made Hg free anyone vaccinated up through 2000 probably got a mercury-containing version, since those were not recalled. Mercury poisoning alone accounts for much of the injury in some people; for others, it's the viral load and issues with autoimmunity. You need to know what has happened to you in order to choose successful treatment. Even simple diet measures can bring a lot of relief. There are many many options, and they don't all have to break your bank account or require invasive care. Check these sites below for treatment tools and research that has pulled hundreds, maybe thousands of kids out of a life sentence of autism, retardation, chronic allergies, or other developmental disability. Hope this helps.
Read more of Ben’s story at her website.
www.conversedesign.com/SavingBen/index.html
Judy C.
My husband and I live in East Texas in a town about 125 miles NE of Houston. My husband works for the Texas Forest Service and has been there for 23-24 years. I owned my own medical transcription business until my son became sick and I had to shut it down in order to care for my child. When we married we decided that we would wait 2 years before starting our family. When I found out I was pregnant after 2 years of marriage we were so excited and began reading everything about pregnancy. I read everything I could lay my hands on regarding healthy eating, nutrition, and giving the baby the best start in life that I possibly could. I gave up all chemicals in foods, aspartame and saccharin, caffeine, etc. so that the baby would be getting only the best source of nutrition. I read everything I could about each stage of pregnancy and I exercised each day. I felt great and my blood work was the best they had seen in a pregnancy in a long time. I then researched methods of delivery and after participating in several classes and reading a bunch of books, I decided that the best would be for me to go through labor and delivery naturally. My husband and I had a private tutor who instructed us on the Bradley Method of childbirth, which taught you how to breathe and focus. I didn't want the epidural drugs in my son's bloodstream and thought it would probably be uncomfortable for me but it would be better for him. I had absolutely no complications during my pregnancy. When the day finally arrived that my water spontaneously ruptured at 41 weeks, my experience with labor began. I went through 19 hours of labor and the last couple of hours were the most intense since they had to initiate Pitocin. Finally at 8:19 PM on 07/31/97 my little son arrived into this world weighing 9 lbs and 7.6 oz. He was 21 inches long and let out a robust cry. There were no complications during labor or delivery. He started to breastfeed within 10 minutes of birth and was 9/9 on the APGAR scale.
I researched and read everything I could lay my hands on while I was pregnant so that I could make informed choices. The one thing that I was never told about was the hepatitis B vaccine that my son would be given in the hospital just before going home. If I had the opportunity to research this vaccine prior to him getting it, he would have never received it.
He was given the federally recommended and state mandated hepatitis B vaccine when he was 3 days old just before we left the hospital. This vaccine was given without our consent or knowledge. Within 4 hours he began screaming at the top of his lungs and we couldn't get him to stop. We called the hospital nursery and they told us that he was probably just scared not being in the hospital environment that he had become accustomed to in the hospital (with the sound of incubators humming etc.). My little boy never slept and screamed a high pitched blood curdling scream all his waking hours.
He only slept for short periods (10-15 minutes) at a time and never slept for more than 4 hours in a 24 hour period. We took him to the pediatrician and we were told that it was colic and he would out grow this. Since this was our first child, we didn't know what was normal and what wasn't. We made many calls to the hospital staff during those early hours. Since the pediatrician told us that this was colic and that he would outgrow it by three months of age, we waited.
Jonathan continued screaming and we couldn't take him into public because we couldn't control his screaming and certainly couldn't stop it once it started. His screaming was so intense that his face would become blood red and he had a look of "panic" on his face that I could do nothing to help. I felt very helpless and felt that I was a bad mom, unable to console my own child. He would wake up screaming even if he only slept for 10 minutes, in fact his screaming would start before his eyes opened. He lost most of his baby hair, it came out in clumps. We later found out that the jerking that he was doing was infantile seizures and not gas pains. This type of seizure is often misdiagnosed as gas.
He got his 2nd hep B shot and three others, one of which was the DTaP when he was 2 months old and the screaming worsened. We recently found out that his DTaP was a HOT LOT. A Hot Lot is a batch of vaccine that killed a bunch of kids and injured a bunch of kids. His batch was one the Hottest Lots in US History. He was horribly constipated too and we ended up in the pediatrician's office several times with this so they could "stretch his sphincter". He had problems having a BM and was in the pediatrician's office at 8 days of age. From that point onward he had to have glycerin suppositories and digital manipulation in order to eliminate.
We thought we were going to go nuts with the continual screaming because we spent all our days and nights trying to console him and make him feel better to no avail. We had to hire some help so that we could get some sleep, we were so exhausted. This screaming literally went on for 18-20 hours a day.
When he was 4 months old he woke up after an unusually long sleep and I got him out of bed to breastfeed him at about 9 am. I could not get him to nurse. Every time I tried to nurse him, he started crying and rubbing his little eye with his fist. He had always been a very good nurser and I thought maybe he was teething and I gave him a little orajel on his gums. This did not help his crying. I tried to give him a little taste of Tylenol, sometimes a taste would distract his crying for a moment. This did not do anything. I then called the pediatrician's office and requested that we come in. I called about 9:30 am and said that we needed to come in "this morning". I really thought it was an earache as I heard that most kids seem to get them but I wanted him to be looked at. They told me to be there at 10:40 and the doctor would see Jonathan before lunch. While I was getting Jonathan ready he threw up and was heaving. He had not eaten anything since the night before. He became very pale. Our pediatrician was out of town and we were seen by her partner (who had never laid eyes on my child). This doctor actually saw Jonathan by 11:00 and did not like the way he looked. He did some labs in his office, which were all negative. He sent us to the local hospital for blood cultures and a chest x-ray which were both negative. He asked us to return at 2:00 and he had a gut instinct that he wanted to do a lumbar puncture. He explained to us that in med school they told him that if he ever thought LP for one second, then DO IT. He said that he wanted to do it. The LP revealed 3 vials of bloody fluid, just like a blood draw and he told us that this should look like water. He sent us immediately to the hospital for a CT scan of the head. The radiologist read the CT as a mass in the brain that had hemorrhaged. (Later determined to be a ruptured aneurysm within the next week). He was rushed off to ICU and air transportation was arranged while he was intubated. My baby was on death's door in a matter of moments.
He was life flighted by helicopter to Shreveport, Louisiana (Schumpert Medical Center) and he died in the helicopter and was resuscitated and began having seizures. Once he got to the PICU he died two more times and they resuscitated him. They worked on him for over an hour and his brain went without oxygen for a total of approximately 30 minutes. He was on total life support in a coma and was given no chance for survival through the night. They did a lot of testing to try and find the source of the bleed. He eventually had an arteriogram which showed the images of the aneurysm. He survived and 10 days later his aneurysm ruptured a 2nd time. They said that there was 3 times as much blood this time and they didn't know how he survived the first bleed. They gave him less than 24 hours to live this time and said that his brain was already herniating. We were praying all the time and believing for miracles. They had us planning his funeral.
He survived and we found that there was only 1 doctor in the country who could deal with our situation in a child so young and he was in San Francisco. One doctor in Shreveport (pediatric neurosurgeon) told us to just let Jonathan die and that it would be wrong for us to do anything to save his life. He said, "He is damaged goods, nothing but damaged goods and to do anything about it is inappropriate" and then he went on to say "There are things worse than death". We were not going to sit back and let our child die once he had already survived what he had. We then went to California where he was going to have embolization of the aneurysm with interventional radiology. Nine doctors were in there with my son and it was going to take 8 hours (they had to do the procedure through an arteriogram in through a vein at the groin, weaving a catheter up into the brain into a vessel the size of 4 hairs), but after only 2 hours the main doctor doing the procedure came out and said, "Well, we're done. We can't explain it but the aneurysm is gone". We said that we could explain it because we had been praying so hard. All the other doctors came out scratching their heads saying that they couldn't explain it either.
My son had to have a shunt emergently placed the very next day because his intracranial pressure had become too high. His shunt then worked too good and caused a bleed on the opposite hemisphere of his brain from where the aneurysm had ruptured (subdural hematoma/effusion) which had to be drained externally with a tube. He then had to have surgery to place his G-tube because his stomach was anatomically behind his rib cage and couldn't be placed endoscopically like most. He was diagnosed with cortical blindness, severe reflux and high risk for aspiration pneumonia. He has severe global developmental delay, has a mixture of hypotonia and does have some spasticity. He is 24 hour care for 2 people at any given time.
Jonathan was recently diagnosed with the following as well: spastic quadriparetic cerebral palsy with microcephaly, cortical blindness, and marked dysphasia. He had global developmental delay secondary to hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy as a result of spontaneous rupture of a left MCA aneurysm. Intractable, symptomatic mixed seizure disorder secondary to rupture of left MCA aneurysm. He appears to have infantile spasms, partial seizures, myoclonic seizures, generalized tonic seizures and grand mal. These are improved on the ketogenic diet.
We saw a physician in Houston who specialized in Hepatitis B adverse reactions and he did a battery of tests. His name is Andrew Campbell, MD. He told us that Jonathan definitely did have an adverse reaction to the hep B vaccine. We had a SPECT scan by Richard Neubauer, MD in Ft. Lauderdale who also stated that Jonathan had toxic anoxic encephalopathy directly related to the hepatitis B vaccine and this was not the first time he had seen it and unfortunately would not be the last time he would see it. We were also told that Jonathan's intracranial pressure was so intense for such a long period of time from his prolonged horrific screaming that the vessel couldn't handle the pressure and ruptured. I was told that brain vessels are the thinnest vessels and are not built to withstand intense and prolonged pressure.
My son is now 4 years old. He was in the hospital for a total of just over 4 months before we were able to bring him home. Hospital dates were 12/11/97 through 04/08/98. We initially went to Shreveport then we were transferred to San Francisco and then back to Shreveport before coming home. We never returned home during that entire four month hospital course. My husband and I remained at Jonathan's side.
My son requires 24 hour nursing care, which is provided by myself (as I had to quit my career), my husband (who has to work to support us), and a nurse. We have no help on the weekends at all. We have no family close by and our church family has stood behind us for a long time.
Jonathan has a compromised immune system and cannot be around other kids or anyone that is sick. We are basically homebound. He was having 100-200 or more seizures a day, every day. We started the ketogenic diet for seizures and changed his medications and he now is having 30-90 or so a day now. He is g-tube fed every four hours and because of his reflux he must be held upright during feeding (which lasts for one hour) and for 1hour afterward to prevent aspiration. With the ketogenic diet, because it is compromised of 90 percent fat, if even one teaspoon were to get into his lungs, it could be deadly. He has medications that must be given throughout the day and must be crushed and put into a syringe, then into his feeding tube. He cries a lot and requires full attention because of his gagging. He stays very constipated and the ketogenic diet makes this worse. He gets Milk of Magnesia every day, and sometimes this doesn't help him. We end up having to use BabyLax and Baby Fleets enemas. We must monitor his ketones, seizures, urine output, and stool to ensure that everything is in balance. If he has an imbalance in any of these areas, his seizures can increase in frequency and intensity. He still does not sleep just a whole lot. Lack of sleep can also increase his seizure frequency and intensity. He goes to bed around 2 am each "night" and sleeps until 6:30 or 7 am. He will wake up anywhere between 2-6 times each night. Sometimes he will go back to sleep for a little while. He will usually take a 1 hour nap during the day and a 30 minute nap in the evening. Someone must be with him, holding him, consoling him, feeding him,caring for him during all his waking hours. That would be myself and his father. He must also sleep in an inclined position in his hospital crib and we must position him and turn him each time he wakes up.
In the past he had been sick with the virus that was around. He needed breathing treatments every 3 hours around the clock. He literally did not shut his eyes for 4 days and 4 nights. He had fever that lasted for 7 days. We were bathing him with a cool cloth, he had no clothes on except his diaper and we were monitoring his temperature to make sure that it didn't continue to rise. My husband ended up sick and I had to be the nurse around the clock.
We do all that we physically can, but when we get sick from getting no sleep, not eating right, and not taking care of ourselves...what will happen to Jonathan? We don't want to get to that point.
My son was injured by the hepatitis B vaccination and it was a federally recommended vaccine which was mandated by the State of Texas. Where is the government now that we need help in dealing with the repercussions of this vaccine injury? Even Dr. William Reynolds Archer, M.D., the former Commissioner of Health for the State of Texas said that all Texas kids had to have this vaccine, exempted his own children. When I called him and had a conference call with him and his Assistant he confirmed that he indeed exempted his own children because he was concerned with its safety. He said his children had allergies and asthma and didn't want to give it to them. He could write his own exemption since he is a physician, we couldn't do that.
Tammy
My son was nearly killed then rendered autistic because of this shot; it has triggered lupus in me. We both focus on recovery and are doing very well. Waiting for the government or our physicians to listen was a waste of time in our cases, time we didn't have. I had to abandon, jettison our pediatric care providers to find ways to address my son's injury because indeed, no doctor would listen or believe that something had gone wrong. We've used many aggressive tools since he was just a week old to rescue him, but one of the key things I did was refuse further shots after he was 4 mos old. Thank goodness I did. He is now 5 years old and doing great. There are many many resources out there for recovery or better quality of life – if you don't get them from your current providers, look elsewhere.
Even though I think it is a waste of time to pester politicians and physicians with closed minds, I've done my share of that, and have testified before my state legislature and before a Congressional hearing to get the message across. Gradually it will happen, but many lives will be needlessly lost or shattered before it does happen.
Since this vaccine triggers a cascade of events in many newborns, which culminates in autism, the autism community has created some very effective tools for recovery from vaccine injuries. The injury systemically injures adults and kids just the same, but when it happens to newborns, they are also robbed of typical development as a side effect. Though injured adults on this list are developmentally in tact, the recovery tools used for injured children may well apply anyway, and it might be worth a visit to sites, which describe and offer these tools in detail.
Some 250 MDs (physicians) are on board with these tools around the world. They are specific for addressing vaccine injury. I encourage everyone to check it out. What's important is to have a provider experienced in treating vaccine injury assess what it has done to you before you are treated. This vaccine has 12.5 micrograms of Hg (mercury) per dose and the usual series for adults is 3-4 shots. Though the shot is now made Hg free anyone vaccinated up through 2000 probably got a mercury-containing version, since those were not recalled. Mercury poisoning alone accounts for much of the injury in some people; for others, it's the viral load and issues with autoimmunity. You need to know what has happened to you in order to choose successful treatment. Even simple diet measures can bring a lot of relief. There are many many options, and they don't all have to break your bank account or require invasive care. Check these sites below for treatment tools and research that has pulled hundreds, maybe thousands of kids out of a life sentence of autism, retardation, chronic allergies, or other developmental disability. Hope this helps.
Read more of Ben’s story at her website.
www.conversedesign.com/SavingBen/index.html
Judy C.
I am Mom to a beautiful daughter, who I almost lost due to vaccines. When my Child was 2 months old, I took her in for a well baby visit. I was wary of vaccines since my pregnancy, having carefully researched the risks and benefits, and I had decided, at first, to vaccinate my child as little as possible. I stood there in the Pediatricians office and told Sophie's doctor that I only wanted to have 1 vaccine for the day. I explained that I was in no rush to flood her body with vaccines and I was concerned for her safety. Her doctor suddenly got very nasty with me. "Well, the state of NJ has very specific recommendations and rules for Vaccinations you know, this is here to help her!"
I calmly told her that I only wanted 1 vaccine for the day or I would leave. "This is mandated by the state", she snipped "If you don't have these shots, I am well within my rights to call DYFS for medical neglect” I was terrified, I was a new Mom with a tiny baby. Here I was being forced into shots and being threatened with Child protective services. I asked what she would be given and the doctor said "Not that much, we give this to all infants at this age." A nurse walked in with 4 needles. Without a word she shot them into my child's legs. "WAIT WAIT WAIT" I yelled as she just injected my daughter "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU GIVE HER? CAN YOU WAIT A SECOND!" "Calm down", said the nurse "She just got her DPT, Prevnar, Hib/HepB" I picked up my daughter, half naked and still screaming and ran out. That afternoon, her health began to decline. She had been refusing to eat, she could not focus her eyes or smile, her cooing stopped. I figured that she was just all screamed out. That night I woke up to the most horrific thing a mother can think of. My baby was choking and gasping for air, she was bluish red, and a thick clear-ish phlegm kept coming up out of her little throat.
I had no idea what to do...I kept patting her back and just praying and crying while I held her. I called the doctor and explained what was happening to her. A nurse practitioner got on the phone and told me "You are just over reacting, she probably just got a cold suddenly and your being hypersensitive".
I fumed and slammed down the phone. For weeks, Sophie lay in this semi-alert stage. She didn't have the strength to feed properly, she wouldn't smile. She couldn't focus her eyes, and did little more than squint her eyes in pain and lay in that state for hours on end. This was not the child I knew. At 2 months, before the shot, my daughter would smile and laugh, she could bring her legs straight and try to stand on my lap when I held her. After the shot, her legs had 2 hard baseball sized black and blue lumps. She could barely move them. She would have these fits of choking for weeks.
I called up the doctor many times to report what was going on, they REFUSED to see her saying that this was just her personality and I was over reacting to "simple coughs". After 3 months of this horrible lifeless state, my daughter would slowly regain more and more movement and consciousness. When she finally smiled again, I promised myself and her that she would NEVER endure that horrible pain again. The doctors’ office was refusing to report her reaction to VAERS, or even to write it down in her chart!!!!! I was furious, so I reported it myself. I showed up at that Pediatricians office for her well baby visit, a few months later with my still recovering daughter, the choking episodes, Thank God, has stopped. I had a mission now. "She is now off her schedule for Vaccinations and needs to be caught up! Do you know how many she's missed?" Said the pediatrician. "You hold on right there, You almost KILLED my daughter with these shots." I went on to repeat all she had been through and I was once again threatened with everything from rare diseases to having Child Protective services called on me"
The doctor went on to say that she "MAY have been allergic to the Pertussis Vaccine" and she wanted to just "try it again and we'll see what happens, Just one more shot". I told her NEVER Again. I picked up my baby, and walked out. I haven't gone back to that terrible office. I don't live in fear of disease, I don't live in fear of CPS. I do live in fear of having to see my daughter in that horrible state ever again. She is now, Thank God, a healthy bright strong toddler. She does however, have some trouble drinking and eating but she will be fine. Her Motor Skills are back and above normal now, She can talk very well for her age, she can run, jump climb and flush her toys down the toilet, like any normal toddler.
I believe that "Just one more shot" would have killed her.
I calmly told her that I only wanted 1 vaccine for the day or I would leave. "This is mandated by the state", she snipped "If you don't have these shots, I am well within my rights to call DYFS for medical neglect” I was terrified, I was a new Mom with a tiny baby. Here I was being forced into shots and being threatened with Child protective services. I asked what she would be given and the doctor said "Not that much, we give this to all infants at this age." A nurse walked in with 4 needles. Without a word she shot them into my child's legs. "WAIT WAIT WAIT" I yelled as she just injected my daughter "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU GIVE HER? CAN YOU WAIT A SECOND!" "Calm down", said the nurse "She just got her DPT, Prevnar, Hib/HepB" I picked up my daughter, half naked and still screaming and ran out. That afternoon, her health began to decline. She had been refusing to eat, she could not focus her eyes or smile, her cooing stopped. I figured that she was just all screamed out. That night I woke up to the most horrific thing a mother can think of. My baby was choking and gasping for air, she was bluish red, and a thick clear-ish phlegm kept coming up out of her little throat.
I had no idea what to do...I kept patting her back and just praying and crying while I held her. I called the doctor and explained what was happening to her. A nurse practitioner got on the phone and told me "You are just over reacting, she probably just got a cold suddenly and your being hypersensitive".
I fumed and slammed down the phone. For weeks, Sophie lay in this semi-alert stage. She didn't have the strength to feed properly, she wouldn't smile. She couldn't focus her eyes, and did little more than squint her eyes in pain and lay in that state for hours on end. This was not the child I knew. At 2 months, before the shot, my daughter would smile and laugh, she could bring her legs straight and try to stand on my lap when I held her. After the shot, her legs had 2 hard baseball sized black and blue lumps. She could barely move them. She would have these fits of choking for weeks.
I called up the doctor many times to report what was going on, they REFUSED to see her saying that this was just her personality and I was over reacting to "simple coughs". After 3 months of this horrible lifeless state, my daughter would slowly regain more and more movement and consciousness. When she finally smiled again, I promised myself and her that she would NEVER endure that horrible pain again. The doctors’ office was refusing to report her reaction to VAERS, or even to write it down in her chart!!!!! I was furious, so I reported it myself. I showed up at that Pediatricians office for her well baby visit, a few months later with my still recovering daughter, the choking episodes, Thank God, has stopped. I had a mission now. "She is now off her schedule for Vaccinations and needs to be caught up! Do you know how many she's missed?" Said the pediatrician. "You hold on right there, You almost KILLED my daughter with these shots." I went on to repeat all she had been through and I was once again threatened with everything from rare diseases to having Child Protective services called on me"
The doctor went on to say that she "MAY have been allergic to the Pertussis Vaccine" and she wanted to just "try it again and we'll see what happens, Just one more shot". I told her NEVER Again. I picked up my baby, and walked out. I haven't gone back to that terrible office. I don't live in fear of disease, I don't live in fear of CPS. I do live in fear of having to see my daughter in that horrible state ever again. She is now, Thank God, a healthy bright strong toddler. She does however, have some trouble drinking and eating but she will be fine. Her Motor Skills are back and above normal now, She can talk very well for her age, she can run, jump climb and flush her toys down the toilet, like any normal toddler.
I believe that "Just one more shot" would have killed her.
This is Tyler. His story is unfortunately just beginning.
He was a typical newborn until the day he got the Polio/Hib/HepB/D/P/T all at once and all in one day. Poor Tyler started SCREAMING and SCREAMING, He had a bluish grey color and had blood in his stools, which were now loose and painful for him to pass. He was too weak to cry for a time and would cry out in pain when you would move his little legs. He is now very small and skinny and not gaining weight very fast.
The worst news came last week at his "well" baby visit. Tyler may have some heart damage and has to see a Pediatric Cardiologist on Feb 14th. We still do not know what will happen to him. As of now, he continues to be miserable and sick since that horrible day.
Story of Ryan and Stacy Blanco
by Kathy Blanco
My story seems as though I am living this life over and over, like a deja vu'. I discovered so many things along the way, that maybe I can share with you, some pitfalls, some things to watch, and something to rejoice over. My son Ryan is now 20 years old and is most medically impacted, with autism and a dual diagnosis of epilepsy. The first signs of anything being wrong were things so obvious, that I cannot even deny, nor my doctor (s) that there was an excruciating entery into autism for him. He was a normal baby, normal apgars, a beautiful blend of castillian spanish and irish. I remember distincfully, a good friend and nursery nurse at the hospital who fought over who was going to take him to mom. She seriously said there were fights who would. This reflects upon the theory that many of our children enter with beautiful faces, often a theory of those who have autism.
While carrying my son, I was working full time, and I was very stressed out with a high stress job. I would come home so tired, and wondered if it was good for me to do this to the baby. Yet, I persevered, as long as I could. I was just married only 1 month before I became pregnant, woops. Before the pregnancy, I lost a lot of weight, you know, the typical I want to look good in my wedding dress sort of thing, and dang, I did look good LOL. Before we got our marriage license, they took a titre check and noticed I did not seem to have adequate MMR titres. So they gave me a quick shot and sent me on my way. Nothing to fear, nothing to even have an inkling about, my life seemed on a new way, a new life. During the pregnancy, I came down with a mild sore throat, and sort of passed it off. Then at the same time, I worked near semiconductor industries, and found some rather scary information about the well water in the area....except, after the fact. I worked in silicon valley, in which there is a possible cluster of autism, right around the time Ryan was born. Well, anyway, I remember distinct fully closing a small office I was working in at lunch time, and simply feeling so exhausted, I would lock the front door, and go to sleep on the carpet in the back room for lunch time. I didn't know what to make of it. The soar throat became worse, and I made an appointment to the GYNO. He did a swab test and found I have MONO. That was really scary. I looked at him and asked him, gee, won't this hurt the baby? He said, I want you to quit work for a month, and seek bed rest, and get off your feet. I was so sick for 2 weeks, that I thought I was going to die. Fevers, trembling in my bed, and when my husband came home, caring for the home and wishing and praying that nothing will harm this baby. He offered prayers in our church, and we felt the Lord close to us during this time. About 5 days short of the due date, Ryan James Blanco was born, with no complications, and an apgar of 9.
He was a good eater, and really, as a new mom, I had no complaints. I did however, notice that every succeeding vaccine that he had, made him react even worse from the previous (this is a hindsight sentence). The obvious line of give him Tylenol was overheard, and I subjected my child to the worse cruel fate I could have ever know. I noticed at 6 months a very distinct thought. Why is he not sitting up? He did, but then when he did, he would fall to one side? Years later, I found out this is a distinct sign of mercury poisoning from childhood vaccines. He began to not sleep at night, even though words were ever-present, like mama, dada, baba, ju ju, dogee, cat, and a couple of cute sighs and coos and eye contact in between. I had really no suspicions. Then it was the eating. I have an 8mm film of him, hanging over his chair, begging him to eat, and in fear, I breast fed him to whazoo and back. He was plump and happy. He walked around 13 months, and I did notice a slight hand flap here or there, but just thought, oh, he is being cute and excited. At around 14 months, I began to notice other slight things, but nothing to worry my head over. I got pregnant again, another woops, and was concerned, but was also ever-present with the fact, I had another baby on the way.
Around 18 months, when he had a DPT/Polio on his well baby, I again, poured down some Tylenol to assure a better go through this time. Around that time, 20/20 news programs were airing that P in DPT shots were of worry and interest. I remember begging for more information on this, and asked my pediatrician if we shouldn't just not give him P, rather a DT because of the information. He brushed it all off as if it was never ever the case, or for people not like me, and would be fine. Fine? 11 days after his DPT, he had a sudden rushing temperature, stiff neck, and body, 105 temperature, screaming and pitching for 24 hours, eyes rolling and convulsions and every trick in the book saying, this child is majorally reacting. We took him to the doctor after hours and he gave him Phenobarbital. When I couldn't stand the way he looked anymore, even after being sent home, I went into the ER room, and had them do some spinal taps to make sure it was not meningitis. I have very distinct memories of being in tepid baths with Ryan the whole night. One of the interns mentioned, I am going to write down this is a vaccine reaction, but if I did that, I would be putting myself in harms way, but this is undeniably a DPT reaction. I was thankful for his bravery and perseverance. After we were sent home and under consensus this must be a "viral illness", I held the release paper in my hand and told myself, I need to put this away for safe keeping. We had no son for a week. He lay in his bed listless and tired and feverish. He seemed to pop out of it, but into something else.
His appetite even grew more worse. I would take him on little walks with my daughter and notice that he would do things over and over. Then when I took him to church nursery, he would be off in a corner, and not paying attention, and even staring out the window. I came to my pediatrician again and mentioned how he couldn't even push the peddles on his tricycle and how his speech was stagnant, and even sometimes silent, and sometimes there were no words at all. He referred me to a speech pathologist, who mentioned to me for the first time AUTISM. I didn't even know what the word meant. I went to the library, pouring through books, and pouring plenty of tears. I put him into the school early intervention programs, and from there on, Ryan was either regressing, getting worse, or had splinter skills here or there. We went to several neurologists, and had numerous tests done. Around 4 years of age, I noticed other things such as muscle wasting, even bouts of what I call movement disorders, where he would get up in the morning and have this twitching and writhing in his legs. The doctors still didn't know what that was. We then took him to see Bryna Siegal at STanford Autism Research Center. She diagnosed him with PDD-nos. At that time, and yes, I was a busy mom, I had my fourth daughter on my lap as we were discussing the diagnosis for Ryan. By then, I think my heart was a little hardened, and or, I was in shock that this became my life. Four children under the age of 61/2!
We got the written report back for Ryan and noticed one line that shocked me. "Stacy seems to have some movements that I recognize as the beginnings of autism". Back then, we didn't have a whole lot to go on, a little Lovaas here or there, a little first inklings of milk being bad for your autistic child, and that was about it. No mention of vaccine connection. You see, the next few kids, there were NO problems with the vaccines, and so, I thought, gee, must have been a fluke? I did however, take out PERTUSSIS for every child succeeding Ryan. I thought I had my bases covered...NOT. Sure enough, the signs of autism surely and slowly crepped in, and on one occassion, I remember my daughter stacy being quite ill after her MMR, and within 2 weeks, was throwing up and or diarrheas from hell. I remember going into the doctor and mentioning there was something strange about this. She also had funny rashes all over her bottom, and welts at that. She also had tell tale signs of not sleeping, and losing her language, and even bouts of extreme anger, as I remember on one report, that "mother was tolerant during our interview while the baby was pulling her hair".
So, with all this knowledge I had gathered for Ryan, even me, a suave mom, could not even recognize that once again, another child was following the patterns. I put her into EARLY intervention at 11 months of age based upon Dr Siegals report. The early intervention was such a life saver, and so many referrals to good doctors, and interventions were afforded not only for Stacy, but for Ryan. We worked on GF CF diets extensively, as well as were probably the first parents that figured out they had candida to whazoo, and seeked the advice of an immunologist to put them on Nystantin. This was a big breakthrough for both of them, particularly Stacy. We also put them on the FEINGOLD diet, in which we avoided colored foods, or dyes, and even phenolic foods. This was another step into progression. During this time, Ryan began to have facial seizures. We took him to the neuro, and he put him on a KETOGENIC DIET. This really helped things, FOR A TIME. He also put him on a mitochondrial cocktail, because we did some extensive tests, that showed he built up too much pyruvate and lactic acid, which are waste products of the kreb cycle. Later I found out, this was also a sign of mercury poisoning.
As the years went by, the seizures either kindled or smoldered into something I call, pubescent HELOOO. Around 13 years of age, Ryan began to have Grand mals. We put him on everything we could think of, pharmacology speaking. Some improvements here or there, and breakthrough, but nothing that went, a ha. I then put him on glycomannans and sterolins, as well as various things such as good fatty acids, homeopathic hgh, zinc sulphate, B-complex vitamins to whazoo. This really seemed to stave off the seizures. This along with other ideas of "healing the gut" which would in turn "heal the seizures". Don't get me wrong, there are things left to be done, and some breakthroughs here or then, but for the most part, better than they were, when they were numbering 1-2 grand mals a week.
As for Stacy, during this time, she really started making gains, in which we put the same protocol on. We did, with added things here or there that were her deficiencies, as well as recognizing how PST deficient she was. She just had her 3 year evaluation, and can no longer be classified autistic, but aspergers. She has a keen sense of humor, and can joke and laugh, make friends, but has some "issues" with social pieces. She reads around the 2-3 grade level and requires no aide in her modified classroom of LD children.
The journey doesn't end here, for we found new information that made all of this come home. As I have expressed, "I was tired" all the time as a mom, and had signs of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I unfortunately learned bad news of my mother last year having Multiple Myeloma. That was devastating and sad. The prognosis is pretty good, compared to someone who has lesions or tumors when they come into it. She is also on the protocol I have outlined for my autoimmune kids. But for what it is worth, I discovered not only is her cancer connected to autism, but also my Chronic Fatigue. I fell upon a website, while researching for treatments for her, and was taken back. I was sure I was on this web site before in regards to autism! I clicked on the appropriate searches for autism and then multiple myeloma. It was there, that I read a report by a Dr Brian Durie, that he saw often complex neurological conditions within the family, even MENTIONING A MOM WITH TWO KIDS WITH AUTISM. I nearly fell off my chair. I called the laboratory web page in question and asked if they wanted to test our family? Would they, they said. I sent in our entire families blood sample, my mother, my father, my sister, her children, my family in total, four kids, and husband and I. ALL OF US TESTED POSITIVE for THE STEALTH VIRUS. Those with obvious neuro conditions were strong positive, those with moderate signs or hardly noticeable to the naked eye were moderate! This was an answer I was seeking. So, your probably asking, so what your saying is, is the STEALTH VIRUS THE CAUSE OF AUTISM? I KNOW NOT. But one thing I do know, the standard PCR and western Blot were used, and you cannot deny what you see. This virus is from POLIO VACCINES, instituted to all back in the fifties and early sixties (the good ole sugar cube). It is also implicated in frank cancers. SV-40 is what they call it, a contaminated simian monkey virus or CMV. This along with mercury poisoning was indeed clues to our family, and I must say, a very interesting explanation not only for the Multiple Myeloma, but also the autism, CFS, Fibro, tics, Bi-polar, Schizo/drug/alcohol problems, dyslexia, ADD, depression. I am sure I am probably describing many families that have autism in them (www.ccid.org ). We are also about to enter the world of chelation therapy, as soon as we get mineral stores up. The tell tale marks of poisoning thus far are low minerals, such as selenium and even lithium and manganese, all signatures of a mercury component.
Since we have 2 with autism, I also have been in many many genetic tests, and or studies. One of the most interesting was the c4b anulle, an allele on the Major Histocompatibility Complex. This gene is responsible for handling VIRUSES, TOXINS and FUNGALS. Those three are implicated in vaccinations. HAD I KNOWN, that they had this immunoincompetance, along with the STEALTH VIRUS, I WOULD HAVE NEVER VACCINATED MY CHILDREN. WE are working closely with CCID, and are about to go on anti virals, such as valtrex, biaxin, acyclovier, or gancylovier. I am currently on Biaxin, said to lower chemokine and cytokine production. We also have done dark field microscopy, and found invasive STILL fungas and candida, so something to work on. As well, it looks as though I may also have mycoplasma infections, which could also be STEALTHY. Ryan's blood work almost made the technician lose her cool, and disseminated what she thought was the oddest form of cells she had ever seen, and filling the whole screen, it screamed STEALTH to me.
So you see, I do have some success here or there, but have a lot more to think about. We just had tests done, and found they have antibodies to almost all their brain proteins, and neurotransmitters. They have antibodies to myelin, seratonin and receptor sites, as well as catecholimines and neural axon filament proteins. YOU CANNOT TELL ME THAT THESE CHILDREN ARE JUST PSYCHOLOGICALLY INVOLVED, they are SYSTEMICALLY ILL. They have many gut issues that I keep in check with probiotics, enzymes, fatty acids, glycomannans and everything I can get my hands on that heals the gut. Typically we put out around 1,000 dollars out of pocket for nutraceuticals and supplements. Yes, it is so unfair, but it has made me strong.
I await more news on whether I should have endoscopy's done on my children, as well as other tests, that will further clue to us, what we must do to heal our children. This I can tell you. I am absolutely resolved that if we pre screen our newborns, there may be more than a major few that cannot handle vaccines. I am currently working on a project to have such done, as a simple needle stick or PKU test is done, and will offer these insights in the time coming. I hope this can be put forth to DAN doctors, and thereby a consensus on what alleles of the immunogenetic system will stamp a child "DO NOT DISTURB". My hope and my prayers are that I will squelch this epidemic, and possibly save another child from the life my children have had to endure. Biomedically these kids are so challenged that one inkling of twisting or turning, or changing their diets can set them off, or regress them. This evident when I found out they were more allergic to CORN then GLUTEN in Wheat. Doing Elisa tests and other targeted treatment tests are advisable in my opinion.
My motto as a parent "knowledge is power"
Kathy
I'm Ellen, currently burning the candle at both ends while my husband has been unemployed since Sept. So we're in limbo, ready and willing to move wherever he gets a job, but meanwhile, we're in Texas, where we both grew up. I have 2 kids: Hannah (10) and George (8). Hannah had a viral encephalitis at 7 mo of age, shortly after her DPT and HibV boosters. Never making the connection, she continued to get all her vaccines on schedule with no problems, until she got the Hepatitis B vaccine as a 7 yr old (this one wasn't out when she was a baby). When she had a severe reaction (more about that later)
After the encephalitis at 7 mo, she was on Phenobarbital for about a year and a half. I can't say whether weaning pheno gave her bad reactions because her seizures were already increasing in frequency. At the time I really didn't know about withdrawal seizures. So we tried a variety of drugs unsuccessfully until, when she was 3 1/2 I pushed for the keto diet. We weaned all drugs one month later (tegretol and diamox). I saw no increase in seizures, but I did see horrible behavior, pacing at night, the shakes. This all lasted about 2 weeks and was clearly a result of weaning the drugs. Never knew until that point how heavily medicated she was. Hannah did very well on the diet initially, over a period of 4 yrs, the diet gradually lost its efficacy. The seizures were already increasing a bit in frequency when she had the Hep B vaccine which altered her metabolism, gave her Parkinson's syndrome (slowed speech, severe tremors, masked facial expression), gave her chronic stomach pain, and tonic clonic seizure every 3 days or so. It also completely wiped out her short term memory.
Its been 3 yrs since then. We've seen tremendous improvement in Hannah's condition, especially from hyperbaric oxygen and I would recommend that to you before you try any other therapies. We've tried many, some helped a little while she continued the therapy but she would regress as soon as that therapy was discontinued. Hannah has not lost anything that she gained as a result of hyperbaric oxygen.
He was a typical newborn until the day he got the Polio/Hib/HepB/D/P/T all at once and all in one day. Poor Tyler started SCREAMING and SCREAMING, He had a bluish grey color and had blood in his stools, which were now loose and painful for him to pass. He was too weak to cry for a time and would cry out in pain when you would move his little legs. He is now very small and skinny and not gaining weight very fast.
The worst news came last week at his "well" baby visit. Tyler may have some heart damage and has to see a Pediatric Cardiologist on Feb 14th. We still do not know what will happen to him. As of now, he continues to be miserable and sick since that horrible day.
Story of Ryan and Stacy Blanco
by Kathy Blanco
My story seems as though I am living this life over and over, like a deja vu'. I discovered so many things along the way, that maybe I can share with you, some pitfalls, some things to watch, and something to rejoice over. My son Ryan is now 20 years old and is most medically impacted, with autism and a dual diagnosis of epilepsy. The first signs of anything being wrong were things so obvious, that I cannot even deny, nor my doctor (s) that there was an excruciating entery into autism for him. He was a normal baby, normal apgars, a beautiful blend of castillian spanish and irish. I remember distincfully, a good friend and nursery nurse at the hospital who fought over who was going to take him to mom. She seriously said there were fights who would. This reflects upon the theory that many of our children enter with beautiful faces, often a theory of those who have autism.
While carrying my son, I was working full time, and I was very stressed out with a high stress job. I would come home so tired, and wondered if it was good for me to do this to the baby. Yet, I persevered, as long as I could. I was just married only 1 month before I became pregnant, woops. Before the pregnancy, I lost a lot of weight, you know, the typical I want to look good in my wedding dress sort of thing, and dang, I did look good LOL. Before we got our marriage license, they took a titre check and noticed I did not seem to have adequate MMR titres. So they gave me a quick shot and sent me on my way. Nothing to fear, nothing to even have an inkling about, my life seemed on a new way, a new life. During the pregnancy, I came down with a mild sore throat, and sort of passed it off. Then at the same time, I worked near semiconductor industries, and found some rather scary information about the well water in the area....except, after the fact. I worked in silicon valley, in which there is a possible cluster of autism, right around the time Ryan was born. Well, anyway, I remember distinct fully closing a small office I was working in at lunch time, and simply feeling so exhausted, I would lock the front door, and go to sleep on the carpet in the back room for lunch time. I didn't know what to make of it. The soar throat became worse, and I made an appointment to the GYNO. He did a swab test and found I have MONO. That was really scary. I looked at him and asked him, gee, won't this hurt the baby? He said, I want you to quit work for a month, and seek bed rest, and get off your feet. I was so sick for 2 weeks, that I thought I was going to die. Fevers, trembling in my bed, and when my husband came home, caring for the home and wishing and praying that nothing will harm this baby. He offered prayers in our church, and we felt the Lord close to us during this time. About 5 days short of the due date, Ryan James Blanco was born, with no complications, and an apgar of 9.
He was a good eater, and really, as a new mom, I had no complaints. I did however, notice that every succeeding vaccine that he had, made him react even worse from the previous (this is a hindsight sentence). The obvious line of give him Tylenol was overheard, and I subjected my child to the worse cruel fate I could have ever know. I noticed at 6 months a very distinct thought. Why is he not sitting up? He did, but then when he did, he would fall to one side? Years later, I found out this is a distinct sign of mercury poisoning from childhood vaccines. He began to not sleep at night, even though words were ever-present, like mama, dada, baba, ju ju, dogee, cat, and a couple of cute sighs and coos and eye contact in between. I had really no suspicions. Then it was the eating. I have an 8mm film of him, hanging over his chair, begging him to eat, and in fear, I breast fed him to whazoo and back. He was plump and happy. He walked around 13 months, and I did notice a slight hand flap here or there, but just thought, oh, he is being cute and excited. At around 14 months, I began to notice other slight things, but nothing to worry my head over. I got pregnant again, another woops, and was concerned, but was also ever-present with the fact, I had another baby on the way.
Around 18 months, when he had a DPT/Polio on his well baby, I again, poured down some Tylenol to assure a better go through this time. Around that time, 20/20 news programs were airing that P in DPT shots were of worry and interest. I remember begging for more information on this, and asked my pediatrician if we shouldn't just not give him P, rather a DT because of the information. He brushed it all off as if it was never ever the case, or for people not like me, and would be fine. Fine? 11 days after his DPT, he had a sudden rushing temperature, stiff neck, and body, 105 temperature, screaming and pitching for 24 hours, eyes rolling and convulsions and every trick in the book saying, this child is majorally reacting. We took him to the doctor after hours and he gave him Phenobarbital. When I couldn't stand the way he looked anymore, even after being sent home, I went into the ER room, and had them do some spinal taps to make sure it was not meningitis. I have very distinct memories of being in tepid baths with Ryan the whole night. One of the interns mentioned, I am going to write down this is a vaccine reaction, but if I did that, I would be putting myself in harms way, but this is undeniably a DPT reaction. I was thankful for his bravery and perseverance. After we were sent home and under consensus this must be a "viral illness", I held the release paper in my hand and told myself, I need to put this away for safe keeping. We had no son for a week. He lay in his bed listless and tired and feverish. He seemed to pop out of it, but into something else.
His appetite even grew more worse. I would take him on little walks with my daughter and notice that he would do things over and over. Then when I took him to church nursery, he would be off in a corner, and not paying attention, and even staring out the window. I came to my pediatrician again and mentioned how he couldn't even push the peddles on his tricycle and how his speech was stagnant, and even sometimes silent, and sometimes there were no words at all. He referred me to a speech pathologist, who mentioned to me for the first time AUTISM. I didn't even know what the word meant. I went to the library, pouring through books, and pouring plenty of tears. I put him into the school early intervention programs, and from there on, Ryan was either regressing, getting worse, or had splinter skills here or there. We went to several neurologists, and had numerous tests done. Around 4 years of age, I noticed other things such as muscle wasting, even bouts of what I call movement disorders, where he would get up in the morning and have this twitching and writhing in his legs. The doctors still didn't know what that was. We then took him to see Bryna Siegal at STanford Autism Research Center. She diagnosed him with PDD-nos. At that time, and yes, I was a busy mom, I had my fourth daughter on my lap as we were discussing the diagnosis for Ryan. By then, I think my heart was a little hardened, and or, I was in shock that this became my life. Four children under the age of 61/2!
We got the written report back for Ryan and noticed one line that shocked me. "Stacy seems to have some movements that I recognize as the beginnings of autism". Back then, we didn't have a whole lot to go on, a little Lovaas here or there, a little first inklings of milk being bad for your autistic child, and that was about it. No mention of vaccine connection. You see, the next few kids, there were NO problems with the vaccines, and so, I thought, gee, must have been a fluke? I did however, take out PERTUSSIS for every child succeeding Ryan. I thought I had my bases covered...NOT. Sure enough, the signs of autism surely and slowly crepped in, and on one occassion, I remember my daughter stacy being quite ill after her MMR, and within 2 weeks, was throwing up and or diarrheas from hell. I remember going into the doctor and mentioning there was something strange about this. She also had funny rashes all over her bottom, and welts at that. She also had tell tale signs of not sleeping, and losing her language, and even bouts of extreme anger, as I remember on one report, that "mother was tolerant during our interview while the baby was pulling her hair".
So, with all this knowledge I had gathered for Ryan, even me, a suave mom, could not even recognize that once again, another child was following the patterns. I put her into EARLY intervention at 11 months of age based upon Dr Siegals report. The early intervention was such a life saver, and so many referrals to good doctors, and interventions were afforded not only for Stacy, but for Ryan. We worked on GF CF diets extensively, as well as were probably the first parents that figured out they had candida to whazoo, and seeked the advice of an immunologist to put them on Nystantin. This was a big breakthrough for both of them, particularly Stacy. We also put them on the FEINGOLD diet, in which we avoided colored foods, or dyes, and even phenolic foods. This was another step into progression. During this time, Ryan began to have facial seizures. We took him to the neuro, and he put him on a KETOGENIC DIET. This really helped things, FOR A TIME. He also put him on a mitochondrial cocktail, because we did some extensive tests, that showed he built up too much pyruvate and lactic acid, which are waste products of the kreb cycle. Later I found out, this was also a sign of mercury poisoning.
As the years went by, the seizures either kindled or smoldered into something I call, pubescent HELOOO. Around 13 years of age, Ryan began to have Grand mals. We put him on everything we could think of, pharmacology speaking. Some improvements here or there, and breakthrough, but nothing that went, a ha. I then put him on glycomannans and sterolins, as well as various things such as good fatty acids, homeopathic hgh, zinc sulphate, B-complex vitamins to whazoo. This really seemed to stave off the seizures. This along with other ideas of "healing the gut" which would in turn "heal the seizures". Don't get me wrong, there are things left to be done, and some breakthroughs here or then, but for the most part, better than they were, when they were numbering 1-2 grand mals a week.
As for Stacy, during this time, she really started making gains, in which we put the same protocol on. We did, with added things here or there that were her deficiencies, as well as recognizing how PST deficient she was. She just had her 3 year evaluation, and can no longer be classified autistic, but aspergers. She has a keen sense of humor, and can joke and laugh, make friends, but has some "issues" with social pieces. She reads around the 2-3 grade level and requires no aide in her modified classroom of LD children.
The journey doesn't end here, for we found new information that made all of this come home. As I have expressed, "I was tired" all the time as a mom, and had signs of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I unfortunately learned bad news of my mother last year having Multiple Myeloma. That was devastating and sad. The prognosis is pretty good, compared to someone who has lesions or tumors when they come into it. She is also on the protocol I have outlined for my autoimmune kids. But for what it is worth, I discovered not only is her cancer connected to autism, but also my Chronic Fatigue. I fell upon a website, while researching for treatments for her, and was taken back. I was sure I was on this web site before in regards to autism! I clicked on the appropriate searches for autism and then multiple myeloma. It was there, that I read a report by a Dr Brian Durie, that he saw often complex neurological conditions within the family, even MENTIONING A MOM WITH TWO KIDS WITH AUTISM. I nearly fell off my chair. I called the laboratory web page in question and asked if they wanted to test our family? Would they, they said. I sent in our entire families blood sample, my mother, my father, my sister, her children, my family in total, four kids, and husband and I. ALL OF US TESTED POSITIVE for THE STEALTH VIRUS. Those with obvious neuro conditions were strong positive, those with moderate signs or hardly noticeable to the naked eye were moderate! This was an answer I was seeking. So, your probably asking, so what your saying is, is the STEALTH VIRUS THE CAUSE OF AUTISM? I KNOW NOT. But one thing I do know, the standard PCR and western Blot were used, and you cannot deny what you see. This virus is from POLIO VACCINES, instituted to all back in the fifties and early sixties (the good ole sugar cube). It is also implicated in frank cancers. SV-40 is what they call it, a contaminated simian monkey virus or CMV. This along with mercury poisoning was indeed clues to our family, and I must say, a very interesting explanation not only for the Multiple Myeloma, but also the autism, CFS, Fibro, tics, Bi-polar, Schizo/drug/alcohol problems, dyslexia, ADD, depression. I am sure I am probably describing many families that have autism in them (www.ccid.org ). We are also about to enter the world of chelation therapy, as soon as we get mineral stores up. The tell tale marks of poisoning thus far are low minerals, such as selenium and even lithium and manganese, all signatures of a mercury component.
Since we have 2 with autism, I also have been in many many genetic tests, and or studies. One of the most interesting was the c4b anulle, an allele on the Major Histocompatibility Complex. This gene is responsible for handling VIRUSES, TOXINS and FUNGALS. Those three are implicated in vaccinations. HAD I KNOWN, that they had this immunoincompetance, along with the STEALTH VIRUS, I WOULD HAVE NEVER VACCINATED MY CHILDREN. WE are working closely with CCID, and are about to go on anti virals, such as valtrex, biaxin, acyclovier, or gancylovier. I am currently on Biaxin, said to lower chemokine and cytokine production. We also have done dark field microscopy, and found invasive STILL fungas and candida, so something to work on. As well, it looks as though I may also have mycoplasma infections, which could also be STEALTHY. Ryan's blood work almost made the technician lose her cool, and disseminated what she thought was the oddest form of cells she had ever seen, and filling the whole screen, it screamed STEALTH to me.
So you see, I do have some success here or there, but have a lot more to think about. We just had tests done, and found they have antibodies to almost all their brain proteins, and neurotransmitters. They have antibodies to myelin, seratonin and receptor sites, as well as catecholimines and neural axon filament proteins. YOU CANNOT TELL ME THAT THESE CHILDREN ARE JUST PSYCHOLOGICALLY INVOLVED, they are SYSTEMICALLY ILL. They have many gut issues that I keep in check with probiotics, enzymes, fatty acids, glycomannans and everything I can get my hands on that heals the gut. Typically we put out around 1,000 dollars out of pocket for nutraceuticals and supplements. Yes, it is so unfair, but it has made me strong.
I await more news on whether I should have endoscopy's done on my children, as well as other tests, that will further clue to us, what we must do to heal our children. This I can tell you. I am absolutely resolved that if we pre screen our newborns, there may be more than a major few that cannot handle vaccines. I am currently working on a project to have such done, as a simple needle stick or PKU test is done, and will offer these insights in the time coming. I hope this can be put forth to DAN doctors, and thereby a consensus on what alleles of the immunogenetic system will stamp a child "DO NOT DISTURB". My hope and my prayers are that I will squelch this epidemic, and possibly save another child from the life my children have had to endure. Biomedically these kids are so challenged that one inkling of twisting or turning, or changing their diets can set them off, or regress them. This evident when I found out they were more allergic to CORN then GLUTEN in Wheat. Doing Elisa tests and other targeted treatment tests are advisable in my opinion.
My motto as a parent "knowledge is power"
Kathy
I'm Ellen, currently burning the candle at both ends while my husband has been unemployed since Sept. So we're in limbo, ready and willing to move wherever he gets a job, but meanwhile, we're in Texas, where we both grew up. I have 2 kids: Hannah (10) and George (8). Hannah had a viral encephalitis at 7 mo of age, shortly after her DPT and HibV boosters. Never making the connection, she continued to get all her vaccines on schedule with no problems, until she got the Hepatitis B vaccine as a 7 yr old (this one wasn't out when she was a baby). When she had a severe reaction (more about that later)
After the encephalitis at 7 mo, she was on Phenobarbital for about a year and a half. I can't say whether weaning pheno gave her bad reactions because her seizures were already increasing in frequency. At the time I really didn't know about withdrawal seizures. So we tried a variety of drugs unsuccessfully until, when she was 3 1/2 I pushed for the keto diet. We weaned all drugs one month later (tegretol and diamox). I saw no increase in seizures, but I did see horrible behavior, pacing at night, the shakes. This all lasted about 2 weeks and was clearly a result of weaning the drugs. Never knew until that point how heavily medicated she was. Hannah did very well on the diet initially, over a period of 4 yrs, the diet gradually lost its efficacy. The seizures were already increasing a bit in frequency when she had the Hep B vaccine which altered her metabolism, gave her Parkinson's syndrome (slowed speech, severe tremors, masked facial expression), gave her chronic stomach pain, and tonic clonic seizure every 3 days or so. It also completely wiped out her short term memory.
Its been 3 yrs since then. We've seen tremendous improvement in Hannah's condition, especially from hyperbaric oxygen and I would recommend that to you before you try any other therapies. We've tried many, some helped a little while she continued the therapy but she would regress as soon as that therapy was discontinued. Hannah has not lost anything that she gained as a result of hyperbaric oxygen.
All three of my children have been suffering from seizures and it all started 3.5 weeks after they had the shots and within two weeks all three of my children had the seizures .This is not a coincidence!!!! Who will pay the medical bills for all the EEGS and Drs. apts??? Not the ones lining they're pockets at the cost of our babies. It should be a crime to threaten a parent with fines and imprisonment if they do not give they're children the immunizations. I have learned a lot about vaccines in the past two weeks. Things I was not aware of...all the children who had the same reactions my children have had. The scary part is my children are just starting to get sick from them. I have read story after story of other children having seizures and some have died from the same reactions or left permanently disabled. What is ahead for my babies futures??? I am a mom of 21-month-old twins and a 6 month old baby. If I had to do all over, The Drs. never would of put anything into they're little bodies. I am sorry to sound so mean but I am worried and scared and I know it is the immunizations they all received on the same day, same lot #. The DPT shot expired the same month as the shot was given.........I will request my children be tested for mercury. We have spent so much time at Drs. testing by EEGs, blood taken from they're little arms. My babies are so scared of Drs. and I know this is a nightmare for them. They should not have to go through all this because of the required immunizations. If I knew all the facts and if I had a choice I would of done things differently. But my ignorance has caused this and now it is too late to turn back what has been done. I wish I knew what I knew now about immunizations. All three of my babies had reactions to the shots before the seizures began. Both of the twins ended up in the ER with a fever of over 105 and a rash all over they're bodies....but our caring and loving Dr. said it had nothing to do with the shots. (mind you Claire was 2months old and Andrew 4 months old when they had the identical reactions). Would you believe they actually checked them for meningitis. Mitchell screamed for 3.5 hrs straight a non stop hurting scream with his first set of shoots, this last set of shots made Mitchell fall asleep and I could not wake him at all. I got so scared I called the 800 # that comes with the patient info. They said this was normal for a baby to sleep and not be awaken for 24 hrs. He also had chronic diarrhea for a month. This last set also turned Claire and Andrew into zombies for a whole day after the shots. This is a normal reaction? I only wish I knew then what I know now. April 5th they had they're immunizations
May 1st. Mitchell had a spell in his bouncy chair. My husband heard him make a strange sound and he checked on him and he seemed out of it. His eyes were in a semi conscious state. I took him in on the changing table and he slowly came around. He was not blue but pale after this he was quiet for a while. May 2nd. As I was holding Mitchell he began to shake, his arms, torso and head.
May 3rd. Mitchell was shaking again and I called the Drs, he looked Mitchell over and thought it was seizure activity. They checked him for his sugar level and it was fine. His blood work came back fine also. He has shaken at least 6 times since this incident. (as of today May 23rd)
May 12th.Andrew hit the back of his head in the Pm
May 13th .Andrew woke up very lethargic. He just kept starring and acting like he was going to pass out. He could not hold his head steady and he did not respond to me at all. His lips were tense and whitish blue. I called my husband at work to tell him something was wrong with Andrew, I had gotten scarred and called the ambulance. He would not lay on the cot and by time the ambulance got there he started to act like himself. We took him to the ER ourselves thinking he had a head injury. The Dr. said it was not a head injury but an ear infection.
We got his medication and he took it all week and he seemed fine, he was not even fussy.
May 16th. Andrew was just about done his dinner. I went to him to wash some sauce off of his face and he gave me the usual fuss about it .I turned around to wash out the wash cloth and turned to sit it on the table Ii looked at Andrew and he was starring downward with his eyes drooping and he acted like he was going to pass out. I went to him and pulled up his chin and I got no response from him at all. I picked him up from the high chair and leaned him over and patted his back, nothing , no choking or coughing. We sat him on the table and he started to come around a bit. My husband held him in his arms for a while then he returned to normal.
May 17th I took Andrew to the Drs. And the nurse Practitioner saw him and felt he too had seizure activity.
May 18th As I was changing Claire's diaper she had a seizure. Her head was held back and her arms were straight out and she had both hands in a fist. Her eyes were tight and rolled back in her head. Her lips and mouth were also tight. After this lasted about 4 minutes then she went limp. I carried her to the phone and she stayed limp until I called my Aunt to hurry and come over, I was very upset. By time she got there Claire was returning to normal. I believe she had a headache after this happened because she was fussy for the rest of the day.
She did not see a Dr. I made a lot of phone calls to see if I could get a Dr. to see her but no one could. The ER said there was no point in bringing her in there as they did not have the equipment to help her.
May 1st. Mitchell had a spell in his bouncy chair. My husband heard him make a strange sound and he checked on him and he seemed out of it. His eyes were in a semi conscious state. I took him in on the changing table and he slowly came around. He was not blue but pale after this he was quiet for a while. May 2nd. As I was holding Mitchell he began to shake, his arms, torso and head.
May 3rd. Mitchell was shaking again and I called the Drs, he looked Mitchell over and thought it was seizure activity. They checked him for his sugar level and it was fine. His blood work came back fine also. He has shaken at least 6 times since this incident. (as of today May 23rd)
May 12th.Andrew hit the back of his head in the Pm
May 13th .Andrew woke up very lethargic. He just kept starring and acting like he was going to pass out. He could not hold his head steady and he did not respond to me at all. His lips were tense and whitish blue. I called my husband at work to tell him something was wrong with Andrew, I had gotten scarred and called the ambulance. He would not lay on the cot and by time the ambulance got there he started to act like himself. We took him to the ER ourselves thinking he had a head injury. The Dr. said it was not a head injury but an ear infection.
We got his medication and he took it all week and he seemed fine, he was not even fussy.
May 16th. Andrew was just about done his dinner. I went to him to wash some sauce off of his face and he gave me the usual fuss about it .I turned around to wash out the wash cloth and turned to sit it on the table Ii looked at Andrew and he was starring downward with his eyes drooping and he acted like he was going to pass out. I went to him and pulled up his chin and I got no response from him at all. I picked him up from the high chair and leaned him over and patted his back, nothing , no choking or coughing. We sat him on the table and he started to come around a bit. My husband held him in his arms for a while then he returned to normal.
May 17th I took Andrew to the Drs. And the nurse Practitioner saw him and felt he too had seizure activity.
May 18th As I was changing Claire's diaper she had a seizure. Her head was held back and her arms were straight out and she had both hands in a fist. Her eyes were tight and rolled back in her head. Her lips and mouth were also tight. After this lasted about 4 minutes then she went limp. I carried her to the phone and she stayed limp until I called my Aunt to hurry and come over, I was very upset. By time she got there Claire was returning to normal. I believe she had a headache after this happened because she was fussy for the rest of the day.
She did not see a Dr. I made a lot of phone calls to see if I could get a Dr. to see her but no one could. The ER said there was no point in bringing her in there as they did not have the equipment to help her.
MITCHELL: I can tell when Mitchell is going to have shaking, He is usually tired before it happens and the way I see it what ever is happening to him is what is making him tired...not the other way around. He sometimes puts his fist right up to his eyes and holds them there tight, as if he has pain or sees something. Then he puts his arms down and he starts to jerk, his legs arms and body then he starts to shake. He then falls asleep sometimes for over an hour and sometimes for just 10 minutes. Sometimes he acts like he is going to start shaking but he starts then stops suddenly and he will start crying and I cannot comfort him. The shaking was tremor like at the beginning and now have turned into convulsion type shaking. Harder and longer then when they first started...they are getting worse. He has an average of one a day and sometimes two a day. I have also noticed lately his eyes are not focusing like they used to and they wander when he tries to look at something. Almost as if one eye goes one way and the other the other way. I see this bothers him and he closes his eyes and puts his head down. I have also noticed he does not grab and play with toys as well as he did before (mostly his right hand)
CLAIRE: prior to Claire having her seizure she acted as if she could see things that were not there. She would actually talk to what ever she was seeing. Claire's first seizure consisted of her throwing her fist's up into her eyes then her arm flared straight out and her head jerked back and her body tightened right up. Both of her hands were in fists, her teeth clenched tight and her eyes were tight and rolled back in her head. After about 4 minutes of this she went limp. I laid her on the couch and she started to become aware of me. She fussed all day after that, I think she had a headache. I had Claire to Drs. thinking it was an earache (she fussed when she had her earache) But she did not. He told me to give her Tylenol. I told him I have been giving her Tylenol since this all started. He said keep giving it to her until she see the neurologist. This cannot be good for her little body. Why does she act as if she is in constant pain????? She does not sleep well. She will wake up at night crying. Ever since Claire had the seizure, she has been fussy, cries a lot and keeps pointing to her arms, legs and head saying hurt, hurt. She wakes up every night crying.
ANDREW: Andrew first stare seizure lasted for an hour. His face was pale his eyes were open but he was not there, his eyes were blood shot. He was limp and could not move his body, he could not hear me or see me. His lips were pursed real tight and bluish almost white. I called my husband and seeing Andrew was not getting better I called the ambulance. He has hit his head the night before like he had a few dozen times and he seemed ok after. I did not feel he hit it hard enough to cause any problems, there was not bump, he continued to play and be happy after. When he awoke that morning I thought his reaction was due to his head. When we got him to the ER the Dr. said he showed no signs of a head injury (by this time Andrew returned to normal) but that Andrew had an ear infection. That was Monday morn. Thursday eve. Andrew had the same type of episode in his high chair but lasting only about 4 minutes total.
And so it continues....testing..blood EEGs and lets just wait and see if they have more or how bad it gets. So much for safe immunizations. And so much for the Drs. admitting it is from the immunizations. This has been costly, emotionally and financially. Its been hard on the babies as we have to travel to see the neurologist...
WILL THIS EVER END?
ANDREW: Andrew first stare seizure lasted for an hour. His face was pale his eyes were open but he was not there, his eyes were blood shot. He was limp and could not move his body, he could not hear me or see me. His lips were pursed real tight and bluish almost white. I called my husband and seeing Andrew was not getting better I called the ambulance. He has hit his head the night before like he had a few dozen times and he seemed ok after. I did not feel he hit it hard enough to cause any problems, there was not bump, he continued to play and be happy after. When he awoke that morning I thought his reaction was due to his head. When we got him to the ER the Dr. said he showed no signs of a head injury (by this time Andrew returned to normal) but that Andrew had an ear infection. That was Monday morn. Thursday eve. Andrew had the same type of episode in his high chair but lasting only about 4 minutes total.
And so it continues....testing..blood EEGs and lets just wait and see if they have more or how bad it gets. So much for safe immunizations. And so much for the Drs. admitting it is from the immunizations. This has been costly, emotionally and financially. Its been hard on the babies as we have to travel to see the neurologist...
WILL THIS EVER END?
My name is Amy I am the mom of 4 beautiful children. This is my story into the vaccination world. I first questioned vaccines out of accident I was 6 mo pregnant with #4 and my 3 and 4 yr old were in headstart. I got notice that they were due for there shots I instantly got sick to my stomach. I went directly to my hubby’s work and told him kids were due for shots he said, well you better take them. I then began to cry him thinking it was pregnancy hormones I said I am afraid I can’t explain this to you cause to this day I don’t understand it. Well we held off and Dec 22 my #4 baby was born and my own Pediatrician happened to be out off town so I had a Dr my midwife recommended. He comes in the room after checking her and says she is beautiful nice big 9 lbs 15 oz apgars perfect then he says We aren’t giving the hep B shot now I said Ok Why. You have to understand at this point I didn’t know a thing about vaccines. The Dr proceeded to tell me they were worried about the Mercury in the shots and until this was cleared up he wouldn’t give it. My husband and my self said WHAT mercury. My husband says did you know of this Amy I said NO way but I will find out. So that started my crusade 18 mo ago.
I will say that my 10 yr old Chelsea has had all her shots except her 4 yr old shots. She has suffered with severe allergies, eczema, and asthma and was hospitalized over and over for unexplained fevers.
Carrigian my 5 yr old is one that we now feel is damaged she has learning problems she started crying at 2 mo old and cried non stop for 8 months I swear. She has eczema also and holds her breath and passes out and did this for the first time directly after a vaccine. She has chronic constipation. Michael my 4 yr old we thought was fine. Although did develop a severe respiratory infection after a vaccine but we didn’t know this then only know it now looking back. And the most troubling thing is he was diagnosed with Epstein Barr virus at 3 yrs old this virus causes MONO. Some research shows that this virus may also be linked to the Rubella vaccine.
Carrigian my 5 yr old is one that we now feel is damaged she has learning problems she started crying at 2 mo old and cried non stop for 8 months I swear. She has eczema also and holds her breath and passes out and did this for the first time directly after a vaccine. She has chronic constipation. Michael my 4 yr old we thought was fine. Although did develop a severe respiratory infection after a vaccine but we didn’t know this then only know it now looking back. And the most troubling thing is he was diagnosed with Epstein Barr virus at 3 yrs old this virus causes MONO. Some research shows that this virus may also be linked to the Rubella vaccine.
Chaela my 18 mo old has not had any vaccines. She is also extended breastfeed I say this cause I think it is important when you don’t vaccinate. She has hardly been sick. She did however have whooping cough at 5 months old which was the worst thing. We treated her with homeopathy and vit C. she recovered nicely from it. She had croup, which lasted 3 days with the use also of homeopathy and a few sniffles here and there. I must say that this journey has been the hardest choice I have had to make for my kids. I make this choice on a daily basis. I worry every day IS this the right choice for her. But I then ask myself how could I willingly inject all that poison in her. I am furious at the medical community the government for not having to inform us of the deadly ingredients in these vaccines they claim are safe. Why as parents cant we be given the info and allowed to make the choice on our own. And to bet that most DRs don’t know what is in these shots all the preservatives and fillers and known cancer causing agents.
Everyone asks “don’t you worry about the diseases?” and YES I do every day. I worry how she will handle measles, mumps, chicken pox and God forbid she get tetanus. I now am reading and learning these diseases trying to make myself more comfortable with treating them. But I truly feel God led me to this choice. I don’t feel that my youngest would have been damaged I feel it would have been my 5 yr old who shows signs of all kinds of damage. I may one day selectively vaccinate but one this I can say is I am a better mom for learning all this and investigating this. I feel it makes us better parents and it is up to us to inform other parents. At least allow them to make a educated choice in the matter of vaccines.
The story of The Frennung Family
Dagmar
by Judith Frennung
My name is Judith Frennung. I am 43 years old. I am the mother of Dagmar, born the 27. April 1981, 11.44 PM. Dagmar’s birth was as normal as a birth in a hospital can be. She was healthy up until the day where near the age of two months got her shot of pertussis vaccine. After three-four weeks with severe convulsions her brain was damaged. Today she is diagnosed a spastic of average intelligence with hemiplegia of the right extremities, epilepsy, dyspracsy and aphasia. Dagmar’s aphasia is so severe that she cannot talk with her mouth, read, write or reckon. And it is difficult for her to understand spoken language. The last 20 years of my life I spent clearing a path in the human society for Dagmar so she would be able to create a life for herself on this planet.
Thinking back, I see that I have always been different compared to others. I have always tried to do things my own way. And not always with the best of results I must admit. My decent and normal parents have only had worries because of me. The reason for that is that I have always been driven to existential experiments by an ever-burning urge stemming from the great invisible dreamworld of within the soul. The result of my behaviour is that my parents and I have lost contact. It is the only way that my severely tried parents can maintain the necessary peace and safety in their honourable life, I guess.
A very young woman I escaped home and moved to Christania in Copenhagen. Christiania is a town-in-town made in 1973 by young people, who wanted to create an alternative way of living every day life. Christiania was in its own primitive way one of the first eco-villages in the world. Later after some experiments with drugs, I changed my life, converted to the Tibetan Buddhism and moved into a Buddhist shared house. In 1977 I travelled to the Far East where I did some voluntary work among Tibetan refugees. I also received education in meditation and Buddhist philosophy from different lamas. Dalai Lama was one of my teachers.
My parents worried a lot because of my strange life. Therefore I returned to Denmark determined to create a lifestyle which could please my parents. I met a man, whom I did not love. And an unplanned pregnancy became an excuse to turn the back to my untameable values and myself. In the pipeline to an existence - an empty vessel with a neat surface - I brought my newborn baby to the doctor to get her shots. This proved to be beginning of the greatest change of my life - so far.
Break down
Before the pertussis immunization my Dagmar was a normal baby. Afterwards she was sad. During the next few days she weakened. She cried a lot. She caught an enormous cold, and appeared to change in subtle ways. The doctor told me that it was normal. I had a strong feeling that something was not quite right.
After a few weeks of crying, illness and strange rashes, Dagmar developed a fluid-filled blister on her right hand. Shocked I went to two different hospitals. Neither could offer me an explanation. Finally I decided that all she needed was fresh air. In great haste I packed a few things and moved to some friends who lived in a shared house in the countryside. But it did not help. Her strength declined.
Suddenly on a warm day while I was breastfeeding her sitting under an old tree in the garden, Dagmar emptied her bladder and intestine. We were both smeared all over. And there the convulsions started. We called the doctor. He immediately admitted her. In ambulance with sirens on we drove across Denmark.
At the hospital the doctors found out that the blister was caused by an herpes infection. But nobody could explain how she got it. I am not infected with herpes. Years later I read in some scientific article from Germany on the subject that herpes or herpes zoster is often seen as a side-effect in cases of allergic reactions to pertussis immunization.
I began to ask all the doctors about the reason of this disaster. I asked if the vaccination could have caused this. All but one flew into a rage. Filled with fear of these outbursts of authoritative anger I stopped asking more questions. I felt as if I had said something horrible about Jesus in a fanatical religious church. Years later a neurologist unofficially made a remark that the braindamage of my daughter was nontypical of infantile herpes infection.
The convulsions went on for almost four weeks. Day and night. Unstoppable. My Dagmar lost consciousness. And several of her life functions were monitored and assumed by machines. I stayed by her side all the time. I lit candles and incense and filled the room with flowers. And I sent for Tibetan herbal medicine given to people in life threatening situations. Through friends I smuggled this herbal medicine into the hospital and gave it to my daughter through the probe in her nose. Within a few hours she began breathing on her own. After a few more hours the convulsions declined and after 24 hours it was clear that she would survive. Doctors gathered in the room. One doctor burst out, ” She survived! Damned! Who would have thought that! Oh …the mother is present.” He caught an eye on me.
All the doctors were very careful to point out that immunizations were unable to cause brain damage. I do not remember that anyone took time to talk the accident over with me. But one of the doctors said something that I shall never forget. He told me that it was best that I never let my daughter receive another vaccination shot again. Those words told me, that maybe the health system had been less than honest with me.
After returning home Dagmar was completely exhausted. For weeks she slept as much as 17 hours at a time. Then she woke up for half an hour to feed before going back to sleep. She had become almost totally paralyzed in her face and mouth, so she could not breastfeed. I rented a milking machine, so she could take my milk from a bottle. Her right arm was paralyzed. The general prognosis was extremely bad. I was told that she probably had become mentally deficient to a severe extent. And I should not expect a natural development of the right side of her body.
Impossible from pain and confusion I managed to ruin the relationship to Dagmar’s father. My parents left, too. This I forgive them with all my heart. I was completely unbearable to relate to in the first years after the accident. I forgive myself.
Breakthrough
Alone. With no family. No peace of mind and therefore very few friends. No place to live. No officially acknowledged education. No money. There I was - 23 years old - with my destroyed child looking out on the ruin of my life. Of course I felt sorry for myself. Of course I was terrified. Of course the loneliness threatened to drive me crazy. And of course my heart struggled with myriads of conflicting emotions concerning my child. It was especially a chock to me that I suffered from the same prejudices against disabled people as everybody else.
At the same time Dagmar and I was surrounded by experts and specialists all knowing better than I. They all wanted to help, but they used a technical language I did not comprehend. I was a very young woman entering an alien and unknown world. The world of the disabled people. A world originated in a scary past where physical and mental defects brought along loss of basic human rights. And in spite of modernizations, Dagmar’s and my New World was unmistakably marked by it’s unloving and harsh past.
My small, destroyed daughter and I lived in a whirlpool of unfortunate, incomprehensible and intimidating circumstances. And being a human being and a mother I did what billions of mothers since the beginning of time have done. I decided to fight for the dignity of my child. I chose to view the unfortunate fate as a kind of spiritual weightlifting. And I promised myself to learn whatever it took to transform terror into strength and blessing for the benefit of my daughter, myself and every living being everywhere. Slowly a strategy formed. Years later I named that strategy ”Project Disabled with Fun, Joy and Dignity”.
The strategy implied daily training of Dagmar’s body. I learned how to give her massage. I investigated the principles of holistic medicine and many methods from the body-mind medicine became part of our family’s culture. I taught myself how to cook healthy, safe and poisonless food from ecological or biodynamic raw materials. Our home was transformed into Dagmar’s training room and my workplace.
When Dagmar was two years old I felt an urge to become a better mother. Therefore I got educated as a Rudolf Steiner teacher. Through that education I was able to understand her nature better. I read lots of books. Some by Soren Kierkegaard, Goethe and Alice Miller. Others about brain damage and the story of disabled people and their social conditions through history, just to mention a few subjects.
I investigated all I could find on the vaccine-subject. Later I became involved in the work of Danish Vaccineforum. It was soon clear to me that the smaller breakdown of my daughter was but an expression of the greater breakdown in all nature’s systems everywhere in consequence of the lack of skill in human societies concerning the creation of human abundance without at the same time destroying the abundance of the natural basis of the very same societies. Realizing that, I got educated as an environmental planner at the university. Later I joined the environmental movement, Permaculture, and became a Permaculture Designer teaching hundreds of people the skills and principles of ecological viable human production and dwelling. And I got a course in win-win conflict resolution and negotiation from the CRN in Australia.
All these new skills helped me to better negotiate with authorities and specialists. I was now able to convince these people to have the diagnosis of my daughter reevaluated and changed. She was now seen as a spastic child of average intelligence.
I also made progress in creating a space for us in society. After eight years without a proper place to live we finally found a wonderful flat. My economical situation improved and I was able to escape social security. I managed to take care of my daughter, take care of my business and make relative good results in my university studies. All in all, I succeeded to turn large parts of our breakdowns to breakthroughs. Sometimes I took a deep breath and saw that the Spirit held it’s loving hand over our lives. It felt like the angels were always there supporting us.
In spite of that I was never satisfied. I was always worried for my daughter’s future because she was unable to talk. And her aphasia made it difficult for her to understand mouth language. We were both miserable from not being able to communicate.
When Dagmar was three years old I accidentally discovered that it was easy for her to comprehend Danish sign language. I decided then that her natural language consequently had to be the language of the deaf. It took 12 years of desperate and fatiguing effort to convince authorities and specialists about this simple fact. During this period we cried a lot. Everyday in fact. The pain of not being able to communicate is intense. We could feel the bodies of each other so we became an extremely close unit communicating through feelings and body language. Bur my bright daughter needed more than that. For long periods I feared that she would withdraw into insanity.
Finally I won the battle. Dagmar was 12 years old and accepted at a school for the deaf. In a few years she changed from an angry and violent girl into a rational and articulated young woman.
Now
Today Dagmar has her own apartment in a suburb. She has the cultural centre for the deaf as a neighbour. Across the street, the church holds services in Danish sign language. Many people with different disabilities live in the area so Dagmar is no longer different from others. She is planning her everyday life together with her helpers. She bought a small Shetlands Sheepdog. His name is translated into English, NewWolf. He is being trained in sign language as a service dog for the disabled. Dagmar works everyday in a protected workshop. She has friends in the deaf world. When I left her in the new flat I had a strong feeling, that she finally had come home.
She has the home I never was able to create for her. We never met a man who was able to be a father and a husband. To be a part of our lives he would have to engage himself in ”Project Disabled with Fun, Joy and Dignity”. That was too big a task and I forgive that. So the price I had to pay to help my daughter was husband, children, family and career. Often I asked myself if this project was worth this high price. And every time, I choose my daughter.
Maybe Dagmar was not a wanted child from the beginning. But during the years I wanted her more and more. Holding her life in my hands I have received learning about the deeper meaning of life. That education I could not have received anywhere else. I have learned to understand a deeper meaning of love, ethics, morality, diligence, helpfulness, generosity, patience, loyalty, discriminating awareness and wisdom. I did not bring up my daughter. It was she who brought up me. She is deeply wanted and beloved.
I have gained insight in the conditions of life of disabled people. I have become bilingual and feel like a part of the culture of the deaf. And when I see young spastic women in the street I recognize their movements and facial expressions in my heart. In a way I see them as my daughters. According to WHO, between 15 and 20 % of world population are disabled. On this planet lives about 6 million deaf people. And about 15 million have brain damage. Instead of having my own children I sometimes feel that all these people have become my family. Wishes for their prosperity fills my heart. May this story of my daughter stream out like a blessing to all these people and their families. May the understanding that every person is a valuable resource no matter how this person is built become common knowledge on this planet. Thank you for letting me tell you our story.
I would like to introduce myself. My son, XXXXXXX, now 16 months suffered a reaction to his first round of vaccinations. He screamed pretty much all night the night of his shots, developed a rash, and then severe reflux, eczema, severe food allergies, and eventually autistic symptoms. Through much research I have made some incredible changes to our diet (we now eat only 11 foods) and his autistic symptoms are almost completely gone. I know in my heart (and our new DO confirms) that all of this is a direct result of his first vaccinations. He dropped from the 95th percentile to below the 5th percentile (off the charts) in less than 6 months. He went from a happy, healthy baby that slept through the night and was growing well, and was already saying mama, dada, baba to a baby that slept only 2 hours/24, screamed frequently, had only 3 BMs in 3 months, and stopped verbalizing completely for 8 months. XXXXXX'X reflux became so bad he would aspirate and stopped breathing on several occasions. I spent months with him "sleeping" on me sitting up all night long. We slept two hours a night for months on end. All of last year is a big blur to me. Before our wheat, gluten, casein, soy, and lots of other food free diet, he would not engage people, and would bang his head repeatedly on anything he could, among other things.
Eight weeks into our elimination diet he became a very happy baby, says one word (hi), smiles a lot, engages people, is very huggable and lovey, has gained 4 pounds - back up to the 10th%, and is doing great! We still have some residual head banging and must eat the restricted diet (we because I am still nursing him) and if we have an exposure to a 'bad' food it is bad.
My daughter, now 5, developed the measles after her MMR and has some pretty intense sensory integration issues, I now believe also a result of her shots. And lastly, the same thing that happened to XXXXXX and my daughter, happened to me... when I was in college, I had to be revaccinated with the MMR (1989) and I developed the measles and the mumps. I then became allergic to everything, all makeup, hairspray, environmental, cats, dogs, many, many foods. I also have had chronic health issues, fatigue, etc. ever since. I only now made the connection to the vaccine after it happened to my son. My son's first doctor refused to believe any of XXXXX's problems were connected to the vaccines and tried to coerce us into giving XXXXXX further shots. I knew in my heart all of XXXXXX's problems came from the vaccines since he was such a healthy, happy baby beforehand. In addition, since my brother also lost his hearing as a child from the MMR, I made the decision to not give my children any further vaccines. We found a new doctor who supports us in our decision. Boy am I glad I did. Since then I have spent hundreds of hours researching and know my husband and I have made the right decision. I am also now learning more about how my daughter's sensory integration dysfunction may also be a result of her vaccines. So in any event, that's my long, long story. I am hoping to find some information and make some connections to other parents that have children with similar issues due to vaccines as my son in the hope that we can find some further answers and maybe eliminate some of his food allergies, and arrest further autistic symptoms. XXXXXX is still on Pepcid for his severe reflux and I would like to try a homeopathic doctor to see if we can't make further progress. I am so looking forward to learning from everyone, reviewing the archives, and making connections.
Please allow me a few moments of your time to tell you about my daughter Bailey. She is such a beautiful, bright and special little girl. She is also so very frustrated at not being able to do the things she used to do. Bailey is a victim of vaccine related autism. She could once eat everything she wanted to and played with her cousins at the playground. She walked around the farm and helped me feed the animals. She was speaking 14 words and putting two together. She used to call me Mama. I've not witnessed her open beauty in so very long. She keeps it all inside now, tucked away in a little box. Sometimes she let's a little bit of what she keeps inside slip out and when she does her face lights up so bright, so filled with love and laughter and look! look! I did it! I did it!
My daughter instead of going to the park everyday after school, goes to a Dr to get treatments for her allergies to nearly everything as well as treatments for her immune system. I've had to stop working because she is not well enough to be in school regularly. No employer will make provisions for a mother who comes and goes more then she comes. My husband, bless him, works day and night, unable to spend those special moments with his sweet "peanut" to make ends meet. So she can go to the Dr, who is kind enough to lower the treatment costs. My daughter is on a slow road to recovery and the road has it's bumps but she is getting there. I noticed symptoms right after Bailey got the first vaccine in the hospital Hepatitis B... she wouldn't nurse. then she turned jaundice and it was said she had "breast-feeding" jaundice. I now know this wasn't breast-feeding jaundice. It was because she was given a vaccine that wasn't necessary at too early an age when her liver wasn't even fully developed yet. Every vaccine thereafter would causes her to regress for a period of about a week or two. After that period she would come back again and was completely normal. I informed the Dr of her reactions. Her reply to me was I am a new mother and am being overly paranoid. My story is not the only story like this. Nearly all the mothers I've spoken to and there are hundreds of them have been through the same ordeal.
Kassandra L Standley
We wanted to update everyone on Brendan. Though his progress, to a casual observer would seem minute, we are very encouraged by the progress we have seen and pray that it will continue. He has said a few words, randomly, and has begun to sort colors and participate in group activities. He has speech therapy and occupational therapy twice a week and is in a three day a week program in a school setting.
After careful review of his medical records, we have determined that Brendan is one of the children that was poisoned by Thimerosal, a form of mercury (the second most toxic chemical known to man.) Until recently, Thimerosal was used as a preservative in vaccines. Over time, more and more thimerosal was added to vaccines, in order to extend their shelf-life. In 1999, an act was passed, entitled the Public Service Health Act, which covered many aspects of health, from what to do with the remains of someone killed in military service, to requiring the removal of Thimerosal from vaccines. The initial problem with this bill, was that it did not require Pharmaceuticals to recall vaccines that were already in circulation. Almost a year and a half after the Bill was written, Brendan was given four vaccines, in one day, all but one containing extremely high levels of Thimerosal. These vaccines poisoned a perfectly healthy 15 month old boy, causing him to become Autistic. As I am sure you can imagine, his "diagnosis" has created an enormous amount of heartache and has created a Goliath financial burden upon our family.
There have been numerous cover-ups from all directions, including a huge one from the Center for Disease Control, who completely changed their preliminary findings on the matter, once their document was leaked. Pharmaceuticals, "physicians, the CDC, and so forth have made numerous attempts to make the claims of thousands of parents and the few physicians with an opened mind enough to examine the evidence, seem like lunacy. We would have most likely thought the same, until our son was labeled Autistic and we were forced to research the issue further. We are completely confident that Brendan was poisoned out of negligence from Pharmaceutical companies and now wish to pursue remedy for their negligence, in order to provide Brendan with the care that he will need, most likely for the rest of his life.
We were both raised in conservative homes and have spent our adult lives doing our part to support conservative viewpoints and agendas. It was with great sorrow that we learned that the Homeland Security Act, that has passed the House and has headed to the Senate, contains a last-minute provision, added by Dick Armey of Texas, a person we once respected and supported as residents of Texas, provides protection to Pharmaceutical companies from their Thimerosal negligence, even after the incredible amount of evidence, indicating that Pharmaceutical companies added Thimerosal to vaccines, knowing it could cause brain damage to infants and toddlers. Pharmaceutical companies have a lot of political influence and have contributed an incredible amount of money to the campaigns of those they feel would make this little nightmare of theirs disappear.
So what do we want? First of all...homeland security. We want the Homeland Security Bill to pass. We feel that the current administration has gone to great lengths to make sure the events of September 11, 2001 will never happen again. We support President Bush and the leaders of our nation in their efforts to make this country a safer place to live. Where we are at odds with our elected officials, is where they support a cause that has knowingly been negligent and has poisoned our son and robbed him of the life he deserved. We feel this move from Dick Armey and his colleagues is ludicrous and ask for your help in making it known that we do not appreciated adding dishonest provisions to a good bill. Please contact your Senator (http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm), immediately and let it be known, on behalf of Brendan and every other Thimerosal-poisoned, Autistic child, that sections 17.14, 17.15, 17.16 and 17.17 of the Homeland Security Act are not supported and that Pharmaceutical companies, like every other company in our economy, should be held accountable for their voluntary negligence.
We ask that you forgive the incredible sloppiness of this message, but did not feel we could waste the time it would take to edit this message. We feel the message is clear, though sloppy. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Also, if you feel so inclined, please forward this message to anyone who may be of interest.
By Deanna Gromowski
There are days I cannot believe what happened to my son Ian Larsen Gromowski.
It almost seems as though it was a bad, horrible nightmare that I cannot wake up from. My name is Deanna Gromowski and I am just a mom.
I live in Wisconsin and have a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UW-Milwaukee and my husband Scott has his bachelor’s degree in Sports Management from UW-LaCrosse. I work in Human Resources and he decided to get a 2nd degree in Fire Science and is now a full-time fire fighter. We dated for 3 years and then got engaged and a year later married in Hawaii in 2005. We decided to hold off on children for the first year to enjoy married life. We ‘did everything right in life’, we planned and prepared and educated ourselves about all our major life decisions. Then June 25, 2007 and our son Ian was born completely healthy. Well, there was a slight mishap at birth and it is very common. Ian swallowed meconium (his stool) as he came through the birth canal. He was originally brought back to our room with us, but then the nurses noticed he was having trouble breathing.
The meconium is like tar and it was in his lungs. So Ian was admitted to the NICU, discharged the next day to our room, but yet again went back because he hadn’t worked all of the meconium out quite yet. Scott and I were worried, as new parents, who wouldn’t be, but we knew it was common and we were told this many times. Some babies need 2 to 3 weeks to work the meconium out of their lungs. Ian was having a hard time getting this tar worked out, but you cannot imagine our JOY when the doctors told us on his 5th day of life, June 30th, 2007, that he would be able to go home. All he needed was his hearing test and his Hepatitis B vaccination.
We couldn’t wait for both of them to happen so we could go home. Looking back Scott and I get frustrated because we weren’t really given an option about the vaccine. We were told to sign a form (in which we were not given any instructions on vaccines) and I remember it seemed strange because the form we signed didn’t have an area for a parent signature, the nurse had to physically write in “Parents Signature” and “draw a line”. Hardly seems professional or right, but I signed it anyway. I look back on that form to date and still get sick to my stomach.
Ian was given his Hepatitis B vaccination on July 1st, 2007 even though he was fighting off the meconium, even though he had a fever ABOVE 100 degrees on June 30th, and even though he had a fever above 100 degrees the day of July 1st they STILL VACCINATED HIM. It states on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website this : “Some people should not get hepatitis B vaccine or should wait.
Anyone with a life-threatening allergy to baker’s yeast, or to any other component of the vaccine, should not get hepatitis B vaccine. Tell your provider if you have any severe allergies.
• Anyone who has had a life-threatening allergic reaction to a previous dose of hepatitis B vaccine should not get another dose.
• Anyone who is moderately or severely ill when a dose of vaccine is scheduled should probably wait until they recover before getting the vaccine. Your provider can give you more information about these precautions..”
So how are parent’s to know if their child is allergic to baker’s yeast? Do you want to just risk it? I would consider Ian moderately ill because he was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and still had a fever. Shouldn’t the experts know this information. Isn’t it their job? Well, that is all hindsight and immediately after Ian was vaccinated the following happened:
FACT: After receiving the Hepatitis B shot these symptoms also appeared:
• Platelets dropped from 248,000 to 131,000 – severe thrombocytopenia
• Scalded-like rash appeared
• Seizures noted
• Irritable, crying non-stop
• Stopped eating
• Viral-like symptoms
His pictures speak a million words. Within 12 hours of his vaccination he had the rash, within 24 hours the severe thrombocytopenia set in, and then he was in a fatal state from then on. NO DOCTORS, NURSES, STAFF would even consider the vaccination as the source.
Nothing else happened, no medicines of any kind because he was supposed to be going home! It even lists on the CDC website that 1 in 1.1 million have a severe reaction and on the Merck website it indicates that thrombocytopenia is a typical reaction of a person with a vaccine reaction. Why didn’t they know this? Why wouldn’t they consider the vaccination? It is possible. It even states so on the form from the CDC that they were SUPPOSED to give us and didn’t!!
Ian lived for 47 days. My son suffered nearly his entire life. Look at the pictures. Imagine watching your child going through this pain and not being able to do anything. No one would listen to us….we are just parents, what do we know? We didn’t leave his side for one moment. We lived at the hospital, literally. I couldn’t save my first born son, I couldn’t make the ‘ouchie’ better. I sat there day in and day out and watched this vaccination destroy his organ one at a time.
But I want you to know that Ian was an old soul. He had a peaceful presence about him. He received edema massages 2 times a day for his swelling and he loved it! The therapists said most babies in his situation do not do well with massages, but he was relaxed, peaceful, and accepting. He fought so hard. He is the strongest person Scott and I have ever met. He took our admiration to a level we didn’t know existed in the world. He was and is our little Sunshine, but more importantly he is OUR HERO.
We now are blessed with another son, Vance. Vance shares his brother’s blonde hair and has blue eyes that glisten like the sky. Vance is almost 6 months old and Vance is not vaccinated yet. Pending on the future of vaccines, we don’t know if he ever will be.. Hopefully Ian’s story will touch the lives of others including people who care for children. His case is not as rare as one would think.
Ian Larsen Gromowski
June 25, 2007 - August 10, 2007
Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Resided In: Brookfield Wisconsin USA
Funeral Home: Max A. Sass & Sons Funeral Home
Visitation: August 14, 2007
Service: August 14, 2007
Gromowski, Ian Larsen
Returned safely to the arms of Jesus on August 10, 2007. Precious son of Scott and Deanna Gromowski. Cherished grandson of Lawrence (Pamela) Gromowski and Gregory (Anita) Lehrkamp. Beloved great-grandson of Eugene Gromowski, Patricia Larsen and Bill Betlinski. Loving nephew of Paul (Amy) Gromowski and Melissa Waszak. Further survived by other relatives and many amazingly dear friends.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Tues. Aug. 14, 7:30 PM at ST. JOHN VIANNEY CATHOLIC CHURCH, 1755 N. CALHOUN RD., BROOKFIELD. Visitation AT THE CHURCH on Tues. from 6 PM until time of Mass.
Special thanks to the NICU nursing staff of St. Joseph�s Hospital and Children�s Hospital. Ian was a fighter with a strong spirit. He will be forever loved and never forgotten.
Mommy and Daddy love you more than you will ever know.
You will always be our sunshine.http://iansvoice.org/gallery.aspx
Dagmar
by Judith Frennung
My name is Judith Frennung. I am 43 years old. I am the mother of Dagmar, born the 27. April 1981, 11.44 PM. Dagmar’s birth was as normal as a birth in a hospital can be. She was healthy up until the day where near the age of two months got her shot of pertussis vaccine. After three-four weeks with severe convulsions her brain was damaged. Today she is diagnosed a spastic of average intelligence with hemiplegia of the right extremities, epilepsy, dyspracsy and aphasia. Dagmar’s aphasia is so severe that she cannot talk with her mouth, read, write or reckon. And it is difficult for her to understand spoken language. The last 20 years of my life I spent clearing a path in the human society for Dagmar so she would be able to create a life for herself on this planet.
Thinking back, I see that I have always been different compared to others. I have always tried to do things my own way. And not always with the best of results I must admit. My decent and normal parents have only had worries because of me. The reason for that is that I have always been driven to existential experiments by an ever-burning urge stemming from the great invisible dreamworld of within the soul. The result of my behaviour is that my parents and I have lost contact. It is the only way that my severely tried parents can maintain the necessary peace and safety in their honourable life, I guess.
A very young woman I escaped home and moved to Christania in Copenhagen. Christiania is a town-in-town made in 1973 by young people, who wanted to create an alternative way of living every day life. Christiania was in its own primitive way one of the first eco-villages in the world. Later after some experiments with drugs, I changed my life, converted to the Tibetan Buddhism and moved into a Buddhist shared house. In 1977 I travelled to the Far East where I did some voluntary work among Tibetan refugees. I also received education in meditation and Buddhist philosophy from different lamas. Dalai Lama was one of my teachers.
My parents worried a lot because of my strange life. Therefore I returned to Denmark determined to create a lifestyle which could please my parents. I met a man, whom I did not love. And an unplanned pregnancy became an excuse to turn the back to my untameable values and myself. In the pipeline to an existence - an empty vessel with a neat surface - I brought my newborn baby to the doctor to get her shots. This proved to be beginning of the greatest change of my life - so far.
Break down
Before the pertussis immunization my Dagmar was a normal baby. Afterwards she was sad. During the next few days she weakened. She cried a lot. She caught an enormous cold, and appeared to change in subtle ways. The doctor told me that it was normal. I had a strong feeling that something was not quite right.
After a few weeks of crying, illness and strange rashes, Dagmar developed a fluid-filled blister on her right hand. Shocked I went to two different hospitals. Neither could offer me an explanation. Finally I decided that all she needed was fresh air. In great haste I packed a few things and moved to some friends who lived in a shared house in the countryside. But it did not help. Her strength declined.
Suddenly on a warm day while I was breastfeeding her sitting under an old tree in the garden, Dagmar emptied her bladder and intestine. We were both smeared all over. And there the convulsions started. We called the doctor. He immediately admitted her. In ambulance with sirens on we drove across Denmark.
At the hospital the doctors found out that the blister was caused by an herpes infection. But nobody could explain how she got it. I am not infected with herpes. Years later I read in some scientific article from Germany on the subject that herpes or herpes zoster is often seen as a side-effect in cases of allergic reactions to pertussis immunization.
I began to ask all the doctors about the reason of this disaster. I asked if the vaccination could have caused this. All but one flew into a rage. Filled with fear of these outbursts of authoritative anger I stopped asking more questions. I felt as if I had said something horrible about Jesus in a fanatical religious church. Years later a neurologist unofficially made a remark that the braindamage of my daughter was nontypical of infantile herpes infection.
The convulsions went on for almost four weeks. Day and night. Unstoppable. My Dagmar lost consciousness. And several of her life functions were monitored and assumed by machines. I stayed by her side all the time. I lit candles and incense and filled the room with flowers. And I sent for Tibetan herbal medicine given to people in life threatening situations. Through friends I smuggled this herbal medicine into the hospital and gave it to my daughter through the probe in her nose. Within a few hours she began breathing on her own. After a few more hours the convulsions declined and after 24 hours it was clear that she would survive. Doctors gathered in the room. One doctor burst out, ” She survived! Damned! Who would have thought that! Oh …the mother is present.” He caught an eye on me.
All the doctors were very careful to point out that immunizations were unable to cause brain damage. I do not remember that anyone took time to talk the accident over with me. But one of the doctors said something that I shall never forget. He told me that it was best that I never let my daughter receive another vaccination shot again. Those words told me, that maybe the health system had been less than honest with me.
After returning home Dagmar was completely exhausted. For weeks she slept as much as 17 hours at a time. Then she woke up for half an hour to feed before going back to sleep. She had become almost totally paralyzed in her face and mouth, so she could not breastfeed. I rented a milking machine, so she could take my milk from a bottle. Her right arm was paralyzed. The general prognosis was extremely bad. I was told that she probably had become mentally deficient to a severe extent. And I should not expect a natural development of the right side of her body.
Impossible from pain and confusion I managed to ruin the relationship to Dagmar’s father. My parents left, too. This I forgive them with all my heart. I was completely unbearable to relate to in the first years after the accident. I forgive myself.
Breakthrough
Alone. With no family. No peace of mind and therefore very few friends. No place to live. No officially acknowledged education. No money. There I was - 23 years old - with my destroyed child looking out on the ruin of my life. Of course I felt sorry for myself. Of course I was terrified. Of course the loneliness threatened to drive me crazy. And of course my heart struggled with myriads of conflicting emotions concerning my child. It was especially a chock to me that I suffered from the same prejudices against disabled people as everybody else.
At the same time Dagmar and I was surrounded by experts and specialists all knowing better than I. They all wanted to help, but they used a technical language I did not comprehend. I was a very young woman entering an alien and unknown world. The world of the disabled people. A world originated in a scary past where physical and mental defects brought along loss of basic human rights. And in spite of modernizations, Dagmar’s and my New World was unmistakably marked by it’s unloving and harsh past.
My small, destroyed daughter and I lived in a whirlpool of unfortunate, incomprehensible and intimidating circumstances. And being a human being and a mother I did what billions of mothers since the beginning of time have done. I decided to fight for the dignity of my child. I chose to view the unfortunate fate as a kind of spiritual weightlifting. And I promised myself to learn whatever it took to transform terror into strength and blessing for the benefit of my daughter, myself and every living being everywhere. Slowly a strategy formed. Years later I named that strategy ”Project Disabled with Fun, Joy and Dignity”.
The strategy implied daily training of Dagmar’s body. I learned how to give her massage. I investigated the principles of holistic medicine and many methods from the body-mind medicine became part of our family’s culture. I taught myself how to cook healthy, safe and poisonless food from ecological or biodynamic raw materials. Our home was transformed into Dagmar’s training room and my workplace.
When Dagmar was two years old I felt an urge to become a better mother. Therefore I got educated as a Rudolf Steiner teacher. Through that education I was able to understand her nature better. I read lots of books. Some by Soren Kierkegaard, Goethe and Alice Miller. Others about brain damage and the story of disabled people and their social conditions through history, just to mention a few subjects.
I investigated all I could find on the vaccine-subject. Later I became involved in the work of Danish Vaccineforum. It was soon clear to me that the smaller breakdown of my daughter was but an expression of the greater breakdown in all nature’s systems everywhere in consequence of the lack of skill in human societies concerning the creation of human abundance without at the same time destroying the abundance of the natural basis of the very same societies. Realizing that, I got educated as an environmental planner at the university. Later I joined the environmental movement, Permaculture, and became a Permaculture Designer teaching hundreds of people the skills and principles of ecological viable human production and dwelling. And I got a course in win-win conflict resolution and negotiation from the CRN in Australia.
All these new skills helped me to better negotiate with authorities and specialists. I was now able to convince these people to have the diagnosis of my daughter reevaluated and changed. She was now seen as a spastic child of average intelligence.
I also made progress in creating a space for us in society. After eight years without a proper place to live we finally found a wonderful flat. My economical situation improved and I was able to escape social security. I managed to take care of my daughter, take care of my business and make relative good results in my university studies. All in all, I succeeded to turn large parts of our breakdowns to breakthroughs. Sometimes I took a deep breath and saw that the Spirit held it’s loving hand over our lives. It felt like the angels were always there supporting us.
In spite of that I was never satisfied. I was always worried for my daughter’s future because she was unable to talk. And her aphasia made it difficult for her to understand mouth language. We were both miserable from not being able to communicate.
When Dagmar was three years old I accidentally discovered that it was easy for her to comprehend Danish sign language. I decided then that her natural language consequently had to be the language of the deaf. It took 12 years of desperate and fatiguing effort to convince authorities and specialists about this simple fact. During this period we cried a lot. Everyday in fact. The pain of not being able to communicate is intense. We could feel the bodies of each other so we became an extremely close unit communicating through feelings and body language. Bur my bright daughter needed more than that. For long periods I feared that she would withdraw into insanity.
Finally I won the battle. Dagmar was 12 years old and accepted at a school for the deaf. In a few years she changed from an angry and violent girl into a rational and articulated young woman.
Now
Today Dagmar has her own apartment in a suburb. She has the cultural centre for the deaf as a neighbour. Across the street, the church holds services in Danish sign language. Many people with different disabilities live in the area so Dagmar is no longer different from others. She is planning her everyday life together with her helpers. She bought a small Shetlands Sheepdog. His name is translated into English, NewWolf. He is being trained in sign language as a service dog for the disabled. Dagmar works everyday in a protected workshop. She has friends in the deaf world. When I left her in the new flat I had a strong feeling, that she finally had come home.
She has the home I never was able to create for her. We never met a man who was able to be a father and a husband. To be a part of our lives he would have to engage himself in ”Project Disabled with Fun, Joy and Dignity”. That was too big a task and I forgive that. So the price I had to pay to help my daughter was husband, children, family and career. Often I asked myself if this project was worth this high price. And every time, I choose my daughter.
Maybe Dagmar was not a wanted child from the beginning. But during the years I wanted her more and more. Holding her life in my hands I have received learning about the deeper meaning of life. That education I could not have received anywhere else. I have learned to understand a deeper meaning of love, ethics, morality, diligence, helpfulness, generosity, patience, loyalty, discriminating awareness and wisdom. I did not bring up my daughter. It was she who brought up me. She is deeply wanted and beloved.
I have gained insight in the conditions of life of disabled people. I have become bilingual and feel like a part of the culture of the deaf. And when I see young spastic women in the street I recognize their movements and facial expressions in my heart. In a way I see them as my daughters. According to WHO, between 15 and 20 % of world population are disabled. On this planet lives about 6 million deaf people. And about 15 million have brain damage. Instead of having my own children I sometimes feel that all these people have become my family. Wishes for their prosperity fills my heart. May this story of my daughter stream out like a blessing to all these people and their families. May the understanding that every person is a valuable resource no matter how this person is built become common knowledge on this planet. Thank you for letting me tell you our story.
I would like to introduce myself. My son, XXXXXXX, now 16 months suffered a reaction to his first round of vaccinations. He screamed pretty much all night the night of his shots, developed a rash, and then severe reflux, eczema, severe food allergies, and eventually autistic symptoms. Through much research I have made some incredible changes to our diet (we now eat only 11 foods) and his autistic symptoms are almost completely gone. I know in my heart (and our new DO confirms) that all of this is a direct result of his first vaccinations. He dropped from the 95th percentile to below the 5th percentile (off the charts) in less than 6 months. He went from a happy, healthy baby that slept through the night and was growing well, and was already saying mama, dada, baba to a baby that slept only 2 hours/24, screamed frequently, had only 3 BMs in 3 months, and stopped verbalizing completely for 8 months. XXXXXX'X reflux became so bad he would aspirate and stopped breathing on several occasions. I spent months with him "sleeping" on me sitting up all night long. We slept two hours a night for months on end. All of last year is a big blur to me. Before our wheat, gluten, casein, soy, and lots of other food free diet, he would not engage people, and would bang his head repeatedly on anything he could, among other things.
Eight weeks into our elimination diet he became a very happy baby, says one word (hi), smiles a lot, engages people, is very huggable and lovey, has gained 4 pounds - back up to the 10th%, and is doing great! We still have some residual head banging and must eat the restricted diet (we because I am still nursing him) and if we have an exposure to a 'bad' food it is bad.
My daughter, now 5, developed the measles after her MMR and has some pretty intense sensory integration issues, I now believe also a result of her shots. And lastly, the same thing that happened to XXXXXX and my daughter, happened to me... when I was in college, I had to be revaccinated with the MMR (1989) and I developed the measles and the mumps. I then became allergic to everything, all makeup, hairspray, environmental, cats, dogs, many, many foods. I also have had chronic health issues, fatigue, etc. ever since. I only now made the connection to the vaccine after it happened to my son. My son's first doctor refused to believe any of XXXXX's problems were connected to the vaccines and tried to coerce us into giving XXXXXX further shots. I knew in my heart all of XXXXXX's problems came from the vaccines since he was such a healthy, happy baby beforehand. In addition, since my brother also lost his hearing as a child from the MMR, I made the decision to not give my children any further vaccines. We found a new doctor who supports us in our decision. Boy am I glad I did. Since then I have spent hundreds of hours researching and know my husband and I have made the right decision. I am also now learning more about how my daughter's sensory integration dysfunction may also be a result of her vaccines. So in any event, that's my long, long story. I am hoping to find some information and make some connections to other parents that have children with similar issues due to vaccines as my son in the hope that we can find some further answers and maybe eliminate some of his food allergies, and arrest further autistic symptoms. XXXXXX is still on Pepcid for his severe reflux and I would like to try a homeopathic doctor to see if we can't make further progress. I am so looking forward to learning from everyone, reviewing the archives, and making connections.
Please allow me a few moments of your time to tell you about my daughter Bailey. She is such a beautiful, bright and special little girl. She is also so very frustrated at not being able to do the things she used to do. Bailey is a victim of vaccine related autism. She could once eat everything she wanted to and played with her cousins at the playground. She walked around the farm and helped me feed the animals. She was speaking 14 words and putting two together. She used to call me Mama. I've not witnessed her open beauty in so very long. She keeps it all inside now, tucked away in a little box. Sometimes she let's a little bit of what she keeps inside slip out and when she does her face lights up so bright, so filled with love and laughter and look! look! I did it! I did it!
My daughter instead of going to the park everyday after school, goes to a Dr to get treatments for her allergies to nearly everything as well as treatments for her immune system. I've had to stop working because she is not well enough to be in school regularly. No employer will make provisions for a mother who comes and goes more then she comes. My husband, bless him, works day and night, unable to spend those special moments with his sweet "peanut" to make ends meet. So she can go to the Dr, who is kind enough to lower the treatment costs. My daughter is on a slow road to recovery and the road has it's bumps but she is getting there. I noticed symptoms right after Bailey got the first vaccine in the hospital Hepatitis B... she wouldn't nurse. then she turned jaundice and it was said she had "breast-feeding" jaundice. I now know this wasn't breast-feeding jaundice. It was because she was given a vaccine that wasn't necessary at too early an age when her liver wasn't even fully developed yet. Every vaccine thereafter would causes her to regress for a period of about a week or two. After that period she would come back again and was completely normal. I informed the Dr of her reactions. Her reply to me was I am a new mother and am being overly paranoid. My story is not the only story like this. Nearly all the mothers I've spoken to and there are hundreds of them have been through the same ordeal.
Kassandra L Standley
We wanted to update everyone on Brendan. Though his progress, to a casual observer would seem minute, we are very encouraged by the progress we have seen and pray that it will continue. He has said a few words, randomly, and has begun to sort colors and participate in group activities. He has speech therapy and occupational therapy twice a week and is in a three day a week program in a school setting.
After careful review of his medical records, we have determined that Brendan is one of the children that was poisoned by Thimerosal, a form of mercury (the second most toxic chemical known to man.) Until recently, Thimerosal was used as a preservative in vaccines. Over time, more and more thimerosal was added to vaccines, in order to extend their shelf-life. In 1999, an act was passed, entitled the Public Service Health Act, which covered many aspects of health, from what to do with the remains of someone killed in military service, to requiring the removal of Thimerosal from vaccines. The initial problem with this bill, was that it did not require Pharmaceuticals to recall vaccines that were already in circulation. Almost a year and a half after the Bill was written, Brendan was given four vaccines, in one day, all but one containing extremely high levels of Thimerosal. These vaccines poisoned a perfectly healthy 15 month old boy, causing him to become Autistic. As I am sure you can imagine, his "diagnosis" has created an enormous amount of heartache and has created a Goliath financial burden upon our family.
There have been numerous cover-ups from all directions, including a huge one from the Center for Disease Control, who completely changed their preliminary findings on the matter, once their document was leaked. Pharmaceuticals, "physicians, the CDC, and so forth have made numerous attempts to make the claims of thousands of parents and the few physicians with an opened mind enough to examine the evidence, seem like lunacy. We would have most likely thought the same, until our son was labeled Autistic and we were forced to research the issue further. We are completely confident that Brendan was poisoned out of negligence from Pharmaceutical companies and now wish to pursue remedy for their negligence, in order to provide Brendan with the care that he will need, most likely for the rest of his life.
We were both raised in conservative homes and have spent our adult lives doing our part to support conservative viewpoints and agendas. It was with great sorrow that we learned that the Homeland Security Act, that has passed the House and has headed to the Senate, contains a last-minute provision, added by Dick Armey of Texas, a person we once respected and supported as residents of Texas, provides protection to Pharmaceutical companies from their Thimerosal negligence, even after the incredible amount of evidence, indicating that Pharmaceutical companies added Thimerosal to vaccines, knowing it could cause brain damage to infants and toddlers. Pharmaceutical companies have a lot of political influence and have contributed an incredible amount of money to the campaigns of those they feel would make this little nightmare of theirs disappear.
So what do we want? First of all...homeland security. We want the Homeland Security Bill to pass. We feel that the current administration has gone to great lengths to make sure the events of September 11, 2001 will never happen again. We support President Bush and the leaders of our nation in their efforts to make this country a safer place to live. Where we are at odds with our elected officials, is where they support a cause that has knowingly been negligent and has poisoned our son and robbed him of the life he deserved. We feel this move from Dick Armey and his colleagues is ludicrous and ask for your help in making it known that we do not appreciated adding dishonest provisions to a good bill. Please contact your Senator (http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm), immediately and let it be known, on behalf of Brendan and every other Thimerosal-poisoned, Autistic child, that sections 17.14, 17.15, 17.16 and 17.17 of the Homeland Security Act are not supported and that Pharmaceutical companies, like every other company in our economy, should be held accountable for their voluntary negligence.
We ask that you forgive the incredible sloppiness of this message, but did not feel we could waste the time it would take to edit this message. We feel the message is clear, though sloppy. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Also, if you feel so inclined, please forward this message to anyone who may be of interest.
By Deanna Gromowski
There are days I cannot believe what happened to my son Ian Larsen Gromowski.
It almost seems as though it was a bad, horrible nightmare that I cannot wake up from. My name is Deanna Gromowski and I am just a mom.
I live in Wisconsin and have a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UW-Milwaukee and my husband Scott has his bachelor’s degree in Sports Management from UW-LaCrosse. I work in Human Resources and he decided to get a 2nd degree in Fire Science and is now a full-time fire fighter. We dated for 3 years and then got engaged and a year later married in Hawaii in 2005. We decided to hold off on children for the first year to enjoy married life. We ‘did everything right in life’, we planned and prepared and educated ourselves about all our major life decisions. Then June 25, 2007 and our son Ian was born completely healthy. Well, there was a slight mishap at birth and it is very common. Ian swallowed meconium (his stool) as he came through the birth canal. He was originally brought back to our room with us, but then the nurses noticed he was having trouble breathing.
The meconium is like tar and it was in his lungs. So Ian was admitted to the NICU, discharged the next day to our room, but yet again went back because he hadn’t worked all of the meconium out quite yet. Scott and I were worried, as new parents, who wouldn’t be, but we knew it was common and we were told this many times. Some babies need 2 to 3 weeks to work the meconium out of their lungs. Ian was having a hard time getting this tar worked out, but you cannot imagine our JOY when the doctors told us on his 5th day of life, June 30th, 2007, that he would be able to go home. All he needed was his hearing test and his Hepatitis B vaccination.
We couldn’t wait for both of them to happen so we could go home. Looking back Scott and I get frustrated because we weren’t really given an option about the vaccine. We were told to sign a form (in which we were not given any instructions on vaccines) and I remember it seemed strange because the form we signed didn’t have an area for a parent signature, the nurse had to physically write in “Parents Signature” and “draw a line”. Hardly seems professional or right, but I signed it anyway. I look back on that form to date and still get sick to my stomach.
Ian was given his Hepatitis B vaccination on July 1st, 2007 even though he was fighting off the meconium, even though he had a fever ABOVE 100 degrees on June 30th, and even though he had a fever above 100 degrees the day of July 1st they STILL VACCINATED HIM. It states on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website this : “Some people should not get hepatitis B vaccine or should wait.
Anyone with a life-threatening allergy to baker’s yeast, or to any other component of the vaccine, should not get hepatitis B vaccine. Tell your provider if you have any severe allergies.
• Anyone who has had a life-threatening allergic reaction to a previous dose of hepatitis B vaccine should not get another dose.
• Anyone who is moderately or severely ill when a dose of vaccine is scheduled should probably wait until they recover before getting the vaccine. Your provider can give you more information about these precautions..”
So how are parent’s to know if their child is allergic to baker’s yeast? Do you want to just risk it? I would consider Ian moderately ill because he was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and still had a fever. Shouldn’t the experts know this information. Isn’t it their job? Well, that is all hindsight and immediately after Ian was vaccinated the following happened:
FACT: After receiving the Hepatitis B shot these symptoms also appeared:
• Platelets dropped from 248,000 to 131,000 – severe thrombocytopenia
• Scalded-like rash appeared
• Seizures noted
• Irritable, crying non-stop
• Stopped eating
• Viral-like symptoms
His pictures speak a million words. Within 12 hours of his vaccination he had the rash, within 24 hours the severe thrombocytopenia set in, and then he was in a fatal state from then on. NO DOCTORS, NURSES, STAFF would even consider the vaccination as the source.
Nothing else happened, no medicines of any kind because he was supposed to be going home! It even lists on the CDC website that 1 in 1.1 million have a severe reaction and on the Merck website it indicates that thrombocytopenia is a typical reaction of a person with a vaccine reaction. Why didn’t they know this? Why wouldn’t they consider the vaccination? It is possible. It even states so on the form from the CDC that they were SUPPOSED to give us and didn’t!!
Ian lived for 47 days. My son suffered nearly his entire life. Look at the pictures. Imagine watching your child going through this pain and not being able to do anything. No one would listen to us….we are just parents, what do we know? We didn’t leave his side for one moment. We lived at the hospital, literally. I couldn’t save my first born son, I couldn’t make the ‘ouchie’ better. I sat there day in and day out and watched this vaccination destroy his organ one at a time.
But I want you to know that Ian was an old soul. He had a peaceful presence about him. He received edema massages 2 times a day for his swelling and he loved it! The therapists said most babies in his situation do not do well with massages, but he was relaxed, peaceful, and accepting. He fought so hard. He is the strongest person Scott and I have ever met. He took our admiration to a level we didn’t know existed in the world. He was and is our little Sunshine, but more importantly he is OUR HERO.
We now are blessed with another son, Vance. Vance shares his brother’s blonde hair and has blue eyes that glisten like the sky. Vance is almost 6 months old and Vance is not vaccinated yet. Pending on the future of vaccines, we don’t know if he ever will be.. Hopefully Ian’s story will touch the lives of others including people who care for children. His case is not as rare as one would think.
Ian Larsen Gromowski
June 25, 2007 - August 10, 2007
Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Resided In: Brookfield Wisconsin USA
Funeral Home: Max A. Sass & Sons Funeral Home
Visitation: August 14, 2007
Service: August 14, 2007
Gromowski, Ian Larsen
Returned safely to the arms of Jesus on August 10, 2007. Precious son of Scott and Deanna Gromowski. Cherished grandson of Lawrence (Pamela) Gromowski and Gregory (Anita) Lehrkamp. Beloved great-grandson of Eugene Gromowski, Patricia Larsen and Bill Betlinski. Loving nephew of Paul (Amy) Gromowski and Melissa Waszak. Further survived by other relatives and many amazingly dear friends.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Tues. Aug. 14, 7:30 PM at ST. JOHN VIANNEY CATHOLIC CHURCH, 1755 N. CALHOUN RD., BROOKFIELD. Visitation AT THE CHURCH on Tues. from 6 PM until time of Mass.
Special thanks to the NICU nursing staff of St. Joseph�s Hospital and Children�s Hospital. Ian was a fighter with a strong spirit. He will be forever loved and never forgotten.
Mommy and Daddy love you more than you will ever know.
You will always be our sunshine.http://iansvoice.org/gallery.aspx
I gave birth to my second daughter in July of 1999. I had a deep worry about her from the time she was in my womb. She didn't seem to move like my first, spunky two year old daughter. After she was born, in the hospital, deep fears began to hit me about her health. Nothing I could put my finger on, but a deep, penetrating fear. They didn't give her the hepB shot at 24 hours old as the policy is because there was some problem and health officials were waiting for a while. Fine with me, but whatever, after all, those anti-vaccine people were just a bunch of hippy trouble-makers to me.
I remember when Allie was just a few weeks old her watching me move around the room as she lay on my bed. I didn't have on a shirt and I thought it was so cute that she was concerned with her food supply! Another time a few days later my mom was holding Allie and as I walked into the room while speaking my mom commented on how she turned when she heard my voice. That made me feel better.
However, as the months went by, that deep worry about her health and development wouldn't leave me. She was a little quiet. She said her babbles, but not very often. She seemed to love TV much more than big sister, but if I compared her to her outgoing big sister my friends would tell me how each child is different and to stop comparing. I guess I was just being freaky. Not to mention I was having horrible post-partum depression and had quit working since my boss wouldn't let me bring two children to work as he did with my first baby. My dread about my Allie had to have been a combination of all the changes in our family.
When Allie was nine months old she got chicken pox exactly two weeks after my nearly three year old contracted it. Jessica had got over it fine, so it was nothing to worry about. However, while Jess might have had 30 pox over her entire body, little Allie had over thirty pox on her face alone. She had pox everywhere, in her mouth, and hemorrhaged spots on her eye balls. It was April 13 that the first pox appeared. Over a week later the last pox began to crust over. On April 26th Allie received a catch-up hep B vaccine. I asked if her having chicken pox was what they meant by being sick. I was told it was nothing to worry about that Allie wasn't considered sick at that point.
I remember after Allie had chicken pox she began to refuse foods and seemed to be in her own world a lot. I mentioned this at her 12 month well-visit. I also mentioned at her 12, 15, and 18 visits that she wasn't talking yet, only ate very few foods, and stayed to herself a lot. At her 12 and 15 month visits I mentioned that she still wasn't walking yet, although making an effort. But, it might have been difficult for the doc to hear my issues because Allie would scream every time I put her on the table. A woman at church asked me if I had had her hearing tested. This was the second time someone asked me that. I called the doc the following day and and said something was definitely wrong with her. I didn't tell him, but from 10 months old I believed she was autistic. I don't know why because she wasn't meeting the symptoms much at that young of an age, but I would find myself doing searches for autism on the Internet late-night.
July 17, 2001 Allie was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. It was two weeks before her second birthday. Since that time we have realized her significant gut problems and improved her with the gluten/casein-free diet, vitamin supplements, and speech/occupational therapy. I am planning to begin chelation therapy next month.
I remembered recently that I received a flu vaccine in October/November of 1999. I conceived my Allie in November of 1999. At six week post-partum checkup I was given a rubella booster while nursing. I told the nurse I was breastfeeding and she said it didn't matter. "Yeah," I thought. Those anti-vaccine whackos don't have a clue what they are talking about.
I now have a third daughter, an eleven week-old. I had planned on beginning one vaccine per month when she is four months old. Now my husband and I see such a healthy, alert baby we think we're gonna wait until she's at least three years old. The thought of taking my healthy girl to the doctor and letting them give her even one vaccine nearly sends me into a panic. I've had nightmares about it. We've decided to keep her out of the nursery at church because of germs and rarely take her to the grocery store. Pertussis still happens where I live and I am afraid of her catching it. But, for our family, the risk of autism from vaccine is much greater.
If the federal and world governments would stop lying to the people and saying vaccines are safe for our babies when for some children they certainly are not, and begin to find why they fail some children, our world would be a much better place. If we parents would stand up and say that our babies are not being vaccinated until they find that even one injured child is one child too much, then the government would get the lead out of its behind and begin to find the answer. We don't want disease of the past. We want a 100% safe vaccine record. Even one injured child in ten million is too much, especially to the mother, father, grandparents, and siblings of that injured
child.
Debi Haney
fightingautism@yahoo.com
Hi,
Oh God where do I begin? I am a vaccine injured adult. I am mad as hell. I was sick with bronchitis and when to the doctor for my yearly female exam. during which he wanted to give me 2 vaccines, a pneumonia and a tetanus. I said I am sick, is it safe? He said oh sure it's okay. lets start out the new century (2000) with a tetanus and then you will know when your next one is due. so I let the ****** vaccinate me. I had a bad reaction. I was sick with flu symptoms for about 10 days. I had a rash that looked like the united states on my arm. I was not well at all. I was also on prednisone at the time for the bronchitis and asthma. I have been over medicated all my life. doctors just kept the process going and I let them. well a month after those shots I developed wrist pain in both wrists. a month after that I became pregnant. during the pregnancy I thought I had carpal tunnel. the pain became worse and I could not work. it was still tolerable, but could not use my hands much. 2 weeks after I had my baby, all hell broke loose. I apologize for my language, it angers me beyond words and I am sorry. I woke up one morning and I could NOT MOVE. I was in so much pain I just cried. I tried to medicate myself, but nothing worked. I was afraid to go the doctor cause I thought I was dying. I waited and waited. finally I went back to the moron who gave me the shots. I still did not know he was the reason why I was sick. he did some tests and found out I had rheumatoid arthritis. My life has become a living nightmare and a living hell. I am in pain 24/7. pain meds do not help. I cannot lift ANYTHING without dropping it. I can barely wipe myself when i go to the bathroom. there are times it takes me 20 minutes to put on a bra. the pain gets so bad that I want to just call it quits. I have 4 kids. the 19 month old has been so hard for me to take care of. GOD it is hard. I could not lift her. I used to have everyone bring her to me to feed her. I would sit on the floor in my living room with her and just play with her cause I could not move from the pain and the disability of this disease. My pain level used to be a 10, now with homeopathic and osteopathic treatment it is a 7.5. stairs are horrible. I would rather have all my fingernails pulled off one at a time slowly, every day, than to go up and down stairs. My joy is gone. I miss being able to do things with my kids. I miss my husband touching me, he is afraid he will hurt me. I miss being able to ride a bike. I miss days without pain. I miss my life. this doctor and the pharmaceutical companies have taken away my life. I have filed with VAERS and also the vaccine injury compensation program. I am disabled and on disability. I cannot work. if something happens to my husband, I have no income except Social security to live on. I did data entry for a job my whole life. I used to type 110 words a minute with maybe 2 mistakes. Ha, now I cannot type worth a darn. every other word I type has errors in it. My brain cannot communicate with my hands anymore and my fingers hurt bad. I am angry, angry at the doctor who put this in my body. I am angry at the drug companies for making this poisonous substance. My doctor was the one who figured out it was the vaccines that did it. NO ONE Is going to inject me or my children ever again with anything. I have been fighting to get people to know what is happening like yourself. NO ONE wants to listen to me. they refuse. I have found a new pediatrician for my kids, one who knows about the dangers of vaccines. If I get one more shot, I could die. I am lucky to be alive. Since I have been going to my new doctor, I have not been put on antibiotics, nor have I needed to be. I have not had more than a slight cold for 2 years. what does that tell you? VACCINES KILL. I just hope I am around long enough to take care of my baby and to see my grandkids. thank you and please write me when you have a chance. I believe in what you are doing.
love Janet
I remember when Allie was just a few weeks old her watching me move around the room as she lay on my bed. I didn't have on a shirt and I thought it was so cute that she was concerned with her food supply! Another time a few days later my mom was holding Allie and as I walked into the room while speaking my mom commented on how she turned when she heard my voice. That made me feel better.
However, as the months went by, that deep worry about her health and development wouldn't leave me. She was a little quiet. She said her babbles, but not very often. She seemed to love TV much more than big sister, but if I compared her to her outgoing big sister my friends would tell me how each child is different and to stop comparing. I guess I was just being freaky. Not to mention I was having horrible post-partum depression and had quit working since my boss wouldn't let me bring two children to work as he did with my first baby. My dread about my Allie had to have been a combination of all the changes in our family.
When Allie was nine months old she got chicken pox exactly two weeks after my nearly three year old contracted it. Jessica had got over it fine, so it was nothing to worry about. However, while Jess might have had 30 pox over her entire body, little Allie had over thirty pox on her face alone. She had pox everywhere, in her mouth, and hemorrhaged spots on her eye balls. It was April 13 that the first pox appeared. Over a week later the last pox began to crust over. On April 26th Allie received a catch-up hep B vaccine. I asked if her having chicken pox was what they meant by being sick. I was told it was nothing to worry about that Allie wasn't considered sick at that point.
I remember after Allie had chicken pox she began to refuse foods and seemed to be in her own world a lot. I mentioned this at her 12 month well-visit. I also mentioned at her 12, 15, and 18 visits that she wasn't talking yet, only ate very few foods, and stayed to herself a lot. At her 12 and 15 month visits I mentioned that she still wasn't walking yet, although making an effort. But, it might have been difficult for the doc to hear my issues because Allie would scream every time I put her on the table. A woman at church asked me if I had had her hearing tested. This was the second time someone asked me that. I called the doc the following day and and said something was definitely wrong with her. I didn't tell him, but from 10 months old I believed she was autistic. I don't know why because she wasn't meeting the symptoms much at that young of an age, but I would find myself doing searches for autism on the Internet late-night.
July 17, 2001 Allie was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. It was two weeks before her second birthday. Since that time we have realized her significant gut problems and improved her with the gluten/casein-free diet, vitamin supplements, and speech/occupational therapy. I am planning to begin chelation therapy next month.
I remembered recently that I received a flu vaccine in October/November of 1999. I conceived my Allie in November of 1999. At six week post-partum checkup I was given a rubella booster while nursing. I told the nurse I was breastfeeding and she said it didn't matter. "Yeah," I thought. Those anti-vaccine whackos don't have a clue what they are talking about.
I now have a third daughter, an eleven week-old. I had planned on beginning one vaccine per month when she is four months old. Now my husband and I see such a healthy, alert baby we think we're gonna wait until she's at least three years old. The thought of taking my healthy girl to the doctor and letting them give her even one vaccine nearly sends me into a panic. I've had nightmares about it. We've decided to keep her out of the nursery at church because of germs and rarely take her to the grocery store. Pertussis still happens where I live and I am afraid of her catching it. But, for our family, the risk of autism from vaccine is much greater.
If the federal and world governments would stop lying to the people and saying vaccines are safe for our babies when for some children they certainly are not, and begin to find why they fail some children, our world would be a much better place. If we parents would stand up and say that our babies are not being vaccinated until they find that even one injured child is one child too much, then the government would get the lead out of its behind and begin to find the answer. We don't want disease of the past. We want a 100% safe vaccine record. Even one injured child in ten million is too much, especially to the mother, father, grandparents, and siblings of that injured
child.
Debi Haney
fightingautism@yahoo.com
Hi,
Oh God where do I begin? I am a vaccine injured adult. I am mad as hell. I was sick with bronchitis and when to the doctor for my yearly female exam. during which he wanted to give me 2 vaccines, a pneumonia and a tetanus. I said I am sick, is it safe? He said oh sure it's okay. lets start out the new century (2000) with a tetanus and then you will know when your next one is due. so I let the ****** vaccinate me. I had a bad reaction. I was sick with flu symptoms for about 10 days. I had a rash that looked like the united states on my arm. I was not well at all. I was also on prednisone at the time for the bronchitis and asthma. I have been over medicated all my life. doctors just kept the process going and I let them. well a month after those shots I developed wrist pain in both wrists. a month after that I became pregnant. during the pregnancy I thought I had carpal tunnel. the pain became worse and I could not work. it was still tolerable, but could not use my hands much. 2 weeks after I had my baby, all hell broke loose. I apologize for my language, it angers me beyond words and I am sorry. I woke up one morning and I could NOT MOVE. I was in so much pain I just cried. I tried to medicate myself, but nothing worked. I was afraid to go the doctor cause I thought I was dying. I waited and waited. finally I went back to the moron who gave me the shots. I still did not know he was the reason why I was sick. he did some tests and found out I had rheumatoid arthritis. My life has become a living nightmare and a living hell. I am in pain 24/7. pain meds do not help. I cannot lift ANYTHING without dropping it. I can barely wipe myself when i go to the bathroom. there are times it takes me 20 minutes to put on a bra. the pain gets so bad that I want to just call it quits. I have 4 kids. the 19 month old has been so hard for me to take care of. GOD it is hard. I could not lift her. I used to have everyone bring her to me to feed her. I would sit on the floor in my living room with her and just play with her cause I could not move from the pain and the disability of this disease. My pain level used to be a 10, now with homeopathic and osteopathic treatment it is a 7.5. stairs are horrible. I would rather have all my fingernails pulled off one at a time slowly, every day, than to go up and down stairs. My joy is gone. I miss being able to do things with my kids. I miss my husband touching me, he is afraid he will hurt me. I miss being able to ride a bike. I miss days without pain. I miss my life. this doctor and the pharmaceutical companies have taken away my life. I have filed with VAERS and also the vaccine injury compensation program. I am disabled and on disability. I cannot work. if something happens to my husband, I have no income except Social security to live on. I did data entry for a job my whole life. I used to type 110 words a minute with maybe 2 mistakes. Ha, now I cannot type worth a darn. every other word I type has errors in it. My brain cannot communicate with my hands anymore and my fingers hurt bad. I am angry, angry at the doctor who put this in my body. I am angry at the drug companies for making this poisonous substance. My doctor was the one who figured out it was the vaccines that did it. NO ONE Is going to inject me or my children ever again with anything. I have been fighting to get people to know what is happening like yourself. NO ONE wants to listen to me. they refuse. I have found a new pediatrician for my kids, one who knows about the dangers of vaccines. If I get one more shot, I could die. I am lucky to be alive. Since I have been going to my new doctor, I have not been put on antibiotics, nor have I needed to be. I have not had more than a slight cold for 2 years. what does that tell you? VACCINES KILL. I just hope I am around long enough to take care of my baby and to see my grandkids. thank you and please write me when you have a chance. I believe in what you are doing.
love Janet
Hi. I would like to tell you about our experiences with vaccine reactions. . Our son, Robbie, our second child, was perfectly fine and healthy, developing normally, until the age of 5 months. He was sitting with support (almost ready to go unsupported), smiling, laughing out loud, rolling over, and eating well...all the "normal things." He was a joy, and along with our 3 year old daughter, our lives were idyllic. He had his 4 month shots (DTaP, HiB, and Prevnar) early in December of 2001. By Christmas, he had an awful cold (or was it?) that wouldn't quit. His doctor put him on an antibiotic (Zithromax) at the beginning of January, then 5 days later, at what was supposed to be his "recheck", gave him his 5 month shots (HepB, Polio). Within a week, he had lost all muscle control, was drooling profusely, stopped smiling, laughing and playing, and lost his appetite. I literally put a happy smiling baby to bed one night, and in the morning, picked up a limp baby, with little responsiveness. I traveled back and forth to the pediatrician, and made numerous after hours phone calls for 3 weeks. They kept telling me "nothing was wrong"; "he is fine"; even when I told them that it had progressed to breathing difficulties and strange eye movements, their only response was to "give him another round of Zithromax."
Finally, at his 6 month checkup, I was determined that I wasn't going home until "someone tells me what's wrong." Little did I know the horrors that would soon begin. The nurse started taking out the vials for his "shots", and I replied that he was not getting any. She began to berate me, and I held him out in front of her and screamed, "LOOK AT HIM!!!" He was gasping for breaths, drooling, his eyes rolling and twitching. The doctor came in, and told me he needed to be admitted to the hospital. I still had no idea what was going on. It was Feb. 6, 2002.
At the hospital, they diagnosed "seizures", started him on medications and began running all kinds of tests. They found nothing. He was not responding to any med they tried (and they tried no less than 5) and we traveled in and out of ICU. The "helpful" neurologist told us (and I quote), "I have no idea what is happening here, and I would need an autopsy to figure out what was wrong." We began searching for a new hospital.
On March 1, we were transferred, via ambulance, with our precious baby on a ventilator (a precaution, they said) and highly sedated, to another hospital, which, we were told by many sources, was the best epilepsy center in New York. Initially, we were thrilled by how they handled him. They started weaning all the drugs, told us what their new course of action was, and gave us a lot of hope. It was short lived. We lasted a week in the epilepsy unit, before we "took up residence" in PICU. We watched other children come and go, as our baby lay there. He was tried on at least 5 more drugs, a steroid treatment, intravenous immuno-globin, several attempts at heavy duty IV sedation, and finally an induced coma (which of course, involved another respirator, for they were trying to mimic "brain death" with what they called "burst suppression", referring to the EEG pattern). He contracted several infections, potentially fatal bed sores on his head and serious withdrawal, as they tried to remove the coma-inducing drug. Nothing worked. They performed every test known to man looking for some cause. His blood was sent all over the country, they consulted with "experts" from all over the world….nothing. Their diagnosis was "idiopathic epilepsy" meaning "no known cause" and "intractable seizures" meaning unresponsive to any treatment."
By now, I was starting to question the vaccine roll in all this. I was told, "No way. Absolutely not." More probably, they said, my husband and I were carriers of some rare, undiscovered disease. It was now May. They told us in no uncertain terms…he had failed every drug, was not a surgical candidate (nothing there to go after!), not a candidate for the nerve stimulator, we could try the Ketogenic Diet, but it would probably kill him, or, we could "take him home, as is, knowing that he is a prime candidate for 'sudden unexplained death in epilepsy'…and we have no ethical, medical, or religious problem with that." So much for bedside manner.
Since we in no way, believed that he had a metabolic or genetic disease, we tried the diet. It was not super successful, but got us enough control that they were willing to let him come home, but not before they insisted that he needed a feeding tube. They would not even let me try to feed him after he came out of the coma, despite the fact that he had displayed no sucking or swallowing problems prior to that. We reluctantly agreed, after they spent 2 weeks telling us what terrible parents we were for not agreeing to it. After several more mishaps, we finally went home on June 24.
We had to have nursing care at home, as his needs were great and he was severely delayed after all the months of sedation. We found that the "neurologists" were worthless, showing little concern for him when we went for office visits. The "team" that was supposed to be managing his diet (for those who don't know, the Keto diet, is serious medicine, that needs to be followed and administered carefully), was very neglectful, and he wasn't doing well at all. But the "kicker" was his pediatrician, who 3 weeks after his discharge, insisted upon resuming his shots. I was completely worn down, and reluctantly agreed (still not fully appreciating their role in all of this). He gave the baby HepB and HiB, and he immediately spiraled downward again, the seizures returning worse and more violently.
At the hospital, they diagnosed "seizures", started him on medications and began running all kinds of tests. They found nothing. He was not responding to any med they tried (and they tried no less than 5) and we traveled in and out of ICU. The "helpful" neurologist told us (and I quote), "I have no idea what is happening here, and I would need an autopsy to figure out what was wrong." We began searching for a new hospital.
On March 1, we were transferred, via ambulance, with our precious baby on a ventilator (a precaution, they said) and highly sedated, to another hospital, which, we were told by many sources, was the best epilepsy center in New York. Initially, we were thrilled by how they handled him. They started weaning all the drugs, told us what their new course of action was, and gave us a lot of hope. It was short lived. We lasted a week in the epilepsy unit, before we "took up residence" in PICU. We watched other children come and go, as our baby lay there. He was tried on at least 5 more drugs, a steroid treatment, intravenous immuno-globin, several attempts at heavy duty IV sedation, and finally an induced coma (which of course, involved another respirator, for they were trying to mimic "brain death" with what they called "burst suppression", referring to the EEG pattern). He contracted several infections, potentially fatal bed sores on his head and serious withdrawal, as they tried to remove the coma-inducing drug. Nothing worked. They performed every test known to man looking for some cause. His blood was sent all over the country, they consulted with "experts" from all over the world….nothing. Their diagnosis was "idiopathic epilepsy" meaning "no known cause" and "intractable seizures" meaning unresponsive to any treatment."
By now, I was starting to question the vaccine roll in all this. I was told, "No way. Absolutely not." More probably, they said, my husband and I were carriers of some rare, undiscovered disease. It was now May. They told us in no uncertain terms…he had failed every drug, was not a surgical candidate (nothing there to go after!), not a candidate for the nerve stimulator, we could try the Ketogenic Diet, but it would probably kill him, or, we could "take him home, as is, knowing that he is a prime candidate for 'sudden unexplained death in epilepsy'…and we have no ethical, medical, or religious problem with that." So much for bedside manner.
Since we in no way, believed that he had a metabolic or genetic disease, we tried the diet. It was not super successful, but got us enough control that they were willing to let him come home, but not before they insisted that he needed a feeding tube. They would not even let me try to feed him after he came out of the coma, despite the fact that he had displayed no sucking or swallowing problems prior to that. We reluctantly agreed, after they spent 2 weeks telling us what terrible parents we were for not agreeing to it. After several more mishaps, we finally went home on June 24.
We had to have nursing care at home, as his needs were great and he was severely delayed after all the months of sedation. We found that the "neurologists" were worthless, showing little concern for him when we went for office visits. The "team" that was supposed to be managing his diet (for those who don't know, the Keto diet, is serious medicine, that needs to be followed and administered carefully), was very neglectful, and he wasn't doing well at all. But the "kicker" was his pediatrician, who 3 weeks after his discharge, insisted upon resuming his shots. I was completely worn down, and reluctantly agreed (still not fully appreciating their role in all of this). He gave the baby HepB and HiB, and he immediately spiraled downward again, the seizures returning worse and more violently.
Finally though, in August, we were led to our savior…an osteopath, who is also practices homeopathy. He identified the cause as vaccine reaction, and strains upon the brain and skull, probably partially from his birth, and aggravated by the vaccines. After 5 ½ months of despair and no answers, he gave us answers, and more importantly hope. He is being treated with cranial sacral osteopathy and homeopathy...the results are astounding. We no longer see any neurologist or a "pediatrician," just him. It is slow going, but we are getting our beautiful boy back. He is now 18 months old, and though he still cannot even hold his head up or sit alone, he is getting stronger each day. We have slowly been able to start weaning the drugs, which I believe, are holding him back developmentally. He is smiling again, and laughing too (which they told me at the hospital he would never do). His strength is returning slowly, but steadily. While the feeding tube is still there (for now), I only use it for meds…he eats by mouth again. We discontinued the Ketogenic diet in Oct., after his blood work came back awful, indicating all kinds of dietary deficiencies. He is on a regular diet, and enjoying his meals. His days are full of Early Intervention therapies, but he works hard, as if he knows that they are his ticket to wellness. His seizures are not completely gone (yet), but they are less severe (much), less frequent, and manageable. We are confident that he will be rid of them. As of the beginning of Feb., we have been able to let the nurses go, and our lives are starting to return to normal. I still cringe whenever I think of that day I let them give my baby shots when he was sick and on antibiotic, but then, I think too, that the reaction had already started, and the new round in Jan., was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I cry every time I think about where we should be now, with 2 kids running around the house and driving me crazy; I cry when I see people with happy, healthy children his age; I am angry that our lives took such a horrible turn…but I cannot allow myself to stay in these terrible places. I have to direct all my energies to getting him well, and know that when he is, all of this will just be an unpleasant memory, and we will have a happy "normal" life.
We made a report to VAERS, but honestly, I think that is just a waste. They don't seem really interested in establishing a connection, just placating angry parents. I find it so hard to get others, even family and close friends, to see the truth. We have friends who are still vaccinating their children, even after they have seen first hand what the shots can do. As for us, we know the truth. I think it is horrible that the government feels that even the death of one child (or anyone) is acceptable for the "greater good." Well, thanks for allowing me my opportunity to vent. I hope sharing our story helps someone; either to think twice before vaccinating, or to give another like us hope that healing can happen. God bless us all.
-Janine (March 2003)
My son Nicholas James Walker-Hertzog, was born on December 13, 2002 at 5:05am. It took an awful lot to get him here. I spent most of my pregnancy in and out of of the hospital and on bed rest. Despite the odds against him he came into this world at 6lbs. 6oz. and 18 inches long. We were very proud of him. He was a very happy and strong little boy.
Very sadly he only lived until Valentine's Day Feb. 14, 2003. He was only two months and one day old. I took him to the emergency room at 5:00am (I only live six houses away from the emergency room so we just ran down the street with him in my father's arms) and he was pronounced at 5:02am, they didn't even try to revive my baby. When I found him that morning he was still warm, he wasn't stiff and he wasn't blue. There was no reason for them to not try to revive him. He didn't seem like he was under for that long. Besides they wouldn't know for sure how long he was under for until they did an autopsy. When my grandfather died in his sleep they still tried to revive him and he was actually stiff and blood had already began to settle along his arms and legs. And I read another website dedicated to the memory of a little girl who died from SIDS and she was stiff and cold when her parents found her and the EMTs still tried to revive her. If my grandfather and this other little girl were given the chance to be revived, then why wasn't my son? It just seemed that the hospital didn't even want to try to save him. They just wanted to push SIDS on me and call it a day.
At first I was told by the doctor in the emergency room that it was probably SIDS. Which it very well may have been but I firmly believe that he had a reaction to the vaccines he was given less than 48 hours before his death. There is a lot of speculation that vaccines may be a cause for SIDS. And that may also be true or it may not be true. All I do know is that all of the information I have read on SIDS states that it is when an infant dies suddenly (hence the name), showing no signs that something was wrong before hand, it is what they label an infants death when there is no cause of death.
Looking back on it now Nicholas showed signs that something was wrong. He was never the same after we left the doctors office the day he received his vaccinations (DTaP,IPV,Hib, and Prevnar). He screamed constantly with a very high pitched cry, he didn't want to eat, and he had gotten very pale. He did show signs that something was wrong. Myself being a first time mom contributed his actions to discomfort from being vaccinated. Which his pediatrician told me he would have since he was getting so many vaccines. I never thought that when I put him to bed on that night that he would die.
I can see how my sons death is very similar to what happens when babies die from SIDS. He did die in his sleep and there was nothing found in the physical autopsy to attribute to his death. Which just basically means all of his organs looked okay and they were normal. That is true but if he had a reaction to the vaccines that wouldn't make any of his organs appear abnormal anyway. I have read and I have been told so many times before and after my sons birth, "Place him on his back to sleep, and not on his stomach." I was told this because this is supposed to reduce the risk of SIDS. However Nicholas never slept on his stomach. He would have tummy time but I always placed him to sleep on his side or his back. The only risk factor he had against him was that he was a male and he was born in the winter. I was told all of that after he died. That 60% of the infants who die of SIDS are boys, and most of the SIDS deaths occur in the winter. Why wasn't I told this before hand?
Obviously that information was available then and my doctors knew that he was going to be a boy (I found that out in August) and that he was going to born in the winter (I knew that just as soon as I found out I was pregnant) so there was plenty of time before he was born to tell me that he was at risk for SIDS, but no one ever told me. I was told about all kinds of other things, but not SIDS. I was told every time I spoke to his doctor, "move him around a lot and switch sides while he is laying on his side so his head won't get flat in one spot." To me that is something cosmetic and I would much rather have my son here with a flat head than not have him here at all. I would rather hear about and receive information on something that may claim his life then hear about something that may only affect his physical appearance.
Since my sons death, besides working at a hair salon and day spa, I have decided to research the link between vaccinations and SIDS. I have come up with several interesting points. The first being the most obvious. The highest number of SIDS deaths takes place between the ages of 2 and 4 months. Just the same time our children are being vaccinated at the heaviest. All of the researches are looking at the vaccines individually for a cause for SIDS. But maybe its not the vaccines themselves, maybe its just the quantity and the time they are given. At the time a baby turns two months old they are given four vaccines. Not one, or two, or three, but....FOUR!!! And each of those vaccines have several different parts and several things that they vaccinate against so its like they are really get much more than four.
When a baby is born it takes three months for their immune system to become fully developed. So why in the world would doctors put these things in a two month old body if their immune system isn't fully developed to fight it off? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
We made a report to VAERS, but honestly, I think that is just a waste. They don't seem really interested in establishing a connection, just placating angry parents. I find it so hard to get others, even family and close friends, to see the truth. We have friends who are still vaccinating their children, even after they have seen first hand what the shots can do. As for us, we know the truth. I think it is horrible that the government feels that even the death of one child (or anyone) is acceptable for the "greater good." Well, thanks for allowing me my opportunity to vent. I hope sharing our story helps someone; either to think twice before vaccinating, or to give another like us hope that healing can happen. God bless us all.
-Janine (March 2003)
My son Nicholas James Walker-Hertzog, was born on December 13, 2002 at 5:05am. It took an awful lot to get him here. I spent most of my pregnancy in and out of of the hospital and on bed rest. Despite the odds against him he came into this world at 6lbs. 6oz. and 18 inches long. We were very proud of him. He was a very happy and strong little boy.
Very sadly he only lived until Valentine's Day Feb. 14, 2003. He was only two months and one day old. I took him to the emergency room at 5:00am (I only live six houses away from the emergency room so we just ran down the street with him in my father's arms) and he was pronounced at 5:02am, they didn't even try to revive my baby. When I found him that morning he was still warm, he wasn't stiff and he wasn't blue. There was no reason for them to not try to revive him. He didn't seem like he was under for that long. Besides they wouldn't know for sure how long he was under for until they did an autopsy. When my grandfather died in his sleep they still tried to revive him and he was actually stiff and blood had already began to settle along his arms and legs. And I read another website dedicated to the memory of a little girl who died from SIDS and she was stiff and cold when her parents found her and the EMTs still tried to revive her. If my grandfather and this other little girl were given the chance to be revived, then why wasn't my son? It just seemed that the hospital didn't even want to try to save him. They just wanted to push SIDS on me and call it a day.
At first I was told by the doctor in the emergency room that it was probably SIDS. Which it very well may have been but I firmly believe that he had a reaction to the vaccines he was given less than 48 hours before his death. There is a lot of speculation that vaccines may be a cause for SIDS. And that may also be true or it may not be true. All I do know is that all of the information I have read on SIDS states that it is when an infant dies suddenly (hence the name), showing no signs that something was wrong before hand, it is what they label an infants death when there is no cause of death.
Looking back on it now Nicholas showed signs that something was wrong. He was never the same after we left the doctors office the day he received his vaccinations (DTaP,IPV,Hib, and Prevnar). He screamed constantly with a very high pitched cry, he didn't want to eat, and he had gotten very pale. He did show signs that something was wrong. Myself being a first time mom contributed his actions to discomfort from being vaccinated. Which his pediatrician told me he would have since he was getting so many vaccines. I never thought that when I put him to bed on that night that he would die.
I can see how my sons death is very similar to what happens when babies die from SIDS. He did die in his sleep and there was nothing found in the physical autopsy to attribute to his death. Which just basically means all of his organs looked okay and they were normal. That is true but if he had a reaction to the vaccines that wouldn't make any of his organs appear abnormal anyway. I have read and I have been told so many times before and after my sons birth, "Place him on his back to sleep, and not on his stomach." I was told this because this is supposed to reduce the risk of SIDS. However Nicholas never slept on his stomach. He would have tummy time but I always placed him to sleep on his side or his back. The only risk factor he had against him was that he was a male and he was born in the winter. I was told all of that after he died. That 60% of the infants who die of SIDS are boys, and most of the SIDS deaths occur in the winter. Why wasn't I told this before hand?
Obviously that information was available then and my doctors knew that he was going to be a boy (I found that out in August) and that he was going to born in the winter (I knew that just as soon as I found out I was pregnant) so there was plenty of time before he was born to tell me that he was at risk for SIDS, but no one ever told me. I was told about all kinds of other things, but not SIDS. I was told every time I spoke to his doctor, "move him around a lot and switch sides while he is laying on his side so his head won't get flat in one spot." To me that is something cosmetic and I would much rather have my son here with a flat head than not have him here at all. I would rather hear about and receive information on something that may claim his life then hear about something that may only affect his physical appearance.
Since my sons death, besides working at a hair salon and day spa, I have decided to research the link between vaccinations and SIDS. I have come up with several interesting points. The first being the most obvious. The highest number of SIDS deaths takes place between the ages of 2 and 4 months. Just the same time our children are being vaccinated at the heaviest. All of the researches are looking at the vaccines individually for a cause for SIDS. But maybe its not the vaccines themselves, maybe its just the quantity and the time they are given. At the time a baby turns two months old they are given four vaccines. Not one, or two, or three, but....FOUR!!! And each of those vaccines have several different parts and several things that they vaccinate against so its like they are really get much more than four.
When a baby is born it takes three months for their immune system to become fully developed. So why in the world would doctors put these things in a two month old body if their immune system isn't fully developed to fight it off? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
Let me give you my background... My first daughter, Brittany, was born on Aug. 31, 1993, perfectly healthy and perfectly beautiful. I had just turned 21, thought I had a decent grasp on motherhood, came from a large family. I never questioned the necessity of vaccinations, it never occurred to me that it she didn't HAVE to have them. She didn't have any immediate reactions to any of her shots, maybe a small fever and a little sleepiness, but nothing major. In 1995, Brittany had a bout with Asthma, she was diagnosed with it, but it seems to have gone away. She was only affected by it for about 5-6 months. At the time I didn't see any connection to her vaccinations, although I think now and I'm not sure if there was a vaccine that she received at that time.
My second daughter, Morgan was born on June 28, 1997, again perfectly healthy and perfectly beautiful. Again, I didn't question the vaccines because I still didn't know any better. Morgan never had any immediate reactions either. Before she turned two I moved to a large city and met some new friends, we'd just started home schooling. A few of them had never had their children vaccinated. At first I was surprised, but I was curious, so I started asking questions about why they didn't vaccinate. It was like a blazing light was turned on in my head, why had I blindly followed what the government and the doctors told me was best for my child. At this point I knew the gov't. didn't know what was best for my child as far as education was concerned, why would medical be any different. Brittany and Morgan never received another vaccination.
Within a few month I was pregnant with Shayna, she was born on June 1, 2000. I swore on everything that is holy to me that no vaccine would ever touch her little body. The nurses at the hospital got hostile with me while I was in recovery for my C-Section because I didn't want them to give her any shots, or the cream they put in their eyes, none of it. Finally the nurse said that they had to give her the Vit. K and the cream in the eyes unless I had a letter from my Pediatrician. *rolls eyes* Naturally given my state at that moment I caved and said fine, but I made my husband stay with Shayna and make sure they didn't do anything else to her. I was so paranoid that they'd try to vaccinate her that she stayed in my room in the hospital every possible second. The only time she went to the nursery was for an hour each morning when the ped dr was doing his rounds. (I should have made him walk to my room every day. LOL) Anyhow, I thought I had escaped all these horror stories that I was finding on the internet about babies dying after vaccines, etc. On Memorial Day, May 28, 2001, Brittany was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I had rushed her to the ER because she'd lost a lot of weight, her face was pale, eyes sunken, short and shallow breaths, rapid heartbeat. When we got to the hospital her sugar was 594, she had large ketones and large quantities of blood in her urine. We stayed in the hospital for 4-1/2 days, had major cramming sessions with her new endocrinologist, dietician and Diabetes Educator Nurse. My 3 new best friends. I asked the dr the day she was dx'd what caused it, he asked about family history, there is absolutely none on either side, mine or her father's. He said that they are suspecting a virus that may be causing it. He said it was a flu-like virus, hence hard to detect. I believed every word he said, I didn't know any different. I didn't know at the time that vaccines were being connected to IDDM (Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus). It was a perfect cover-up, whether he intentionally covered or if that is what has been fed to him. Bet your ass I'm going to ask him the next appointment she has in April. The issues with her kidneys (blood in the urine) have been resolved, the nephrologist is satisfied that there has been no permanent damage done to her kidneys yet. She goes to the ophthalmologist every year, she just saw him Monday, she doesn't have any Diabetic Retinopathy yet. I wouldn't mind seeing all these doctors if they would just stop using the word YET. On the whole she is doing good, but it is very difficult to keep her sugars level. There are times when I just want to chuck it all out the window and give up, however, I know she would die in a fairly short period of time.
Isaiah received his vaccinations Fri. Jan. 10, 2003. He weighed in at 16lbs and was 24 and a half inches long. In the afternoon. He slept all day Sat. We could not hardly wake him up to feed him. He slept all day Sunday also. Sun evening he was running a low grade fever about 101. During church he started crying and we prayed for him because we thought he just felt bad because of his shot. Fever is a well know side affect. When we left church his fever had subsided. Monday he seemed fussy but not bad. My daughter had a doctors appt in Mineral Wells which is about 24 miles from where we live. So she took Isaiah with her. She had been in the doctors office for about 30minutes when she called me to please come get him she said he had been screaming since she left and she couldn’t get him to quiet down. I drove to pick him up and when I got there one of the girls in the office was holding him and he was screaming. I took him and I couldn’t console him. I had never seen anything like it. I could always get him to quit crying. I left and when we started driving he stopped crying. We went to Wal-Mart and bought a few things and when we started checking out he started screaming again. We left and he screamed most of the way home. He was real fussy that night. I don’t remember about Tuesday but my Mom who kept him during the day said that Wed. he was real fussy, and just needed to be held. He was also waking up a lot during the night . Thursday night he seemed fine, I bathed him and took him to see a friend of mine. He was laughing and talking to me. I rocked him to sleep when we got home. The next morning my daughter woke up and found him dead.
My story began 16 years ago, without any support from other Moms. I thought my son was the only child in the world who was affected. I had no idea what was wrong, but I didn't give up trying to find out. I had a 54 hour labor with my little gem! When he was born, he was very jaundiced. When that was resolved he became very constipated for periods of weeks, then there were periods of explosive diarrhea. Tried to breastfeed he seemed allergic. Switched to formula, and went through at least five. Soy caused projectile vomiting. No sleeping, no naps, I know most of you Moms know what I'm talking about!! At 3 1/2 we went to see Dr. Doris Rapp in Buffalo, New York. We were there for three days. He had allergy testing, and he was allergic to about 50 different foods and inhalants. She put him on her course of treatments much like the DAN Drs. today. He finally hit the weight and growth charts for the first time at 5 years old. Hooray!!
My son couldn't take any changes. He lined up toys, he did not pretend play. He had meltdowns where he hit, bit, but was actually adding through the tables up to four at two. From the time he was 18 months old he was doing puzzles for 5 to 10 year olds. I thought this was normal being my first child, until my sisters informed me NO WAY! This is getting too long! He was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 14. He developed all his language on time.
My purpose at this time is vaccine awareness. No one informed me, it's imperative other parents are informed. After the DPT at four months he had an encephalitic reaction. His first MMR booster, he was hospitalized with severe gastroenteritis. IV in a baby is no fun! I went through all my AS son's records and found out he was back at the peds after every vaccine, and he either lost or didn't gain weight for at least a month.
My little three yr. old son had a hypo-responsive reaction to his third DTaP vaccine. At nine months, he developed almost a full body rash underneath his skin after the Prevnar vaccine, which had only been approved for one month. Something also very weird happened. It was the only vaccine he received that day. I was holding him and watched the needle go in, I saw a lot of blood, and some of the vaccine itself come back out. The ped handed my husband a tissue, and told him to wipe the baby off. My husband is a contractor, and his hands are always full of splits. Three days later, he came down with a fever of 104 degrees. He couldn't lift his head, the pains in the back of his head and neck were so horrendous. I have never seen this man so sick. It lasted for a month with every test imaginable done. The only thing he wouldn't do was a spinal tap. In retrospect I wish he had done it. A rheumatoid arthritis titer was positive, which he had seen a specialist for. At this time, all titers are negative. He couldn't work, and the fevers continued. An apt was made with an infectious diseases specialist, but right before the apt, his fever subsided. I believe he had Pneumococcal meningitis. I spoke with the PCP about it, and he said that there is an incubation period. I said this didn't go in the usual route, which he had no reply for.
My journey began a long time ago, and I've spent countless hours researching the medical conditions that could cause the symptoms our children go through. On the vaccine issue I've spent more time. Our kids have immune, genetic and neurological frailties. They need to be tested before these needles are stuck in these precious bodies. Most of my time and efforts, (besides taking care of five boys, and a husband) has been devoted to this cause through Childscreen. Since last February I've had my head buried in research, and also helping with the website. I'm also very active with getting vaccine information out to all the groups.
Below, I'm including some of the package insert from Dow Chemicals DPT from the 1960's. My sister's children were all born in the '60's, and her pediatrician fractioned their doses, because they all reacted. I was diagnosed with a dairy allergy at birth, as well as my two sons. I believe my three yr. olds vaccine reaction was a blessing in disguise, because the next would have been the MMR, CP, and fourth DTaP. There are more allergic reactions recorded with the DTaP than the whole cell pertussis.
Cindy Stolten
http://www.childscreen.org
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic2/tripedia_ad.htm
http://www.childscreen.org/Adverse%20events%20reported%
20after%20and%20fifth%20dose%20of%20DT%20Vaccine.htm
Dow Chemical Company's DPT product insert in the 1960's states: "fractional doses are recommended in infants with cerebral injury, asthma, a strong family history of allergy..." In 1961, Hooper found that in a group of babies who reacted violently to the pertussis vaccine, there was twice as much eczema, asthma, hay fever, and allergic skin rashes in the child, his brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents as there was in a control group of the same size. In 1969, Hannik found a positive family history of allergies in a significant proportion of infants who reacted with high pitched screaming, shock and convulsions.
A 1982 study by Stienman concludes that genetic predisposition may play a role in pertussis vaccine reactions and suggests that a personal or family history of allergies, particularly milk allergy, may be a warning sign. Steinman's work has been reinforced by reports from parents whose children are allergic to milk and have reacted to the vaccine. An allergy to milk may be manifested by severe constipation, diarrhea, projectile vomiting or frequent spitting up of significant amounts of milk after bottle or breast feeding, persistent crying after feedings (colic), eczema or recurrent skin rashes.
Aust Fam Physician 1976 Jul;5(6):734-55
Over-immunization-an ever present problem.
Trinca JC.
The development of purified vaccines for the control of common infectious diseases may lead to a sense of false security and a tendency to over-immunize. Repeated antigenic challenge may cause hypersensitivity reactions which could harm the individual. For each vaccine there is an optimum time and age for dosing; for those vaccines requiring a course of doses, there is a minimum but no maximum time interval between the doses. In Australia, active immunization is conducted on a regular basis against seven preventable infectious diseases. In this article, the vaccine control each disease is discussed briefly and suggestions made to avoid hyperimmunization. The need to appreciate the dangers inherent in all immunization procedures in general, and in certain vaccines in particular, is emphasized. Indiscriminate immunization cannot be condoned
I'm Kate, stay at home mom to 4 children, aged 7, 5, 2-1/2 and 2 months. I started questioning vaccines when my daughter (the 5 year old) was 16 months old and developed epilepsy. She was nearly due for her 18 month booster, and I read somewhere that children with a personal or family history of seizures should not receive the pertussis vaccine. I asked around, got different answers everywhere, and realized I had better figure it out on my own. My daughter's MMR was the last vaccine any of my children received. Unfortunately, we think it was one too many, because we now look back and think it was the cause of my daughter's seizures. Thankfully, she has now been pretty much seizure free for 3 years and med free for 2, so we are very lucky. I'm now gearing up for the upcoming battle over my youngest not getting the shots.
Kate
I am Juli mother to vaccine damaged Nicollette diagnosed with Rett Syndrome. Considering that they have never really tested vaccines for carcinogenic and mutagenic effects there is no way they can dismiss the possibility also if it can cause cancer and genetic mutations in rats and bunnies how so do they think humans will be any more special as to not suffer similar affects? Think about it. Rett Syndrome, Fragile X (which is similar as it also like Rett Syndrome effects the X chromosome) and Angelman Syndrome amongst countless other 'brand new' genetic diseases weren't seen, or observed, or about, fifty years ago. many of these conditions are cropping out in 1960s, 1970's. 1980s just out of nowhere.
Have the child tested for stealth viruses, also metals levels. You may be surprised at what you find. Just a lot of mislabeling, separate the conditions but its all the same *VACCINE DAMAGE*.
Okay but I went and got Child Protective Services called on me days after arguing with a genetic doctor and some others because you get informed and dare challenge them and question them and that's what happens. But 'tis okay. because I know the truth now and it doesn't take much to realize common sense when it stares at you in the face. So I don't care about their medical licenses hanging on their walls. You read through the Pubmed/medline publications and its all there. And it's the price of being deliberately misled.
I am sorry about your friend. Rett Syndrome is a terrible condition. Nicollette is doing well with DAN doctors and homeopaths. Please steer your friend away from conventional medicine. Nicollette would be tubefed, in a wheel chair on six different harsh medications all with a different side effects of their own if I continued her under their care. She runs, swims, self feeds and these are skill she lost that were REGAINED through alternative methods that Child Protection and social services seem to constantly question. And now the meds say that it's simply that Nicollette is higher functioning. These girls conditions can get bad fast. And traditional medicine will only make things worse. I've seen it happen with Nicollette. she is now on no drugs, just supplements and special diets and I'm not letting any of them near her to ruin the progress she has made.
Here is this from ouralexander.org:
This information is taken directly from their inserts as it is published in the Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR, 51st edition, Medical Economics Co. Inc., 1997). The last column is of most interest.
TYPE OF VACCINE MANUFACTURER BRAND NAME AGES PRESCRIBED STUDIES ON CARCINOGENIC POTENTIAL ACCORDING
TO MANUFACTURER
Chickenpox (Varicella) Merck Varivax 12 months and older
No studies conducted
DTP Lederle Tetramune 2 months to 5 years "Tetramune has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential."
DTP Lederle Tri-Immunol 2 months to 7 years
No studies conducted
DTP Connaught Tripedia 15 months to 7 years
"Tripedia has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential."
DTP Lederle Acel-Immune 17 months to 7 years "Acel-Immune has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential"
DTP(whole cell pertussis)SmithKline Beecham 6 weeks to 7 years "Animal and human studies concerning possible
carcinogenic or teratogenic effects have not been done."
Hepatitis A SmithKline Beecham Havrix Over two years old "Havrix has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic
or mutagenic potential."
Hepatitis B Merck Recombivax "infants"
No studies conducted
Influenza type b
Haemophilus b conjugate
with diphtheria protein Lederle HibTITER 2-71 months
"HibTITER has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential."
Influenza type b
Haemphilus b conjugate
with tetatus toxoid conjugate Connaught ActHIB 2 months to 5 years
No studies conducted
Japanese encephalitis virus Connaught JE-VAX One year and older "No studies have been performed to evaluate
carcinogenicity or mutagenic potential."
Measles live Merck Attenuvax 15 months and older
No studies conducted
Measles, Mumps, Rubella live Merck M-M-R 15 months and older No studies conducted
Measles, Rubella (live) Merck M-R-Vax 15 months and older No studies conducted
Mumps (live) Merck Mumpsvax 12 months and older No studies conducted
Polio (live) Lederle Orimune 6 weeks to 18 years No studies conducted
Poliovirus (inactivated) Connaught IPOL "infants, children and adolescents" "Studies in animals to evaluate carcinogenic potential have not been conducted."
Rubella and mumps (live) Merck Biavax II 12 months and older
No studies conducted
Rubella (live) Merck Meruvax 12 months to puberty
No studies conducted
None of the vaccines injected into children have ever been tested for their carcinogenic (cancer causing), mutagenic (mutation causing), or teratogenic (developmental malformation causing) potential. Not a single one. Can these chemicals that are injected into healthy children cause cancer? The people manufacturing the vaccines (the drug companies) and the bureaucrats mandating the drugs can't say because no studies have ever been conducted. In summary, federal and state governments are mandating that infants and children swallow and be injected with substances that have never been tested for their ability to cause cancer, mutations or developmental malformations. In the meantime, the drug companies are grossing billions of dollars on sales of these potentially carcinogenic products.
read more at: http://ouralexander.org/burton.htm
My story began 16 years ago, without any support from other Moms. I thought my son was the only child in the world who was affected. I had no idea what was wrong, but I didn't give up trying to find out. I had a 54 hour labor with my little gem! When he was born, he was very jaundiced. When that was resolved he became very constipated for periods of weeks, then there were periods of explosive diarrhea. Tried to breastfeed he seemed allergic. Switched to formula, and went through at least five. Soy caused projectile vomiting. No sleeping, no naps, I know most of you Moms know what I'm talking about!! At 3 1/2 we went to see Dr. Doris Rapp in Buffalo, New York. We were there for three days. He had allergy testing, and he was allergic to about 50 different foods and inhalants. She put him on her course of treatments much like the DAN Drs. today. He finally hit the weight and growth charts for the first time at 5 years old. Hooray!!
My son couldn't take any changes. He lined up toys, he did not pretend play. He had meltdowns where he hit, bit, but was actually adding through the tables up to four at two. From the time he was 18 months old he was doing puzzles for 5 to 10 year olds. I thought this was normal being my first child, until my sisters informed me NO WAY! This is getting too long! He was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 14. He developed all his language on time.
My purpose at this time is vaccine awareness. No one informed me, it's imperative other parents are informed. After the DPT at four months he had an encephalitic reaction. His first MMR booster, he was hospitalized with severe gastroenteritis. IV in a baby is no fun! I went through all my AS son's records and found out he was back at the peds after every vaccine, and he either lost or didn't gain weight for at least a month.
My little three yr. old son had a hypo-responsive reaction to his third DTaP vaccine. At nine months, he developed almost a full body rash underneath his skin after the Prevnar vaccine, which had only been approved for one month. Something also very weird happened. It was the only vaccine he received that day. I was holding him and watched the needle go in, I saw a lot of blood, and some of the vaccine itself come back out. The ped handed my husband a tissue, and told him to wipe the baby off. My husband is a contractor, and his hands are always full of splits. Three days later, he came down with a fever of 104 degrees. He couldn't lift his head, the pains in the back of his head and neck were so horrendous. I have never seen this man so sick. It lasted for a month with every test imaginable done. The only thing he wouldn't do was a spinal tap. In retrospect I wish he had done it. A rheumatoid arthritis titer was positive, which he had seen a specialist for. At this time, all titers are negative. He couldn't work, and the fevers continued. An apt was made with an infectious diseases specialist, but right before the apt, his fever subsided. I believe he had Pneumococcal meningitis. I spoke with the PCP about it, and he said that there is an incubation period. I said this didn't go in the usual route, which he had no reply for.
My journey began a long time ago, and I've spent countless hours researching the medical conditions that could cause the symptoms our children go through. On the vaccine issue I've spent more time. Our kids have immune, genetic and neurological frailties. They need to be tested before these needles are stuck in these precious bodies. Most of my time and efforts, (besides taking care of five boys, and a husband) has been devoted to this cause through Childscreen. Since last February I've had my head buried in research, and also helping with the website. I'm also very active with getting vaccine information out to all the groups.
Below, I'm including some of the package insert from Dow Chemicals DPT from the 1960's. My sister's children were all born in the '60's, and her pediatrician fractioned their doses, because they all reacted. I was diagnosed with a dairy allergy at birth, as well as my two sons. I believe my three yr. olds vaccine reaction was a blessing in disguise, because the next would have been the MMR, CP, and fourth DTaP. There are more allergic reactions recorded with the DTaP than the whole cell pertussis.
Cindy Stolten
http://www.childscreen.org
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic2/tripedia_ad.htm
http://www.childscreen.org/Adverse%20events%20reported%
20after%20and%20fifth%20dose%20of%20DT%20Vaccine.htm
Dow Chemical Company's DPT product insert in the 1960's states: "fractional doses are recommended in infants with cerebral injury, asthma, a strong family history of allergy..." In 1961, Hooper found that in a group of babies who reacted violently to the pertussis vaccine, there was twice as much eczema, asthma, hay fever, and allergic skin rashes in the child, his brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents as there was in a control group of the same size. In 1969, Hannik found a positive family history of allergies in a significant proportion of infants who reacted with high pitched screaming, shock and convulsions.
A 1982 study by Stienman concludes that genetic predisposition may play a role in pertussis vaccine reactions and suggests that a personal or family history of allergies, particularly milk allergy, may be a warning sign. Steinman's work has been reinforced by reports from parents whose children are allergic to milk and have reacted to the vaccine. An allergy to milk may be manifested by severe constipation, diarrhea, projectile vomiting or frequent spitting up of significant amounts of milk after bottle or breast feeding, persistent crying after feedings (colic), eczema or recurrent skin rashes.
Aust Fam Physician 1976 Jul;5(6):734-55
Over-immunization-an ever present problem.
Trinca JC.
The development of purified vaccines for the control of common infectious diseases may lead to a sense of false security and a tendency to over-immunize. Repeated antigenic challenge may cause hypersensitivity reactions which could harm the individual. For each vaccine there is an optimum time and age for dosing; for those vaccines requiring a course of doses, there is a minimum but no maximum time interval between the doses. In Australia, active immunization is conducted on a regular basis against seven preventable infectious diseases. In this article, the vaccine control each disease is discussed briefly and suggestions made to avoid hyperimmunization. The need to appreciate the dangers inherent in all immunization procedures in general, and in certain vaccines in particular, is emphasized. Indiscriminate immunization cannot be condoned
I'm Kate, stay at home mom to 4 children, aged 7, 5, 2-1/2 and 2 months. I started questioning vaccines when my daughter (the 5 year old) was 16 months old and developed epilepsy. She was nearly due for her 18 month booster, and I read somewhere that children with a personal or family history of seizures should not receive the pertussis vaccine. I asked around, got different answers everywhere, and realized I had better figure it out on my own. My daughter's MMR was the last vaccine any of my children received. Unfortunately, we think it was one too many, because we now look back and think it was the cause of my daughter's seizures. Thankfully, she has now been pretty much seizure free for 3 years and med free for 2, so we are very lucky. I'm now gearing up for the upcoming battle over my youngest not getting the shots.
Kate
I am Juli mother to vaccine damaged Nicollette diagnosed with Rett Syndrome. Considering that they have never really tested vaccines for carcinogenic and mutagenic effects there is no way they can dismiss the possibility also if it can cause cancer and genetic mutations in rats and bunnies how so do they think humans will be any more special as to not suffer similar affects? Think about it. Rett Syndrome, Fragile X (which is similar as it also like Rett Syndrome effects the X chromosome) and Angelman Syndrome amongst countless other 'brand new' genetic diseases weren't seen, or observed, or about, fifty years ago. many of these conditions are cropping out in 1960s, 1970's. 1980s just out of nowhere.
Have the child tested for stealth viruses, also metals levels. You may be surprised at what you find. Just a lot of mislabeling, separate the conditions but its all the same *VACCINE DAMAGE*.
Okay but I went and got Child Protective Services called on me days after arguing with a genetic doctor and some others because you get informed and dare challenge them and question them and that's what happens. But 'tis okay. because I know the truth now and it doesn't take much to realize common sense when it stares at you in the face. So I don't care about their medical licenses hanging on their walls. You read through the Pubmed/medline publications and its all there. And it's the price of being deliberately misled.
I am sorry about your friend. Rett Syndrome is a terrible condition. Nicollette is doing well with DAN doctors and homeopaths. Please steer your friend away from conventional medicine. Nicollette would be tubefed, in a wheel chair on six different harsh medications all with a different side effects of their own if I continued her under their care. She runs, swims, self feeds and these are skill she lost that were REGAINED through alternative methods that Child Protection and social services seem to constantly question. And now the meds say that it's simply that Nicollette is higher functioning. These girls conditions can get bad fast. And traditional medicine will only make things worse. I've seen it happen with Nicollette. she is now on no drugs, just supplements and special diets and I'm not letting any of them near her to ruin the progress she has made.
Here is this from ouralexander.org:
This information is taken directly from their inserts as it is published in the Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR, 51st edition, Medical Economics Co. Inc., 1997). The last column is of most interest.
TYPE OF VACCINE MANUFACTURER BRAND NAME AGES PRESCRIBED STUDIES ON CARCINOGENIC POTENTIAL ACCORDING
TO MANUFACTURER
Chickenpox (Varicella) Merck Varivax 12 months and older
No studies conducted
DTP Lederle Tetramune 2 months to 5 years "Tetramune has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential."
DTP Lederle Tri-Immunol 2 months to 7 years
No studies conducted
DTP Connaught Tripedia 15 months to 7 years
"Tripedia has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential."
DTP Lederle Acel-Immune 17 months to 7 years "Acel-Immune has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential"
DTP(whole cell pertussis)SmithKline Beecham 6 weeks to 7 years "Animal and human studies concerning possible
carcinogenic or teratogenic effects have not been done."
Hepatitis A SmithKline Beecham Havrix Over two years old "Havrix has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic
or mutagenic potential."
Hepatitis B Merck Recombivax "infants"
No studies conducted
Influenza type b
Haemophilus b conjugate
with diphtheria protein Lederle HibTITER 2-71 months
"HibTITER has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential."
Influenza type b
Haemphilus b conjugate
with tetatus toxoid conjugate Connaught ActHIB 2 months to 5 years
No studies conducted
Japanese encephalitis virus Connaught JE-VAX One year and older "No studies have been performed to evaluate
carcinogenicity or mutagenic potential."
Measles live Merck Attenuvax 15 months and older
No studies conducted
Measles, Mumps, Rubella live Merck M-M-R 15 months and older No studies conducted
Measles, Rubella (live) Merck M-R-Vax 15 months and older No studies conducted
Mumps (live) Merck Mumpsvax 12 months and older No studies conducted
Polio (live) Lederle Orimune 6 weeks to 18 years No studies conducted
Poliovirus (inactivated) Connaught IPOL "infants, children and adolescents" "Studies in animals to evaluate carcinogenic potential have not been conducted."
Rubella and mumps (live) Merck Biavax II 12 months and older
No studies conducted
Rubella (live) Merck Meruvax 12 months to puberty
No studies conducted
None of the vaccines injected into children have ever been tested for their carcinogenic (cancer causing), mutagenic (mutation causing), or teratogenic (developmental malformation causing) potential. Not a single one. Can these chemicals that are injected into healthy children cause cancer? The people manufacturing the vaccines (the drug companies) and the bureaucrats mandating the drugs can't say because no studies have ever been conducted. In summary, federal and state governments are mandating that infants and children swallow and be injected with substances that have never been tested for their ability to cause cancer, mutations or developmental malformations. In the meantime, the drug companies are grossing billions of dollars on sales of these potentially carcinogenic products.
read more at: http://ouralexander.org/burton.htm
Adrina is fully vaccinated and Jillian has only 6 months of vaccines, and to be honest I really don't know which ones she has had! I know I need to get that info and see what she has had. Anyway, when I was pregnant with Jillian a friend at church mentioned that vaccines were damaging. I thought she was nuts, and then I had read a few things, this made me wonder, but not enough to not vaccine. DH also mentioned he didn't want the baby vaccinated, but didn't give me evidence as to why. It was not until 3/01 that I started researching and reading and finding out the horrors of vaccines. I had met this woman who didn't vaccinate and she told me of some book titles and so I read them and was just shocked.
Some of the problems Adrina has had that I believe are due to vaccines are the following: Night terrors (she'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night or from naps....but not be really awake. She would thrash around and scream uncontrollably. After certain shots she would sleep for 24hrs (give or take an hour or 2) and she was not able to be awakened! This scared me.....24hrs with out eating or drinking a single thing! It was like she was in a coma. Also at the injection sites she would swell up and have a large red & hot lump. Other times she would just cry and cry. I never really thought anything of it, just thought it was normal.
She had trouble with bedwetting until a few months before her 7th birthday. I read this is also a problem from vaccines....but not 100% sure if her case is linked, but I don't doubt it is. She gets sick more than her little sister does. And recently they had this nasty virus that really knocked their immune system down, and SHE wound up with ITP (a blood disorder) and DH & I believe Jillian didn't get this because her system has not been "damaged" in the ways that Adrina's has by the vaccines. Jillian is/was alot more alert and interactive up to the age she is now (2½) than Adrina ever was. Jillian started to shows signs of going in the same direction as Adrina when she was being vaxed....(the sleeping, crying, and red/hot lumps from shots)
Anyway, that is our story.
Melinda
My brother: completely deaf in one ear, partial hearing loss in second ear -result of MMR vaccine as child - subsequent severe life-threatening asthma and allergies
Me: 10 years old - nonlockjaw tetanus from tetanus shot. 20 years old -developed measles and mumps after MMR in college (1989), subsequent severe food allergies, animal and environmental allergies, every hairspray, every makeup, every facial cleanser, you name it - I am allergic to it. IBS, CFS, myofacial pain syndrome, etc., etc.
My daughter (5.5) - began hitting herself in the face after developing measles from MMR, developed sensory integration dysfunction - intolerant to dairy
My son (2) - born perfectly healthy, robust 9 lbs., 10 oz. - very happy,easy baby, nursed well, was sleeping through night, early babbling sounds until the first round of shots. Then by 16 months: mercury poisoning - was severely autistic, headbanging 50 - 100 times per day, spinning, stims, licking things, not with us, had never played with toys, severe reflux with aspiration, severe food allergies, leaky gut syndrome, severe yeast, phenol intolerance, OT issues, nonverbal - all problems began immediately following first round of shots - fast forward to today - not a single autistic behavioral trait detectable, still dealing with leaky gut and food intolerances. Must remain casein, gluten, soy, corn - free - can only eat six foods: rice, potato, pear, chicken, pork, and brocolli. Elimination diet, homeopathy, and supplements are keeping autistic behaviors at bay. "Bad" food exposure causes relapse. Developmentally aged at 12 months. Introduction of Culturelle (probiotic) and last few rounds of homeopathy - XXXXXX talks! Nonstop! :) Can't understand a word he says but by golly we will!
My friends pre-d (for me that is "pre-discovery" of the pharma-cartel and the disgusting truth about vaccines) do not understand me and do not want to know the truth. So I can't talk about it there. My husband's family thinks my son is "too beautiful to be autistic" and that we can deal with the "food allergies" because they are "no big deal." My husband and my mother are the only ones that understand. And, of course, my beloved email friends - THANK YOU! Unfortunately, that means I have no one to refer for the group. Life post-vaccine-damaged child is very lonely.
I look forward to learning from all of you. Unfortunately, I work from home and my time is limited so my checking in will be sporadic but I'll be here.
Truly,
Erica
Hi, my name is Ellen Sweeney, I am a single mom to 5 kids, 2 with developmental disabilities and 1 child with Asthma/Reactive Airway disease. My other 2 children have no issues. We reside in Brick, NJ. Kim is 12 and my oldest. She developed Hydrocephalus at the age of 3 months just 2 weeks after her 2 month shots-HepB, DTaP, and HiB. She was shunted at 8 months after 5 months of testing and therapies . She was diagnosed less than a year ago with ADHD, OCD, ODD, and a co-morbid anxiety/mood disorder.
Megan is 8 and my 3rd child. When she was born she had an Apgar score of 10 She was one of those 24 hour release babies, receiving her HepB vax the morning of discharge at 1 day old. She developed a pneumothorax(collapsed lung)12 hours post-vaccination. She was diagnosed with ashtma at the age of 6 months. The next 7 years were spent with numerous doctors visits, ER trips, and hospital stays to treat her asthma, on more than one occasion er attacks were labelled "life-threatening" by her pulmonologist.
Nicholas, is age 7 and my 4th child. He was developing normally through his first year, meeting all developmental milestones at or sooner than targeted age. He spoke, was very responsive to touch, and enjoyed the company of his siblings. Each immunization he received in his first year of life resulted in a reaction---fever, lethargy, etc. At 13 months of age he received his MMR vaccination and I truly believe that this immunization dealt the final blow to his delicate immune system. After a period of about only a few weeks, he began to change, losing words, tantrumming, stimming, screaming when touched, and refusing to eat.....by the time he was 16 months, he lost all skills. I was told by our pediatrician at the time that he was going through a "phase". At 22 months he began head-banging and SIB. He was diagnosed with Autism 2 weeks shy of his 2nd birthday. He was also subsequently diagnosed with ADHD, Semantic Pragmatic Language Disorder at the age of 4 1/2 and Heavy Metal Toxic at the age of 6.
I have been researching the dangers of vaccines for close to a year and I truly believe their is a correlation between my children's issues and their vaccinations. My children were all vaccinated in the past but now have a religious exemption from immunization. I am currently the NJ chapter director for The Autism Autoimmunity Project and am attempting to start a local group to educate the public on the dangers of vaccines and to also support and education parents on their treatment options and educational rights for their children. Most parents here place an undeserving trust in their child's doctor to tell them what is best for them, without informing them of the dangers of vaccination. I am hoping to play a part in making sure this changes and parents become informed. No child should suffer the way my children have and still do.
Ellen Sweeney
esweeney22@comcast.net
or
taap-nj@comcast.net
Some of the problems Adrina has had that I believe are due to vaccines are the following: Night terrors (she'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night or from naps....but not be really awake. She would thrash around and scream uncontrollably. After certain shots she would sleep for 24hrs (give or take an hour or 2) and she was not able to be awakened! This scared me.....24hrs with out eating or drinking a single thing! It was like she was in a coma. Also at the injection sites she would swell up and have a large red & hot lump. Other times she would just cry and cry. I never really thought anything of it, just thought it was normal.
She had trouble with bedwetting until a few months before her 7th birthday. I read this is also a problem from vaccines....but not 100% sure if her case is linked, but I don't doubt it is. She gets sick more than her little sister does. And recently they had this nasty virus that really knocked their immune system down, and SHE wound up with ITP (a blood disorder) and DH & I believe Jillian didn't get this because her system has not been "damaged" in the ways that Adrina's has by the vaccines. Jillian is/was alot more alert and interactive up to the age she is now (2½) than Adrina ever was. Jillian started to shows signs of going in the same direction as Adrina when she was being vaxed....(the sleeping, crying, and red/hot lumps from shots)
Anyway, that is our story.
Melinda
My brother: completely deaf in one ear, partial hearing loss in second ear -result of MMR vaccine as child - subsequent severe life-threatening asthma and allergies
Me: 10 years old - nonlockjaw tetanus from tetanus shot. 20 years old -developed measles and mumps after MMR in college (1989), subsequent severe food allergies, animal and environmental allergies, every hairspray, every makeup, every facial cleanser, you name it - I am allergic to it. IBS, CFS, myofacial pain syndrome, etc., etc.
My daughter (5.5) - began hitting herself in the face after developing measles from MMR, developed sensory integration dysfunction - intolerant to dairy
My son (2) - born perfectly healthy, robust 9 lbs., 10 oz. - very happy,easy baby, nursed well, was sleeping through night, early babbling sounds until the first round of shots. Then by 16 months: mercury poisoning - was severely autistic, headbanging 50 - 100 times per day, spinning, stims, licking things, not with us, had never played with toys, severe reflux with aspiration, severe food allergies, leaky gut syndrome, severe yeast, phenol intolerance, OT issues, nonverbal - all problems began immediately following first round of shots - fast forward to today - not a single autistic behavioral trait detectable, still dealing with leaky gut and food intolerances. Must remain casein, gluten, soy, corn - free - can only eat six foods: rice, potato, pear, chicken, pork, and brocolli. Elimination diet, homeopathy, and supplements are keeping autistic behaviors at bay. "Bad" food exposure causes relapse. Developmentally aged at 12 months. Introduction of Culturelle (probiotic) and last few rounds of homeopathy - XXXXXX talks! Nonstop! :) Can't understand a word he says but by golly we will!
My friends pre-d (for me that is "pre-discovery" of the pharma-cartel and the disgusting truth about vaccines) do not understand me and do not want to know the truth. So I can't talk about it there. My husband's family thinks my son is "too beautiful to be autistic" and that we can deal with the "food allergies" because they are "no big deal." My husband and my mother are the only ones that understand. And, of course, my beloved email friends - THANK YOU! Unfortunately, that means I have no one to refer for the group. Life post-vaccine-damaged child is very lonely.
I look forward to learning from all of you. Unfortunately, I work from home and my time is limited so my checking in will be sporadic but I'll be here.
Truly,
Erica
Hi, my name is Ellen Sweeney, I am a single mom to 5 kids, 2 with developmental disabilities and 1 child with Asthma/Reactive Airway disease. My other 2 children have no issues. We reside in Brick, NJ. Kim is 12 and my oldest. She developed Hydrocephalus at the age of 3 months just 2 weeks after her 2 month shots-HepB, DTaP, and HiB. She was shunted at 8 months after 5 months of testing and therapies . She was diagnosed less than a year ago with ADHD, OCD, ODD, and a co-morbid anxiety/mood disorder.
Megan is 8 and my 3rd child. When she was born she had an Apgar score of 10 She was one of those 24 hour release babies, receiving her HepB vax the morning of discharge at 1 day old. She developed a pneumothorax(collapsed lung)12 hours post-vaccination. She was diagnosed with ashtma at the age of 6 months. The next 7 years were spent with numerous doctors visits, ER trips, and hospital stays to treat her asthma, on more than one occasion er attacks were labelled "life-threatening" by her pulmonologist.
Nicholas, is age 7 and my 4th child. He was developing normally through his first year, meeting all developmental milestones at or sooner than targeted age. He spoke, was very responsive to touch, and enjoyed the company of his siblings. Each immunization he received in his first year of life resulted in a reaction---fever, lethargy, etc. At 13 months of age he received his MMR vaccination and I truly believe that this immunization dealt the final blow to his delicate immune system. After a period of about only a few weeks, he began to change, losing words, tantrumming, stimming, screaming when touched, and refusing to eat.....by the time he was 16 months, he lost all skills. I was told by our pediatrician at the time that he was going through a "phase". At 22 months he began head-banging and SIB. He was diagnosed with Autism 2 weeks shy of his 2nd birthday. He was also subsequently diagnosed with ADHD, Semantic Pragmatic Language Disorder at the age of 4 1/2 and Heavy Metal Toxic at the age of 6.
I have been researching the dangers of vaccines for close to a year and I truly believe their is a correlation between my children's issues and their vaccinations. My children were all vaccinated in the past but now have a religious exemption from immunization. I am currently the NJ chapter director for The Autism Autoimmunity Project and am attempting to start a local group to educate the public on the dangers of vaccines and to also support and education parents on their treatment options and educational rights for their children. Most parents here place an undeserving trust in their child's doctor to tell them what is best for them, without informing them of the dangers of vaccination. I am hoping to play a part in making sure this changes and parents become informed. No child should suffer the way my children have and still do.
Ellen Sweeney
esweeney22@comcast.net
or
taap-nj@comcast.net
Nicholas is 6 yrs old, diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, Semantic Pragmatic Language Disorder(SPLD), and Heavy Metal Toxicity. Nicholas was born and was developing neurotypically until the age of 13 months immediately following his MMR. All routine vaxes up to that point were given, and after all he exhibited a fever, rash, swelling at the injection site, and insomnia after his first DTaP, the opposite happened and I had trouble waking him). After he was given the MMR, he just seemed to change. My once playful affectionate and happy child slipped away from us . He began stimming, banging his head, tantrumming and lost all the speech he had acquired to that point. At the age of 2 yrs and after insistence for awhile by his pediatrician that he was going "through a stage", Nicholas was diagnosed with Autism. At the age of 4, he was diagnosed with ADHD and SPLD. After 3 years of behavioral and speech therapies, Nicholas improved but wasn't completely well...When Nicholas was 6, I became aware of the link between vaccination and Autism and had him tested for metal toxicity. It was at this time he was diagnosed with Heavy Metal Toxicity due to high levels of mercury, aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, iron, lead....I truly believe Nicholas's vaccines played an integral part of his development of his disabilities, each vaccine affecting his delicate developing neurological and immune systems, with the MMR delivering the final devastating blow. We are slowly on our way to recovery preparing his delicate system for the rigors of chelation to remove the metals from his body and to make his body well again.....The journey will be a long one but it is one I am willing to take to help my son recover and return to us, healthy and happy once again........
We, as parents, placed an undeserving trust in the medical community to tell us what was necessary to help protect our children and keep them out of harm's way and as a result, my son became vaccine-damaged.... Our government needs to realize and acknowledge the damaging effects that mandatory vaccines have on our children. I lost my neurotypical son to vaccine-damage as did countless other parents due to the dangerous vaccines that the medical community push on us to help "protect" them...Some children have even lost their lives as a result of vaccine side-effects....All these children are not acceptable losses to us.....Our main question is when is this loss going to become unacceptable to our government and to the medical community? When is it going to end?
Ellen Sweeney, Brick, NJ (esweeney22@comcast.net)
Mentally handicapped gun collector arrested in Mora shooting death
Associated Press
Published August 15, 2003
MORA15
MORA, Minn. -- A mentally handicapped gun collector was charged Thursday in a triple shooting that killed his mother and wounded his father and stepmother. Ryan C. Miller, 26, was charged with second-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. Kanabec County Sheriff Steve Schulz said they no motive for the shootings. ``I really don't know why he went off,'' he said. In a court statement three years ago, Miller's mother, Deborah Miller, said her son was disabled and ``emotionally, mentally, physically and socially delayed from the seizures, surgery and medications'' he had experienced.
Her son began to have seizures at age 2 1/2 after a vaccination, and they were so severe that they could not be controlled by medication alone, his mother said. In 1988, at age 10, he had a temporal lobectomy, surgery to remove part of the brain where seizures seemed to originate. She said in 2000 that he had then been seizure-free for more than two years. Various neighbors described the man as ``slow,'' someone who made them nervous, but a man who loved his parents and gave tips on gardening.
Sometimes Miller seemed to be ``a 26-year-old man caught in the mind of a boy,'' said neighbor Harley Anderson. ``He's always been really a sweetheart to us.'' The shootings left Deborah Miller, 49, dead; Randolph Miller, 53, wounded in the neck and Laurie Miller, 46, with a shoulder wound. Randolph and Laurie Miller were expected to survive. The sheriff, neighbors and court records portray a split family, often prickly relationships with some residents of their rural neighborhood and a son who sometimes walked along the highway carrying a rifle. Schulz said Miller shot his mother in the head with a rifle Tuesday at her home, then apparently walked across vacant land to his father's house less than a mile away. It appeared that the father was shot once outside the house and the stepmother was shot once as they drove away, the sheriff said.
Miller was arrested several hours later while lying on the living room floor of his father's house, the sheriff said. ``He's talked to us'' but did not give a motive, he said. People who knew Miller said he loved collecting old guns - especially World War II rifles. Several neighbors said they frequently heard shooting on the Millers' property. Milo Kadlec said Miller told him that when he gets angry, ``I go out and shoot.'' Ronnie Hendershot said he was working on a boat trailer in his yard Tuesday when ``I heard the shooting going on for the longest time. ``I thought it was somebody sighting their deer rifle,'' he said. ``But it kept going on. I thought to myself 'Geez, are they ever going to get it sighted in?''' It wasn't until after officers arrived that he knew something was wrong. Miller had been accused of making terroristic threats to a coworker in 1999, Schulz said. No charge shows up on computerized state and county records, however. The sheriff said he knew of no domestic calls involving the family but ``a few minor incidents'' involving property disputes with neighbors.
In abmd@yahoogroups.com, "Steve Z" <jjmaterials@m...> wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10020-2003Jul31.html
A Child's Severe Reaction to a Vaccine Alters Life Something was wrong with Porter
By Sarah Bridges
Sunday, August 3, 2003; Page W12
This is the lesson you don't get in the parenting books: Sometimes bad things happen from doing the right thing for your baby. Porter's high-pitched scream woke us at midnight. When I ran to the nursery and picked him up, his sleeper was damp and his head flopped to the side. My husband grabbed the phone and punched in the number for the pediatrician. "Hurry," I yelled, even though Brian was dialing as fast as he could. He reached for Porter, then handed me the phone. "It's the nurses' line," he said. "What's the problem?" a voice on the other end asked calmly. "Our baby has a fever and is listless. He was fine today," I said. "The doctor said he was perfectly healthy at his well-baby appointment this afternoon." "Did he get his vaccines?" "Yes." "It's probably the shots -- fevers are typical after the DPT." "But he isn't waking up."
Her voice changed. "Get to the emergency room -- I'll tell them you are on your way." Brian pulled Porter's 2-year-old sister, Tyler, out of her bed and strapped her, still sleeping, into her car seat. The freeway was empty as we barreled to the hospital, the windows in the car opened for air. Porter lay on my lap with his eyes closed, and my legs felt hot under his body. We turned past the bar with the sign that read, "THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE." A nurse met us at the emergency room entrance and carried Porter to an examining room. Within minutes of arriving, Porter began a 90-minute grand mal seizure. Watching helplessly, I was pressed against the wall as a doctor jammed a breathing tube down my son's throat. Porter, just 4 months old, lurched on the table while nurses stuck syringes of Valium into his arms. After a minute, the doctor turned to me and said, "Don't worry, we'll stop it. I'm sure about that. It's just that we may need to sedate him to the point that he'll quit breathing." In that instant, in that one sentence, everything I took for granted vanished. At first, the doctors thought Porter would be fine. They said it was a bad reaction -- a rare side effect to the pertussis vaccine, which can cause seizures in some children and brain injury in others -- but that brain damage was so rare we shouldn't think much about it. Of course, I couldn't think of anything else but the worst-case scenario. When Porter awoke in one piece, he seemed alert, but beyond that we were guessing. The day after his seizure the pediatrician asked, "Does he still do the same things he did before the reaction?" My mind went blank as I struggled to recall what exactly a 4-month-old did. After 72 hours in the hospital Porter was smiling again, and by the end of the day he was allowed to go home. Porter seemed fine, and I told everyone who asked about him how lucky we were. And then two weeks later he stopped breathing. I was home alone getting ready for work and drying my hair as Porter lay beside me on a blanket. When I smiled down at him, Porter's eyes were frozen and his lips were blue. I screamed and put my cheek against his mouth to check if he was breathing. I didn't feel anything. I grabbed the phone and punched in 911, tapping my foot through two slow rings. "Emergency, can I help you?" "My baby stopped breathing." "Tell me what he looks like."
I screamed, "His face is blue!" as I clutched Porter in my arms. She said loudly, "You need to stop yelling so I can help you." I forced myself to concentrate as she guided me through baby CPR, and I did the two-fingered presses until I heard the rescue truck pull up outside. We lived a block from the station, so the firefighters came first, tromping up the stairs in blue coveralls and boots. A case like a tackle box banged the wall beside me as they circled around Porter and then moved me out of the way. A man dropped to his knees and took over for me until Porter started breathing -- one quick little gasp.
We scrambled into the ambulance and the paramedic tucked a bear onto the stretcher beside Porter, saying, "The church ladies make these." I watched the numbers on the oxygen gauge flash every few seconds -- holding my breath, fixated on the monitor. Once at the hospital we learned that the original seizure wasn't a fluke but the first in what would become an intractable seizure disorder. This time Porter had stopped breathing, as people sometimes do, in the midst of an intense episode. As they hooked Porter to a breathing monitor we would later take home, a doctor in clogs pulled me aside. I recognized him immediately -- he had treated Porter during his first hospitalization. "I filed a report with the CDC about Porter's reaction to the pertussis shot. Do you know about the National Vaccine Injury Act?" I shook my head.
"It's a program set up by Congress to compensate for the medical needs of children injured by vaccines. I think you might want to look into it." With that he handed me a phone number and turned down the hall to answer a page. I tucked the paper into my pocket, reassuring myself that it wasn't that bad. After all, they said Porter just had epilepsy -- and I knew that could be treated. Following the second hospitalization, Porter began taking phenobarbital. I cringed at the thought of giving my 5-month-old a barbiturate. The readings I had done on it studying for my PhD in experimental psychology suggested that it could impair a child's intelligence. Porter's neurologist put these fears in perspective when he said, "The New England Journal of Medicine just did a big study of the drug and found that it may lower IQ by five points. I don't think that small a drop is even noticeable." I mixed the crushed pills into jam that night and fed them to Porter. While I understood that the majority of people with a seizure disorder respond to medication, Porter's seizures continued unabated. By the end of his second year he'd been hospitalized 14 times to stop seizures -- some of which went on for hours. Though Porter received no definitive diagnosis during this time, the early language and behavior problems he was experiencing indicated he might have autism -- something we gradually came to believe was true.
After 12 different medications, two more years and no change in the seizures, I came to stop investing hope in traditional medicine. Reading broadly on the subject of health, I came across the books of Andrew Weil and decided a natural approach to eating might make a difference. One morning I stripped the processed food out of the pantry, bought organic, got a water filter and threw out the microwave. We added vitamins to Porter's diet,scrapped the Froot Loops, stopped eating meat and stocked up on tofu. The whole family got into the act, and it soon became clear that the new diet was affecting Porter's sister, Tyler -- more than we guessed. One day, while Tyler was eating tofu pups, our babysitter told me, "The minute you went out this morning Tyler pulled me over to the freezer." "What did she want?" "She didn't say anything at first, she just opened the door and pointed. After looking around she said, 'Quick, Mom's gone, can we have some bacon?'
"
Despite giving up meat for tofu, the change was worth it. The natural diet seemed to be working. For 24 days straight Porter went without a seizure. I gave the doctor weekly updates, and he encouraged me, saying, "I'd love it if you find something that works for Porter. It's obvious I can't figure it out." But just as quickly, the diet stopped working. The first time Porter had a seizure after we began the diet, I blamed it on something else (he was sick or tired), and carried on as if nothing had happened. But then he had another seizure that night, and it was impossible to deny. I saw the doctor the next day, and again he raised the medications, saying, "They can always go higher." Giving Porter an extra dose controlled the seizures for several weeks with one drawback: The medication revved him up, and his activity level soon eclipsed the original problem. Additionally, as a good-sized 4-year-old, he was capable of significant destruction. At least beforehand there was time to take a breath after a seizure. Now I dreaded the unstructured time of weekends. One particular Saturday was typical of the way our days were taking shape: By 9 a.m. Porter had microwaved a fork and scribbled on the walls. Then I heard clapping and ran into the bathroom to find that he'd stuffed the toilet with toothbrushes and Kleenex. He giggled and said, "Don't touch knives," as the bowl overflowed. As I sopped up the water with towels, Porter darted past me and threw kibble around the living room, yelling, "EAT DOG." We needed to get out of the house, so I loaded the kids into the car to drive to an indoor park while Brian unclogged the toilet. Upon arrival, we piled our coats on a metal bench and lined up for the slide. At the top of the slide steps, a boy Porter's age asked him, "Do you want to go first or should I?" Porter flapped his hands and jumped up and down. Then he turned around and bolted down the steps, knocking over a toddler. I set her back on her feet and said, "Slow down, Porter." He looked at me and answered, "Hi, Porter." "Right -- slow down." Porter climbed on the platform behind him, grabbed the fire pole, and jumped. He hung there, stuck, unable to figure out how to slide to the ground, until I lifted him down. "Don't do that," I told him. A minute later he was dangling on the pole again. We repeated this four more times until I was distracted taking a drink of water. I looked back just in time to see a hearty woman in snow boots falling on her back with Porter on top of her. The only warning she had was when Porter yelled, "Jump!" "I am sorry," I said, as I pulled the woman to her feet. She looked dazed. "He's much faster than he looks." I grabbed our coats and called Tyler to go. She walked over slowly. "But we just got here." "I know, but Porter's getting in trouble." "We never stay at the park."Come on -- we need to go." While unlocking the car, I told Porter to stay by my side, but a moment later he declared, "Home," and headed off across a snowy field. He marched toward a frozen lake and I raced to catch up to him, then led him back to the car and buckled him into the booster seat. As we made our way out of the parking lot, Tyler asked, "On my birthday can I stay at the park for at least 10 minutes?" Family life wasn't the only area affected by Porter's behavior. When his day-care providers told us that they could no longer watch him due to his hyperactivity, our social worker recommended a specialist, a professor in my psychology doctoral program and an expert in managing difficult children. He arrived at our house after dinner and sat on the floor to observe our family. Within moments, he laid out his straightforward approach: "Ignoring unwanted behavior is your best weapon." Porter threw a block and hit him in the back of the head. "What about tantrums?" I asked. "Especially tantrums." "Even in the grocery store?"
"Yes, stay detached -- just pick up any food he throws." I tried to picture doing this. "But, if he does cross the border of appropriateness, you'll need to act." "What then?" "You need to save the nuclear weapon for that -- the basket hold." This technique involves pinning your child's arms to his side and carrying him away. I tried the doctor's advice the very next time we were at the Discovery Zone, when Porter saw a party and ran over to grab a piece of pizza from the birthday boy's hands. The psychologist's advice seemed great until I realized that I'm not good at ignoring screaming. And I'm terrible at tuning out the stares of other parents -- the ones who never carry their children through the produce aisle in a basket hold. Instead, I scooped up Porter, one arm and one leg, and carried him around the kids in the birthday hats and toward the parking lot. Walking past one 5-year-old boy in the group, I heard him ask, "Can I have an airplane ride when he's done?"
Another seizure, another hospitalization. I knew from our last hospital stay that the drugs would make Porter sleep for a day. We watched him anyway until lunchtime, sitting in his ICU room, Tyler stretched out on the floor building a tower out of tongue depressors. When we finally went to the parents' lounge to eat takeout pizza, Tyler skipped ahead of us navigating the way, still in her feety pajamas from the night before. As we finished our meal, Brian sighed and said, "The screen door at home is ripped -- animals are going to get into the porch." "We'll fix it later." I said it too loudly, and the family next to us stopped chewing and stared.
"When?" he asked. "We never have time to get anything done." "It's not even that cold yet." "I've got over 40 finals to correct -- I'm constantly behind." "I can't handle thinking about anything right now," I snapped. "It's not as if everything else in our lives stops." The woman next to us beckoned Tyler over and gave her a fortune cookie. I heard her say, "Look out, they're stale," as Tyler pulled up a chair at her table. "Let's talk about it later, Brian." "You always get so cool and practical," he said. "And you always sound depressed."
"I've already missed two weeks at work -- I only have two more sick days." "They'll understand," I said. "It's not that easy -- you always want to make it sound simple." "We have to get through this, and then we can figure it out." We both stood and cleared our plates, leaving our extra napkins under the note about prayer services. Shortly after this, Brian and I nearly split up. But before giving in we tried marriage counseling and made a commitment to work harder. As we looked forward to what lay ahead, we decided to have another baby. I'd always hoped to have at least three children, and we believed it would be good for Tyler to have a sibling she could truly talk to. But there was more to it than that. I secretly wanted a chance to make up for what had happened to Porter. I didn't blame myself -- I knew rationally that I hadn't done anything wrong. But on some level, being unable to help him year after year was equally bad. For this reason, I was determined to do everything exactly right for the next baby. It started with my pregnancy diet -- when Brian stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work, I gave him my list: "Spinach, lean meat, fruits, and cheese. NO JUNK FOOD." Brian glanced at it and said, "What's this?" "I'm off sugar. And can you get those eggs from the chickens who listen to classical music and run free?"
Our focus continued after our baby, Jackson, arrived. We carried him everywhere, and I nursed him for a full year. The day he turned 5 months old, I watched him as he lay across my lap, smiling. It struck me then: Jackson had brought something good and light to the family. But it still didn't make up for what had happened to Porter. Brian took a sabbatical from his teaching job to be home with the baby, though it was Porter who received most of the attention that year. His behavior became increasingly impulsive and required minute-to-minute supervision. And despite more medications, the seizures continued anytime, anywhere. Soon after, I learned about a magic bullet -- a way to feed your child that kept him seizure-free and off medication. I was introduced to the "ketogenic diet" a month before Porter was 4, when a mother in my seizure support group played a clip from "20/20" profiling a doctor who was using high-fat meals to control epilepsy. This was an about-face. No more Newman's Own Organics -- now the focus was on 90 percent saturated fat entrees. I called our neurologist the next morning, and he agreed that the diet was worth a try, though he warned us from the start that he didn't have high hopes. But there was one catch to the ketogenic diet: You need to starve the patient for a few days to kick-start the ketosis -- the state in which your body is burning its own fat for fuel. This requires hospitalization as a precaution. We checked into the hospital on a Thursday morning and began watching videos on a wheeled-in VCR. Over and over I answered Porter's pleas for food with, "We'll eat in a little while." After 24 hours Porter became docile, rolling over only occasionally to grab my arm and ask quietly, "Bagel?" By the 48-hour point they began serving 1/3-size meals, and Porter was ecstatic. When the tray arrived and I pulled the cover off to reveal four tiny piles, I was startled. There was a teaspoon of applesauce, a tablespoon of whipping cream, a bite of scrambled egg and a glob of margarine on a saucer. Porter ate it all in seconds, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and looking for more. We stayed at the hospital for another two days, eating butter and cream and watching for seizures. Once we got home the excitement over this new approach began to dim as we fed Porter mayonnaise while everyone else ate lasagna and French bread. He was agreeable initially, lying on the living room floor next to a boombox listening to music with his face in his hands. He held a blanket and ran his fingertips over the edges, staring at us as he did it, a hundred miles away.
We held out on Porter's high-fat diet until the first seizure happened nine days later. When several followed, he went back on multiple medications. Throughout this time we tried testing -- testing his behavior, his coordination, his speech, his urine, his enzymes, his liver, his metabolism and his brain as 5-year-old Porter's other difficulties became more apparent. While other kids his age played T-ball and learned the alphabet, and had long since been toilet-trained, Porter was stalled at the level of a 2-year-old. Most obvious was the strange way he communicated. When I got Porter ready to leave the house, he would hold a foot out to me and say, "Tie your shoe." More irritating was the way he became locked into phrases -- repeating them over and over like a record skipping. He'd say, "That's funny. That's funny. That's funny. That's funny." As I was running one morning with Porter in the baby jogger, he started in, "Stupid head, stupid head, stupid head," in a monotone voice. I tried to ignore it, jogging faster, hoping the runner's high would kick in. But 20 minutes later he was still at it. "Stupid head," I heard from below me. Finally I'd had enough. I stopped the jogger, got down on one knee, and leaned in close to him. "Stop saying that, Porter, it isn't nice." There was a pause as I stood back up and started running again. A minute later I heard below me, "Dummy head."
After years of daily seizures, canceled vacations and midnight trips to the hospital, my marriage broke up. Brian moved out, and we began an arrangement of equal-time shared custody of the children. It was during one of my weeks with the kids that Porter was hit by a car. I'd taken them grocery shopping and had just buckled Porter into his seat. As I turned to load groceries he wriggled out, slipped through my arms and dashed into the street. I called his name, and it seemed to hang in the air, and in the next moment I heard brakes squeal and Porter scream. An old man's voice yelled, "Oh my God!" I dropped the groceries and ran around the car, asking the man, "Was he hit?" Porter was crumpled on the street. Cars stopped and people gathered around us as I knelt on the wet pavement holding him in my arms. A woman bent down and said in my ear, "An ambulance is on its way, hang in there." "Mama," Porter whimpered. I took off the helmet he now wore to protect his head in the event of a seizure. People pulled blankets out of their cars. Porter clutched his foot and cried. The police arrived first, then the ambulance. An officer stood over us and jotted down information in a tiny notebook. He asked, "How did it happen?" I answered, "He's autistic and hyperactive." He closed his pad and said, "It was an accident, then." The initial examination indicated that his foot was broken, but otherwise he would be all right. A month after Porter's accident, we summarized all of his medical records as we filed his vaccine injury with the special governmental court in charge of these cases. Despite the interventions, his seizures were intractable and his other disabilities unchanged. Results from his special education testing confirmed what we'd suspected for a long time -- Porter was severely retarded. The government received our petition and immediately conceded. A vaccine injury had caused permanent brain damage. As part of the settlement the government set up a trust to provide for all of Porter's medical needs. In support of the case, Porter's doctors wrote letters sharing what they saw for his future: All three agreed he would never hold a job or live independently. Here's a part of the story I wish I could leave out: the day I realized that I could no longer take care of Porter alone. The morning I first considered it, I'd called in sick to work because Porter had been up much of the night prowling the house. Shortly before breakfast, he'd had a seizure, which made it impossible for him to go to his special education class. By lunchtime he was back on his feet, and I'd taken Jackson and him to the park before picking up Tyler at school. After a few minutes in the sand, Porter got bored and climbed the jungle gym. As I lifted Jackson out of the baby swing I saw Porter hanging from the top of the slide. His pants had come unbuttoned and hung around his ankles as he swung there grinning in his helmet. A minute later he had a seizure, falling off the platform and landing in the sand below. I ran to him and held him on my lap until the shaking stopped, trying to figure out what to do. I attempted to pick him up, but as a large 5-year-old, he was getting more difficult to carry. He was also in no shape to be moved, so we sat under the slide for 45 minutes waiting for him to wake up. I looked at my watch and realized I was late to get Tyler -- and had no way to reach the school and tell them what had happened. Jackson whined beside me and pulled on my shirt to be held. I decided we had to go, hoisted Porter over a shoulder, and balanced Jackson on a hip. With stops and starts we made it to the car, only to realize I'd left my purse with the key in it back at the park.
I flagged a woman over and asked if she would go to the playground and find my bag. She stared at us for a moment -- Porter in his diaper passed out on my lap, Jackson on the ground with a blanket over his face -- before nodding and running back to the park. Then I sat on the curb and watched the other families walk to the park in their flip-flops. A mother turned to her son and said, "Keep up, honey, you always walk so slowly." The boy skipped along, kicking a beach ball ahead of him. I strained to watch them until they disappeared over the hill -- I could still hear him laughing even after he was gone. A few nights later, I invited our social worker over for dinner to ask her advice. After an evening with the family, she said, "There is a woman in town that specializes in taking care of autistic children. She's done amazing things with some of the kids and is the best there is. Let me speak with her." What I didn't know at the time was that this woman, Ramona, had recently decided to stop taking new children. Each placement represented a potential 10- to15-year commitment, and she thought it might be a good time to take a break from such care. But our social worker persisted, and Ramona agreed to meet. Months later, when I asked Ramona what changed her mind about taking a new child, she said simply, "I met Porter." On the day of our first visit, Ramona greeted me at the door of her three-story Victorian, barefoot, with a warm smile, holding back the two dogs yapping behind her. She invited me in and sat down to talk, not stopping until the sunlight had faded outside.
I visited Ramona again a week later and spent an afternoon with her. As we talked, she told me about another child she cared for. "He was 5 when he moved in here and never spoke," she said. "The doctors thought he wasn't able to because of abuse he'd suffered. We worked at it for quite a while and I was able to get him to open up." Ramona leaned forward. "What the doctors don't know is how he first started talking." "How?" I asked. "I was driving with him and heard a siren behind us, which I pointed to and said, 'Oh look -- there's a police car.' He smiled sweetly and turned to look. As the squad car passed us he stuck his head out the window and yelled, 'Motherf -- ing pigs!' That was my clue that he could talk if he wanted to." As we spoke, Jacob, who lived with Ramona, walked into the room and snuggled next to her on the couch. "I have had good luck with some of the kids -- you know I helped Jacob get toilet-trained when he was 11. But it's because I'm not his mother that I can do a lot of it. Ignoring a tantrum doesn't rip my heart out." After Porter and Brian met Ramona, Brian and I agreed that it was best for everyone to have Porter move in with her. But I saw that it wasn't that simple: While I knew in my heart that we were doing the right thing, I had never felt so guilty in my life. Porter had his first trial overnight three weeks later. Ramona picked him up, and he yelled, "Bye, Mommy," as she led him by the hand to the driveway. I saw his helmet through the back window of the car as she drove off. I sat on the couch after they left, holding a sweat shirt of his and crying, not moving until my legs were stiff. When the sun was completely down I called Ramona. "How is he doing?" I asked. I know this is hard to hear, Sarah," she said, "but he hasn't asked for you at all. It's not like it would be for one of your other kids being away from home. You have to believe me when I say that it's good he is responding this way." Porter moved in with Ramona soon after that, visiting us on weekends. The following summer Ramona and I took Porter and Tyler and Jackson to a rented cabin. After a day of swimming we put Porter in the tub, and I sat on the floor next to Ramona as we gave him his bath. I trickled water on his head and washed his hair while Ramona scrubbed his feet one at a time. Porter clapped his hands as we did it and said, "Hi, Mommy." In unison, we both said hello back.
Sarah Bridges is a psychologist and writer living in Minneapolis
When Connor was 5.5 months old he became more whiny and didn't seem so interested in his toys anymore - I put this down to teething. Within a couple of weeks his head kept dropping down briefly at the same time all his muscles would relax. We took him to the GP who said it was probably nothing to worry about. Another week of this the episodes were increasing and he was becoming very upset and did nothing but make a strange noise almost constantly. We took him to A&E and he was admitted to the hospital.
www.vaccine-info.com/dpt/evans_medical_trivax.htm
He had loads of tests including an EEG. The diagnosis we were given was Infantile Spasms and having never heard of this before we thought it sounded mild until the consultant filled us in. It's a rare infant form of epilepsy which can be caused by many things, including brain damage in-uterou, tuberous sclerosis, vaccines..... www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/infantile.html
We were told that Connor would probably never walk or talk and would be retarded, and then sent home with him and an Anti Epileptic drug called Sodium Valproate. Connor had a Very Bad reaction to this med, so we went straight back up the hospital where he was monitored hourly until he started to 'come back' to us three days later. He was then put on Vigabatrin, which has been a complete Godsend. The spasms stopped within a couple of weeks and by September his EEG had normalised. He has been off this med since December last year and he is pretty much like a normal toddler - Thank God!!!!
Anyway, if you're not bored of my essay yet and still with me the reason I've joined this group is that I'm convinced it was his vaccinations that caused this illness. Funnily enough, one of the first questions we were asked at the hospital was whether his immunisations were up to date but we thought nothing of it at the time.
I have done loads of research over the last year and I'm completely horrified as to what I've found out about vaccines, drug companies etc... I'm one of the people who had complete trust in the medical profession when they told me Connor was due his jabs, and to be honest it never even crossed my mind that anything could happen. After all, no-one told me of any side effects - can't believe I was so stupid.
Needless to say, Connor will be having NO more vaccines and we've already declined the Hib booster and MMR with no problems from the GP. I'm very happy to have found this group, and hope that more and more people can find out the truth about vaccines so that no more children can be damaged.
Love to all
Lisa UK
http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/publish/article_7073.shtml
Mother sues over MMR jab
A Shropshire mother is suing an American drug company for more than £50,000 amid claims that the controversial MMR jab could have led to her son developing autism. Jayne Koczy, who is landlady of the White Hart pub in Shifnal, believes the triple vaccination may be responsible for her nine-year-old son Michael's learning difficulties. The youngster, who goes to the Bridge Special School in Brookside, Telford, has severe speech and communication problems and needs round-the-clock care. Mrs Koczy, 40, said her son had developed normally until having the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine in 1995 when he was 13 months old. Shortly afterwards she noticed he was not responding when his name was called and was not progressing as expected. He was diagnosed as having severe learning difficulties at two years old. She said not knowing whether or not the jab had caused the problems had prevented her from having another child.
"I wanted to know, why him? He had two healthy parents, no difficulties in either family going back for centuries and nothing to suggest he would have these problems in the first year of his life." Mrs Koczy said she had not associated her son's learning difficulties with the vaccination until a friend had asked her about her son's problems before the MMR jab. She said she had checked her baby book, a record of the child's development, and found that he had progressed normally until shortly after the injection. She said more than 900 people were involved in the action being brought by solicitors Hodge, Jones and Allen against Merck and Co Inc, based in New Jersey.
"There are other cases where the influence of MMR is far more obvious than mine. We will be comparatively minor witnesses. I would like to know one way or another." The Government has always insisted the jab is safe and does not lead to learning difficulties. It maintains medical research has not provided a conclusive link between the vaccine and autism and there is no acceptance among medical authorities that the jab causes the symptoms experienced by the children.
Published December 28, 2003
Teen disabled by vaccine prepares for life on own
A rare reaction to an immunization crippled J.J. Coffelt's muscles, but not her spirit.
By Kathryn Buckstaff
Copyright 2003 News-Leader
Cheri Coffelt stops stirring the pot of spaghetti sauce and looks over her shoulder at her 18-year-old daughter. "I know what you're up to," she tells J.J. The girl with long brown hair has jiggered the joystick on her wheelchair, and with a quick electric whir she's nearly in a standing position. Now the cup of Dr Pepper on the lap tray is within easy reach of her lips. J.J., who has spent most of her life in wheelchairs, enjoys the feature she's just discovered on her new model — although it doesn't help her move her few muscles that still work. Cheri looks over her glasses and chides her daughter: "Use it or lose it."
J.J. is a statistical anomaly, one of 638 kids nationwide who, since 1988, have been compensated by the federal government for crippling disabilities suffered after getting immunized against childhood diseases. More than 3.5 million American kids get vaccines each year. The 19 doses recommended before age 2 have reduced the occurrence of measles, all but eliminated rubella and the mumps, and nearly eradicated smallpox and polio. But, like J.J., about 40 children each year suffer a debilitating reaction that makes them eligible for help from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. J.J.'s compensation has made it possible for her get her own house, with two disabled roommates and a full-time caretaker. The senior at Forsyth High School is about to enter a new chapter in her life. This story begins, though, when J.J. was a 15-month-old toddler — the moment she received her shot for measles, mumps and rubella.
Was it the vaccine?
Cheri's memories are vague of the day in May 1986 when she took J.J. — short for Julie — to get vaccinated. At 35, Cheri was pregnant with her youngest son, Joel, and juggling day care and her job at White River Valley Cooperative in Taney County.
But she remembers the exact moment she knew something was wrong. Three days after the injection, Cheri saw J.J. awkwardly throwing out her left leg as she toddled around the living room. She thought maybe her healthy, chubby baby's little foot was turning. She imagined a clunky brace. The next day, J.J. slid down the stairs of the split-level ranch. Odd, Cheri thought, because J.J. had been crawling up those stairs for months. Two days after that, J.J. grabbed toys with her right hand. Her left arm lay inert in her lap. Eleven days after J.J. received the shot, Cheri took her child back to the doctor. He said the toddler was fine. Cheri knew he was wrong. Within three months, J.J. was having trouble swallowing food. She couldn't hold her head up. Her baby babblings of "ma-ma" and "da-da" disappeared. She no longer responded to playful tickles.
Cheri took J.J. to a physician in Springfield. He diagnosed cerebral palsy. Cheri argued, knowing the symptoms were different. "'It doesn't matter what you call it,'" she recalls the doctor explaining. "'It matters how you deal with it.'" By the time she was 2, J.J. was paralyzed except for some ungainly movement of her head, right arm, thumb and forefinger. Cheri took J.J. to a doctor in Kansas City. He diagnosed brain damage, but named neither a cause nor a remedy.
Cheri obsessed over anything she might have done to injure her daughter. They had dogs, so she read about chemicals in flea spray. She remembered each tumble the toddler took. She also recalled her own slip on the stairs while holding J.J. in her arms. Nothing connected to the harm her child had suffered. Only one thing defied elimination as its cause: the vaccination.
The answer
When J.J. was 2, Cheri put her on a bus to Springfield every morning to attend a special day care at the Developmental Center of the Ozarks. Then Cheri's three other children had to be trundled off to school or the baby sitter, and Cheri had to get to work. For 24 years, she's worked at White River where she's now data programming manager. Cheri earned a bachelor's degree in social work, and since she was married at 29, her dreams have revolved around a happy family. In 1990, a caseworker handed Cheri an article about Wyoming attorney Jack Gage. Now retired, Gage represented clients applying for money from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
In the early 1980s, reports of seizures following the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus shots led to lawsuits and caused vaccination rates to drop. In 1986 — the year of J.J.'s last vaccination — Congress created the program to resolve injury claims and to ensure an adequate supply of vaccine. Funds for the program come from a 75-cents-per-dose surcharge on each vaccination. Cheri called the Wyoming attorney. J.J.'s symptoms matched those listed as possible reactions to measles vaccine. "'I think you have a case,'" Cheri recalls the lawyer saying. In 1992, 7-year-old J.J. was approved for lifetime benefits. But the money was not the most important thing. "We finally had an answer," Cheri says.
Independence
Without her mother's tireless efforts in Washington, D.C., including a two-year stint filled with countless hearings, J.J. would not be in a position to live on her own. Since 1988, 1,477 vaccine injury claims have been heard in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Of those, 638 have been judged compensable, with more than $558 million paid out. In 2003, the average award to 59 petitioners was $1.2 million. Parceled out to J.J.'s trust fund each month, the money provides for special needs from physical therapy to braces and wheelchairs through her normal life expectancy. The plan includes money for institutional care.
Cheri dreaded that prospect until 1998 when her attorney suggested a crazy idea: Build J.J. her own institution. Like a mother bear, Cheri charged back onto the paperwork trail armed with architectural plans and cost estimates. Two years later, she won approval to use some of the federal award to build J.J.'s house next door to the home where Cheri raised J.J., her sister and two brothers. Cheri got the 10-acre rural property south of Forsyth in a divorce when J.J. was 3 and will return to the old house so she can be close to her daughter.
Shots or not
Cheri gave birth to Joel when J.J. was 2. When he was 1 month old, Cheri let Joel get his first polio and DPT vaccines. Then she stopped. "It was just that nagging thing that the shots were the only thing that had happened to J.," Cheri says. Joel's doctor signed a form exempting him from Missouri's required vaccinations because of his family history of adverse reactions. Missouri grants medical and religious exemptions. Texas recently became the 18th state to allow parents to exercise a "conscientious belief exemption." J.J.'s sister Jessica and her husband Heath Silvey plan children in a few years.
"I'm pretty worried about it," says Jessica, who is a junior business education major at Southwest Missouri State University. "I just don't know whether or not to have them at all or wait until they're older and have built up an immune system." There is no clear answer to the national debate over parental rights to decide on vaccinations. Vaccines remain a safe way to prevent diseases that used to be common childhood killers, says Dr. Ben Schwartz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "Certainly, no vaccine is 100 percent safe, but serious adverse reactions are very rare, and the benefits far outweigh the risks," Schwartz says. Each year, about 4 million children are born in the United States and 90 percent get the recommended series of vaccinations, Schwartz says. There are so few serious reactions that those numbers aren't tabulated by the CDC, he says.
"When a person looks at it through the lens of what's out there today, they would not see the magnitude of what would happen without the vaccinations," Schwartz says. In countries where children are not vaccinated, diseases like pertussis and measles still kill children. The diseases are waiting in the wings, he says. Barbara Loe Fisher has a different view. Her son developed learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder following a DPT vaccination in 1980 when he was 2. In 1982, Fisher founded the National Vaccine Information Center in Vienna, Va., to lobby for parents' right to choose. In the past decade, people have become more attuned to managing their own health care. This clashes with a political and financial infrastructure set up to ensure the control of infectious diseases, Fisher says.
Parents should become informed about vaccinations and their options, she says. Over the past 20 years, more vaccines have been given to children at earlier ages. At the same time, rates have climbed for learning disabilities, autism and other childhood illnesses. Research is inadequate for placing blame on vaccines, and the causes likely are a combination of factors, but "do you think it's a fair scientific question to ask if they're contributing?" she says.
"The club that is used is: 'You're going to endanger everyone else,'" Fisher says. "But if I feel my child is at high risk, how can you force me to sacrifice my child?"
The pricey translator and the $22,000 wheelchair are among the benefits from the compensation fund and from the medical insurance from Cheri's job. J.J. got the new wheelchair this summer. Soon afterward, Cheri glanced sideways during a Sunday Mass. J.J. had lifted herself so that, like everyone else, she was standing during the hymn.
In J.J.'s senior year, the special services program is designed to get the students ready for life after school. J.J. scowled at suggestions she might volunteer at nursing homes. But she has always been happy around children.
J.J. is "a normal teenager," says her special education teacher Dana Ehrhardt. "A lot of times, people will look at her and all they see are the devices." Ehrhardt says she'd like more area employers to offer work to her students. "They need a chance to look for the things they can do instead of dwell on what they can't do," she says.
Club director Alan Catron says J.J. has been wonderful for the children and everyone else who knows her. The kids will never again be afraid of people who are a little different, he says. J.J. will always be welcome as a volunteer, and he's looking for ways to offer her a paying job.
At a ceremony last week, J.J. was named the club's Volunteer of the Year. She beamed only for a moment at the plaque and the bouquet of roses. Then she swiveled back to watch her 4-year-olds sing a rousing chorus of "Jingle Bells."
Contact reporter Kathryn Buckstaff at kbuckstaff@springfi.gannett.com.
John was born in 1992, a suprise, but deeply wanted child. Born normal, he developed normally and talked quite well early on, he was considered an early talker, as was my older son. John was just like his big brother in so many ways. Soon afer he turned 2 I knew something had gone wrong and on 12-25-94, John had his last normal day, and spoke to us for the last time. By age 3 he was "a breathing blob of humanity" nothing about him was child like or in may ways...human either. He regressed so far that he lost his physical skills and the hunt was on to uncover what happened to a once normal child. That hunt ended in 1998 with the news of 'mercury poison' from vaccines.
Coming back for John has been a 24 hour 7 day a week job, and we have not won all the way YET. Now 11 he is developmentally delayed, has speech issues, but is smart and funny and wants to be 17 more that anything. We are currently homeschooling with strong outside support for speech, physical therapy, hippotherapy, and a few other odd ball things that seem to be helping as well. John has been on chelation 4 years as of this month. So that is us, I have a 18 year old, a weekend husband (truck driver), and take care of my mom, who has a brain tumor, so my days are very full. Still this fight for vaccine education is foremost on my mind and if you see me out...I'll be the lady with the tee-shirt on about mercury poison, need I say I am not too popular around here! Thanks again for the welcome and let me know how I can help, Cheryl Bailey/ AKA another mad mercury mom
My name is Jen and I have 4 wonderful children. My oldest is 6 and is vaccine injured. I didn't know anything at the time (thought I did, LOL) and never questioned the docs about whether or not I should vaccinate. I never thought of it. Why would a doc do something to hurt your child, right? After her DPT, Marissa got a high fever. We brought it down with tylenol and motrin (I would never do that now). And she started having seizures. We put her on an anticonvulsant right away. It seemed to work, and being as ignorant of the system as I was, I completely believed the doctor when I asked "Is this from the shots?" and she said "Absolutely not!". So we kept on vaccinating. 13 days after her MMR at 13 months, we lost the Marissa we had. She had been a "normal" baby. She pulled up, she rolled and scooted around, she had seven words (I remember that because I had to answer the same stupid questions in the hospital so many times). On day 13, she went into status (seizures that don't stop). We rushed her to ER more times than I care to remember. She was hospitalized for the majority of the next three months. "We have no idea what happened" they all said when every single test came back negative. Her EEG was so flat, the neurologist told us she would never sit again, never walk, never even know who we were again. "Could this be from the shots?" I would ask him later "Quite possibly, but vaccines are important.". I had no response to such a moronic statement. I don't think he realized what he was saying. We tried all the drugs. Nothing worked. She was still seizing and her liver was failing. We had an emergency gastroenterologist appointment- she might need a new liver, they thought. So I went completely AMA and despite a neuro literally screaming at me over the phone that I was going to hurt my child, I stopped her meds. Guess what? Instant reversal of liver damage, and the seizures lessened significantly. We now work only with homeopathy and accupuncture, which we started a few months ago. We stopped vaccines immediately for Marissa. And of course our other three younger children have not received any. Heck, I can count on one hand the times all of them have even seen a doctor for anything- I don't take them when they're sick, and they only go for a well-child once a year or less because I have to play by the rules somewhat because of Marissa's disability. Otherwise I wouldn't even have one (a doctor). We are VERY far out of the mainstream now, and I can credit this awesome teacher I have in Marissa. I think she chose to sacrifice her "normal" life in order to learn her own lessons and help me and my family learn ours. Sorry to go on and on, I'm feeling rather belligerent about the whole thing right now because Marissa has not been doing well for a couple months. And I just saw my family, who all continue to vaccinate their children and inject themselves with whatever crap is in the flu shot, despite the fact that what can happen is staring them in the face. I don't get it. I don't get it at all. And they think I'm the weird one.
Jen
Mommy to Marissa (6 years, vaccine injured, medical dx cerebral palsy with
intractible seizures), Gina (4 years), Jade (2 years), Sage (8 months)
We, as parents, placed an undeserving trust in the medical community to tell us what was necessary to help protect our children and keep them out of harm's way and as a result, my son became vaccine-damaged.... Our government needs to realize and acknowledge the damaging effects that mandatory vaccines have on our children. I lost my neurotypical son to vaccine-damage as did countless other parents due to the dangerous vaccines that the medical community push on us to help "protect" them...Some children have even lost their lives as a result of vaccine side-effects....All these children are not acceptable losses to us.....Our main question is when is this loss going to become unacceptable to our government and to the medical community? When is it going to end?
Ellen Sweeney, Brick, NJ (esweeney22@comcast.net)
Mentally handicapped gun collector arrested in Mora shooting death
Associated Press
Published August 15, 2003
MORA15
MORA, Minn. -- A mentally handicapped gun collector was charged Thursday in a triple shooting that killed his mother and wounded his father and stepmother. Ryan C. Miller, 26, was charged with second-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. Kanabec County Sheriff Steve Schulz said they no motive for the shootings. ``I really don't know why he went off,'' he said. In a court statement three years ago, Miller's mother, Deborah Miller, said her son was disabled and ``emotionally, mentally, physically and socially delayed from the seizures, surgery and medications'' he had experienced.
Her son began to have seizures at age 2 1/2 after a vaccination, and they were so severe that they could not be controlled by medication alone, his mother said. In 1988, at age 10, he had a temporal lobectomy, surgery to remove part of the brain where seizures seemed to originate. She said in 2000 that he had then been seizure-free for more than two years. Various neighbors described the man as ``slow,'' someone who made them nervous, but a man who loved his parents and gave tips on gardening.
Sometimes Miller seemed to be ``a 26-year-old man caught in the mind of a boy,'' said neighbor Harley Anderson. ``He's always been really a sweetheart to us.'' The shootings left Deborah Miller, 49, dead; Randolph Miller, 53, wounded in the neck and Laurie Miller, 46, with a shoulder wound. Randolph and Laurie Miller were expected to survive. The sheriff, neighbors and court records portray a split family, often prickly relationships with some residents of their rural neighborhood and a son who sometimes walked along the highway carrying a rifle. Schulz said Miller shot his mother in the head with a rifle Tuesday at her home, then apparently walked across vacant land to his father's house less than a mile away. It appeared that the father was shot once outside the house and the stepmother was shot once as they drove away, the sheriff said.
Miller was arrested several hours later while lying on the living room floor of his father's house, the sheriff said. ``He's talked to us'' but did not give a motive, he said. People who knew Miller said he loved collecting old guns - especially World War II rifles. Several neighbors said they frequently heard shooting on the Millers' property. Milo Kadlec said Miller told him that when he gets angry, ``I go out and shoot.'' Ronnie Hendershot said he was working on a boat trailer in his yard Tuesday when ``I heard the shooting going on for the longest time. ``I thought it was somebody sighting their deer rifle,'' he said. ``But it kept going on. I thought to myself 'Geez, are they ever going to get it sighted in?''' It wasn't until after officers arrived that he knew something was wrong. Miller had been accused of making terroristic threats to a coworker in 1999, Schulz said. No charge shows up on computerized state and county records, however. The sheriff said he knew of no domestic calls involving the family but ``a few minor incidents'' involving property disputes with neighbors.
In abmd@yahoogroups.com, "Steve Z" <jjmaterials@m...> wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10020-2003Jul31.html
A Child's Severe Reaction to a Vaccine Alters Life Something was wrong with Porter
By Sarah Bridges
Sunday, August 3, 2003; Page W12
This is the lesson you don't get in the parenting books: Sometimes bad things happen from doing the right thing for your baby. Porter's high-pitched scream woke us at midnight. When I ran to the nursery and picked him up, his sleeper was damp and his head flopped to the side. My husband grabbed the phone and punched in the number for the pediatrician. "Hurry," I yelled, even though Brian was dialing as fast as he could. He reached for Porter, then handed me the phone. "It's the nurses' line," he said. "What's the problem?" a voice on the other end asked calmly. "Our baby has a fever and is listless. He was fine today," I said. "The doctor said he was perfectly healthy at his well-baby appointment this afternoon." "Did he get his vaccines?" "Yes." "It's probably the shots -- fevers are typical after the DPT." "But he isn't waking up."
Her voice changed. "Get to the emergency room -- I'll tell them you are on your way." Brian pulled Porter's 2-year-old sister, Tyler, out of her bed and strapped her, still sleeping, into her car seat. The freeway was empty as we barreled to the hospital, the windows in the car opened for air. Porter lay on my lap with his eyes closed, and my legs felt hot under his body. We turned past the bar with the sign that read, "THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE." A nurse met us at the emergency room entrance and carried Porter to an examining room. Within minutes of arriving, Porter began a 90-minute grand mal seizure. Watching helplessly, I was pressed against the wall as a doctor jammed a breathing tube down my son's throat. Porter, just 4 months old, lurched on the table while nurses stuck syringes of Valium into his arms. After a minute, the doctor turned to me and said, "Don't worry, we'll stop it. I'm sure about that. It's just that we may need to sedate him to the point that he'll quit breathing." In that instant, in that one sentence, everything I took for granted vanished. At first, the doctors thought Porter would be fine. They said it was a bad reaction -- a rare side effect to the pertussis vaccine, which can cause seizures in some children and brain injury in others -- but that brain damage was so rare we shouldn't think much about it. Of course, I couldn't think of anything else but the worst-case scenario. When Porter awoke in one piece, he seemed alert, but beyond that we were guessing. The day after his seizure the pediatrician asked, "Does he still do the same things he did before the reaction?" My mind went blank as I struggled to recall what exactly a 4-month-old did. After 72 hours in the hospital Porter was smiling again, and by the end of the day he was allowed to go home. Porter seemed fine, and I told everyone who asked about him how lucky we were. And then two weeks later he stopped breathing. I was home alone getting ready for work and drying my hair as Porter lay beside me on a blanket. When I smiled down at him, Porter's eyes were frozen and his lips were blue. I screamed and put my cheek against his mouth to check if he was breathing. I didn't feel anything. I grabbed the phone and punched in 911, tapping my foot through two slow rings. "Emergency, can I help you?" "My baby stopped breathing." "Tell me what he looks like."
I screamed, "His face is blue!" as I clutched Porter in my arms. She said loudly, "You need to stop yelling so I can help you." I forced myself to concentrate as she guided me through baby CPR, and I did the two-fingered presses until I heard the rescue truck pull up outside. We lived a block from the station, so the firefighters came first, tromping up the stairs in blue coveralls and boots. A case like a tackle box banged the wall beside me as they circled around Porter and then moved me out of the way. A man dropped to his knees and took over for me until Porter started breathing -- one quick little gasp.
We scrambled into the ambulance and the paramedic tucked a bear onto the stretcher beside Porter, saying, "The church ladies make these." I watched the numbers on the oxygen gauge flash every few seconds -- holding my breath, fixated on the monitor. Once at the hospital we learned that the original seizure wasn't a fluke but the first in what would become an intractable seizure disorder. This time Porter had stopped breathing, as people sometimes do, in the midst of an intense episode. As they hooked Porter to a breathing monitor we would later take home, a doctor in clogs pulled me aside. I recognized him immediately -- he had treated Porter during his first hospitalization. "I filed a report with the CDC about Porter's reaction to the pertussis shot. Do you know about the National Vaccine Injury Act?" I shook my head.
"It's a program set up by Congress to compensate for the medical needs of children injured by vaccines. I think you might want to look into it." With that he handed me a phone number and turned down the hall to answer a page. I tucked the paper into my pocket, reassuring myself that it wasn't that bad. After all, they said Porter just had epilepsy -- and I knew that could be treated. Following the second hospitalization, Porter began taking phenobarbital. I cringed at the thought of giving my 5-month-old a barbiturate. The readings I had done on it studying for my PhD in experimental psychology suggested that it could impair a child's intelligence. Porter's neurologist put these fears in perspective when he said, "The New England Journal of Medicine just did a big study of the drug and found that it may lower IQ by five points. I don't think that small a drop is even noticeable." I mixed the crushed pills into jam that night and fed them to Porter. While I understood that the majority of people with a seizure disorder respond to medication, Porter's seizures continued unabated. By the end of his second year he'd been hospitalized 14 times to stop seizures -- some of which went on for hours. Though Porter received no definitive diagnosis during this time, the early language and behavior problems he was experiencing indicated he might have autism -- something we gradually came to believe was true.
After 12 different medications, two more years and no change in the seizures, I came to stop investing hope in traditional medicine. Reading broadly on the subject of health, I came across the books of Andrew Weil and decided a natural approach to eating might make a difference. One morning I stripped the processed food out of the pantry, bought organic, got a water filter and threw out the microwave. We added vitamins to Porter's diet,scrapped the Froot Loops, stopped eating meat and stocked up on tofu. The whole family got into the act, and it soon became clear that the new diet was affecting Porter's sister, Tyler -- more than we guessed. One day, while Tyler was eating tofu pups, our babysitter told me, "The minute you went out this morning Tyler pulled me over to the freezer." "What did she want?" "She didn't say anything at first, she just opened the door and pointed. After looking around she said, 'Quick, Mom's gone, can we have some bacon?'
"
Despite giving up meat for tofu, the change was worth it. The natural diet seemed to be working. For 24 days straight Porter went without a seizure. I gave the doctor weekly updates, and he encouraged me, saying, "I'd love it if you find something that works for Porter. It's obvious I can't figure it out." But just as quickly, the diet stopped working. The first time Porter had a seizure after we began the diet, I blamed it on something else (he was sick or tired), and carried on as if nothing had happened. But then he had another seizure that night, and it was impossible to deny. I saw the doctor the next day, and again he raised the medications, saying, "They can always go higher." Giving Porter an extra dose controlled the seizures for several weeks with one drawback: The medication revved him up, and his activity level soon eclipsed the original problem. Additionally, as a good-sized 4-year-old, he was capable of significant destruction. At least beforehand there was time to take a breath after a seizure. Now I dreaded the unstructured time of weekends. One particular Saturday was typical of the way our days were taking shape: By 9 a.m. Porter had microwaved a fork and scribbled on the walls. Then I heard clapping and ran into the bathroom to find that he'd stuffed the toilet with toothbrushes and Kleenex. He giggled and said, "Don't touch knives," as the bowl overflowed. As I sopped up the water with towels, Porter darted past me and threw kibble around the living room, yelling, "EAT DOG." We needed to get out of the house, so I loaded the kids into the car to drive to an indoor park while Brian unclogged the toilet. Upon arrival, we piled our coats on a metal bench and lined up for the slide. At the top of the slide steps, a boy Porter's age asked him, "Do you want to go first or should I?" Porter flapped his hands and jumped up and down. Then he turned around and bolted down the steps, knocking over a toddler. I set her back on her feet and said, "Slow down, Porter." He looked at me and answered, "Hi, Porter." "Right -- slow down." Porter climbed on the platform behind him, grabbed the fire pole, and jumped. He hung there, stuck, unable to figure out how to slide to the ground, until I lifted him down. "Don't do that," I told him. A minute later he was dangling on the pole again. We repeated this four more times until I was distracted taking a drink of water. I looked back just in time to see a hearty woman in snow boots falling on her back with Porter on top of her. The only warning she had was when Porter yelled, "Jump!" "I am sorry," I said, as I pulled the woman to her feet. She looked dazed. "He's much faster than he looks." I grabbed our coats and called Tyler to go. She walked over slowly. "But we just got here." "I know, but Porter's getting in trouble." "We never stay at the park."Come on -- we need to go." While unlocking the car, I told Porter to stay by my side, but a moment later he declared, "Home," and headed off across a snowy field. He marched toward a frozen lake and I raced to catch up to him, then led him back to the car and buckled him into the booster seat. As we made our way out of the parking lot, Tyler asked, "On my birthday can I stay at the park for at least 10 minutes?" Family life wasn't the only area affected by Porter's behavior. When his day-care providers told us that they could no longer watch him due to his hyperactivity, our social worker recommended a specialist, a professor in my psychology doctoral program and an expert in managing difficult children. He arrived at our house after dinner and sat on the floor to observe our family. Within moments, he laid out his straightforward approach: "Ignoring unwanted behavior is your best weapon." Porter threw a block and hit him in the back of the head. "What about tantrums?" I asked. "Especially tantrums." "Even in the grocery store?"
"Yes, stay detached -- just pick up any food he throws." I tried to picture doing this. "But, if he does cross the border of appropriateness, you'll need to act." "What then?" "You need to save the nuclear weapon for that -- the basket hold." This technique involves pinning your child's arms to his side and carrying him away. I tried the doctor's advice the very next time we were at the Discovery Zone, when Porter saw a party and ran over to grab a piece of pizza from the birthday boy's hands. The psychologist's advice seemed great until I realized that I'm not good at ignoring screaming. And I'm terrible at tuning out the stares of other parents -- the ones who never carry their children through the produce aisle in a basket hold. Instead, I scooped up Porter, one arm and one leg, and carried him around the kids in the birthday hats and toward the parking lot. Walking past one 5-year-old boy in the group, I heard him ask, "Can I have an airplane ride when he's done?"
Another seizure, another hospitalization. I knew from our last hospital stay that the drugs would make Porter sleep for a day. We watched him anyway until lunchtime, sitting in his ICU room, Tyler stretched out on the floor building a tower out of tongue depressors. When we finally went to the parents' lounge to eat takeout pizza, Tyler skipped ahead of us navigating the way, still in her feety pajamas from the night before. As we finished our meal, Brian sighed and said, "The screen door at home is ripped -- animals are going to get into the porch." "We'll fix it later." I said it too loudly, and the family next to us stopped chewing and stared.
"When?" he asked. "We never have time to get anything done." "It's not even that cold yet." "I've got over 40 finals to correct -- I'm constantly behind." "I can't handle thinking about anything right now," I snapped. "It's not as if everything else in our lives stops." The woman next to us beckoned Tyler over and gave her a fortune cookie. I heard her say, "Look out, they're stale," as Tyler pulled up a chair at her table. "Let's talk about it later, Brian." "You always get so cool and practical," he said. "And you always sound depressed."
"I've already missed two weeks at work -- I only have two more sick days." "They'll understand," I said. "It's not that easy -- you always want to make it sound simple." "We have to get through this, and then we can figure it out." We both stood and cleared our plates, leaving our extra napkins under the note about prayer services. Shortly after this, Brian and I nearly split up. But before giving in we tried marriage counseling and made a commitment to work harder. As we looked forward to what lay ahead, we decided to have another baby. I'd always hoped to have at least three children, and we believed it would be good for Tyler to have a sibling she could truly talk to. But there was more to it than that. I secretly wanted a chance to make up for what had happened to Porter. I didn't blame myself -- I knew rationally that I hadn't done anything wrong. But on some level, being unable to help him year after year was equally bad. For this reason, I was determined to do everything exactly right for the next baby. It started with my pregnancy diet -- when Brian stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work, I gave him my list: "Spinach, lean meat, fruits, and cheese. NO JUNK FOOD." Brian glanced at it and said, "What's this?" "I'm off sugar. And can you get those eggs from the chickens who listen to classical music and run free?"
Our focus continued after our baby, Jackson, arrived. We carried him everywhere, and I nursed him for a full year. The day he turned 5 months old, I watched him as he lay across my lap, smiling. It struck me then: Jackson had brought something good and light to the family. But it still didn't make up for what had happened to Porter. Brian took a sabbatical from his teaching job to be home with the baby, though it was Porter who received most of the attention that year. His behavior became increasingly impulsive and required minute-to-minute supervision. And despite more medications, the seizures continued anytime, anywhere. Soon after, I learned about a magic bullet -- a way to feed your child that kept him seizure-free and off medication. I was introduced to the "ketogenic diet" a month before Porter was 4, when a mother in my seizure support group played a clip from "20/20" profiling a doctor who was using high-fat meals to control epilepsy. This was an about-face. No more Newman's Own Organics -- now the focus was on 90 percent saturated fat entrees. I called our neurologist the next morning, and he agreed that the diet was worth a try, though he warned us from the start that he didn't have high hopes. But there was one catch to the ketogenic diet: You need to starve the patient for a few days to kick-start the ketosis -- the state in which your body is burning its own fat for fuel. This requires hospitalization as a precaution. We checked into the hospital on a Thursday morning and began watching videos on a wheeled-in VCR. Over and over I answered Porter's pleas for food with, "We'll eat in a little while." After 24 hours Porter became docile, rolling over only occasionally to grab my arm and ask quietly, "Bagel?" By the 48-hour point they began serving 1/3-size meals, and Porter was ecstatic. When the tray arrived and I pulled the cover off to reveal four tiny piles, I was startled. There was a teaspoon of applesauce, a tablespoon of whipping cream, a bite of scrambled egg and a glob of margarine on a saucer. Porter ate it all in seconds, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and looking for more. We stayed at the hospital for another two days, eating butter and cream and watching for seizures. Once we got home the excitement over this new approach began to dim as we fed Porter mayonnaise while everyone else ate lasagna and French bread. He was agreeable initially, lying on the living room floor next to a boombox listening to music with his face in his hands. He held a blanket and ran his fingertips over the edges, staring at us as he did it, a hundred miles away.
We held out on Porter's high-fat diet until the first seizure happened nine days later. When several followed, he went back on multiple medications. Throughout this time we tried testing -- testing his behavior, his coordination, his speech, his urine, his enzymes, his liver, his metabolism and his brain as 5-year-old Porter's other difficulties became more apparent. While other kids his age played T-ball and learned the alphabet, and had long since been toilet-trained, Porter was stalled at the level of a 2-year-old. Most obvious was the strange way he communicated. When I got Porter ready to leave the house, he would hold a foot out to me and say, "Tie your shoe." More irritating was the way he became locked into phrases -- repeating them over and over like a record skipping. He'd say, "That's funny. That's funny. That's funny. That's funny." As I was running one morning with Porter in the baby jogger, he started in, "Stupid head, stupid head, stupid head," in a monotone voice. I tried to ignore it, jogging faster, hoping the runner's high would kick in. But 20 minutes later he was still at it. "Stupid head," I heard from below me. Finally I'd had enough. I stopped the jogger, got down on one knee, and leaned in close to him. "Stop saying that, Porter, it isn't nice." There was a pause as I stood back up and started running again. A minute later I heard below me, "Dummy head."
After years of daily seizures, canceled vacations and midnight trips to the hospital, my marriage broke up. Brian moved out, and we began an arrangement of equal-time shared custody of the children. It was during one of my weeks with the kids that Porter was hit by a car. I'd taken them grocery shopping and had just buckled Porter into his seat. As I turned to load groceries he wriggled out, slipped through my arms and dashed into the street. I called his name, and it seemed to hang in the air, and in the next moment I heard brakes squeal and Porter scream. An old man's voice yelled, "Oh my God!" I dropped the groceries and ran around the car, asking the man, "Was he hit?" Porter was crumpled on the street. Cars stopped and people gathered around us as I knelt on the wet pavement holding him in my arms. A woman bent down and said in my ear, "An ambulance is on its way, hang in there." "Mama," Porter whimpered. I took off the helmet he now wore to protect his head in the event of a seizure. People pulled blankets out of their cars. Porter clutched his foot and cried. The police arrived first, then the ambulance. An officer stood over us and jotted down information in a tiny notebook. He asked, "How did it happen?" I answered, "He's autistic and hyperactive." He closed his pad and said, "It was an accident, then." The initial examination indicated that his foot was broken, but otherwise he would be all right. A month after Porter's accident, we summarized all of his medical records as we filed his vaccine injury with the special governmental court in charge of these cases. Despite the interventions, his seizures were intractable and his other disabilities unchanged. Results from his special education testing confirmed what we'd suspected for a long time -- Porter was severely retarded. The government received our petition and immediately conceded. A vaccine injury had caused permanent brain damage. As part of the settlement the government set up a trust to provide for all of Porter's medical needs. In support of the case, Porter's doctors wrote letters sharing what they saw for his future: All three agreed he would never hold a job or live independently. Here's a part of the story I wish I could leave out: the day I realized that I could no longer take care of Porter alone. The morning I first considered it, I'd called in sick to work because Porter had been up much of the night prowling the house. Shortly before breakfast, he'd had a seizure, which made it impossible for him to go to his special education class. By lunchtime he was back on his feet, and I'd taken Jackson and him to the park before picking up Tyler at school. After a few minutes in the sand, Porter got bored and climbed the jungle gym. As I lifted Jackson out of the baby swing I saw Porter hanging from the top of the slide. His pants had come unbuttoned and hung around his ankles as he swung there grinning in his helmet. A minute later he had a seizure, falling off the platform and landing in the sand below. I ran to him and held him on my lap until the shaking stopped, trying to figure out what to do. I attempted to pick him up, but as a large 5-year-old, he was getting more difficult to carry. He was also in no shape to be moved, so we sat under the slide for 45 minutes waiting for him to wake up. I looked at my watch and realized I was late to get Tyler -- and had no way to reach the school and tell them what had happened. Jackson whined beside me and pulled on my shirt to be held. I decided we had to go, hoisted Porter over a shoulder, and balanced Jackson on a hip. With stops and starts we made it to the car, only to realize I'd left my purse with the key in it back at the park.
I flagged a woman over and asked if she would go to the playground and find my bag. She stared at us for a moment -- Porter in his diaper passed out on my lap, Jackson on the ground with a blanket over his face -- before nodding and running back to the park. Then I sat on the curb and watched the other families walk to the park in their flip-flops. A mother turned to her son and said, "Keep up, honey, you always walk so slowly." The boy skipped along, kicking a beach ball ahead of him. I strained to watch them until they disappeared over the hill -- I could still hear him laughing even after he was gone. A few nights later, I invited our social worker over for dinner to ask her advice. After an evening with the family, she said, "There is a woman in town that specializes in taking care of autistic children. She's done amazing things with some of the kids and is the best there is. Let me speak with her." What I didn't know at the time was that this woman, Ramona, had recently decided to stop taking new children. Each placement represented a potential 10- to15-year commitment, and she thought it might be a good time to take a break from such care. But our social worker persisted, and Ramona agreed to meet. Months later, when I asked Ramona what changed her mind about taking a new child, she said simply, "I met Porter." On the day of our first visit, Ramona greeted me at the door of her three-story Victorian, barefoot, with a warm smile, holding back the two dogs yapping behind her. She invited me in and sat down to talk, not stopping until the sunlight had faded outside.
I visited Ramona again a week later and spent an afternoon with her. As we talked, she told me about another child she cared for. "He was 5 when he moved in here and never spoke," she said. "The doctors thought he wasn't able to because of abuse he'd suffered. We worked at it for quite a while and I was able to get him to open up." Ramona leaned forward. "What the doctors don't know is how he first started talking." "How?" I asked. "I was driving with him and heard a siren behind us, which I pointed to and said, 'Oh look -- there's a police car.' He smiled sweetly and turned to look. As the squad car passed us he stuck his head out the window and yelled, 'Motherf -- ing pigs!' That was my clue that he could talk if he wanted to." As we spoke, Jacob, who lived with Ramona, walked into the room and snuggled next to her on the couch. "I have had good luck with some of the kids -- you know I helped Jacob get toilet-trained when he was 11. But it's because I'm not his mother that I can do a lot of it. Ignoring a tantrum doesn't rip my heart out." After Porter and Brian met Ramona, Brian and I agreed that it was best for everyone to have Porter move in with her. But I saw that it wasn't that simple: While I knew in my heart that we were doing the right thing, I had never felt so guilty in my life. Porter had his first trial overnight three weeks later. Ramona picked him up, and he yelled, "Bye, Mommy," as she led him by the hand to the driveway. I saw his helmet through the back window of the car as she drove off. I sat on the couch after they left, holding a sweat shirt of his and crying, not moving until my legs were stiff. When the sun was completely down I called Ramona. "How is he doing?" I asked. I know this is hard to hear, Sarah," she said, "but he hasn't asked for you at all. It's not like it would be for one of your other kids being away from home. You have to believe me when I say that it's good he is responding this way." Porter moved in with Ramona soon after that, visiting us on weekends. The following summer Ramona and I took Porter and Tyler and Jackson to a rented cabin. After a day of swimming we put Porter in the tub, and I sat on the floor next to Ramona as we gave him his bath. I trickled water on his head and washed his hair while Ramona scrubbed his feet one at a time. Porter clapped his hands as we did it and said, "Hi, Mommy." In unison, we both said hello back.
Sarah Bridges is a psychologist and writer living in Minneapolis
When Connor was 5.5 months old he became more whiny and didn't seem so interested in his toys anymore - I put this down to teething. Within a couple of weeks his head kept dropping down briefly at the same time all his muscles would relax. We took him to the GP who said it was probably nothing to worry about. Another week of this the episodes were increasing and he was becoming very upset and did nothing but make a strange noise almost constantly. We took him to A&E and he was admitted to the hospital.
www.vaccine-info.com/dpt/evans_medical_trivax.htm
He had loads of tests including an EEG. The diagnosis we were given was Infantile Spasms and having never heard of this before we thought it sounded mild until the consultant filled us in. It's a rare infant form of epilepsy which can be caused by many things, including brain damage in-uterou, tuberous sclerosis, vaccines..... www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/infantile.html
We were told that Connor would probably never walk or talk and would be retarded, and then sent home with him and an Anti Epileptic drug called Sodium Valproate. Connor had a Very Bad reaction to this med, so we went straight back up the hospital where he was monitored hourly until he started to 'come back' to us three days later. He was then put on Vigabatrin, which has been a complete Godsend. The spasms stopped within a couple of weeks and by September his EEG had normalised. He has been off this med since December last year and he is pretty much like a normal toddler - Thank God!!!!
Anyway, if you're not bored of my essay yet and still with me the reason I've joined this group is that I'm convinced it was his vaccinations that caused this illness. Funnily enough, one of the first questions we were asked at the hospital was whether his immunisations were up to date but we thought nothing of it at the time.
I have done loads of research over the last year and I'm completely horrified as to what I've found out about vaccines, drug companies etc... I'm one of the people who had complete trust in the medical profession when they told me Connor was due his jabs, and to be honest it never even crossed my mind that anything could happen. After all, no-one told me of any side effects - can't believe I was so stupid.
Needless to say, Connor will be having NO more vaccines and we've already declined the Hib booster and MMR with no problems from the GP. I'm very happy to have found this group, and hope that more and more people can find out the truth about vaccines so that no more children can be damaged.
Love to all
Lisa UK
http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/publish/article_7073.shtml
Mother sues over MMR jab
A Shropshire mother is suing an American drug company for more than £50,000 amid claims that the controversial MMR jab could have led to her son developing autism. Jayne Koczy, who is landlady of the White Hart pub in Shifnal, believes the triple vaccination may be responsible for her nine-year-old son Michael's learning difficulties. The youngster, who goes to the Bridge Special School in Brookside, Telford, has severe speech and communication problems and needs round-the-clock care. Mrs Koczy, 40, said her son had developed normally until having the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine in 1995 when he was 13 months old. Shortly afterwards she noticed he was not responding when his name was called and was not progressing as expected. He was diagnosed as having severe learning difficulties at two years old. She said not knowing whether or not the jab had caused the problems had prevented her from having another child.
"I wanted to know, why him? He had two healthy parents, no difficulties in either family going back for centuries and nothing to suggest he would have these problems in the first year of his life." Mrs Koczy said she had not associated her son's learning difficulties with the vaccination until a friend had asked her about her son's problems before the MMR jab. She said she had checked her baby book, a record of the child's development, and found that he had progressed normally until shortly after the injection. She said more than 900 people were involved in the action being brought by solicitors Hodge, Jones and Allen against Merck and Co Inc, based in New Jersey.
"There are other cases where the influence of MMR is far more obvious than mine. We will be comparatively minor witnesses. I would like to know one way or another." The Government has always insisted the jab is safe and does not lead to learning difficulties. It maintains medical research has not provided a conclusive link between the vaccine and autism and there is no acceptance among medical authorities that the jab causes the symptoms experienced by the children.
Published December 28, 2003
Teen disabled by vaccine prepares for life on own
A rare reaction to an immunization crippled J.J. Coffelt's muscles, but not her spirit.
By Kathryn Buckstaff
Copyright 2003 News-Leader
Cheri Coffelt stops stirring the pot of spaghetti sauce and looks over her shoulder at her 18-year-old daughter. "I know what you're up to," she tells J.J. The girl with long brown hair has jiggered the joystick on her wheelchair, and with a quick electric whir she's nearly in a standing position. Now the cup of Dr Pepper on the lap tray is within easy reach of her lips. J.J., who has spent most of her life in wheelchairs, enjoys the feature she's just discovered on her new model — although it doesn't help her move her few muscles that still work. Cheri looks over her glasses and chides her daughter: "Use it or lose it."
J.J. is a statistical anomaly, one of 638 kids nationwide who, since 1988, have been compensated by the federal government for crippling disabilities suffered after getting immunized against childhood diseases. More than 3.5 million American kids get vaccines each year. The 19 doses recommended before age 2 have reduced the occurrence of measles, all but eliminated rubella and the mumps, and nearly eradicated smallpox and polio. But, like J.J., about 40 children each year suffer a debilitating reaction that makes them eligible for help from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. J.J.'s compensation has made it possible for her get her own house, with two disabled roommates and a full-time caretaker. The senior at Forsyth High School is about to enter a new chapter in her life. This story begins, though, when J.J. was a 15-month-old toddler — the moment she received her shot for measles, mumps and rubella.
Was it the vaccine?
Cheri's memories are vague of the day in May 1986 when she took J.J. — short for Julie — to get vaccinated. At 35, Cheri was pregnant with her youngest son, Joel, and juggling day care and her job at White River Valley Cooperative in Taney County.
But she remembers the exact moment she knew something was wrong. Three days after the injection, Cheri saw J.J. awkwardly throwing out her left leg as she toddled around the living room. She thought maybe her healthy, chubby baby's little foot was turning. She imagined a clunky brace. The next day, J.J. slid down the stairs of the split-level ranch. Odd, Cheri thought, because J.J. had been crawling up those stairs for months. Two days after that, J.J. grabbed toys with her right hand. Her left arm lay inert in her lap. Eleven days after J.J. received the shot, Cheri took her child back to the doctor. He said the toddler was fine. Cheri knew he was wrong. Within three months, J.J. was having trouble swallowing food. She couldn't hold her head up. Her baby babblings of "ma-ma" and "da-da" disappeared. She no longer responded to playful tickles.
Cheri took J.J. to a physician in Springfield. He diagnosed cerebral palsy. Cheri argued, knowing the symptoms were different. "'It doesn't matter what you call it,'" she recalls the doctor explaining. "'It matters how you deal with it.'" By the time she was 2, J.J. was paralyzed except for some ungainly movement of her head, right arm, thumb and forefinger. Cheri took J.J. to a doctor in Kansas City. He diagnosed brain damage, but named neither a cause nor a remedy.
Cheri obsessed over anything she might have done to injure her daughter. They had dogs, so she read about chemicals in flea spray. She remembered each tumble the toddler took. She also recalled her own slip on the stairs while holding J.J. in her arms. Nothing connected to the harm her child had suffered. Only one thing defied elimination as its cause: the vaccination.
The answer
When J.J. was 2, Cheri put her on a bus to Springfield every morning to attend a special day care at the Developmental Center of the Ozarks. Then Cheri's three other children had to be trundled off to school or the baby sitter, and Cheri had to get to work. For 24 years, she's worked at White River where she's now data programming manager. Cheri earned a bachelor's degree in social work, and since she was married at 29, her dreams have revolved around a happy family. In 1990, a caseworker handed Cheri an article about Wyoming attorney Jack Gage. Now retired, Gage represented clients applying for money from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
In the early 1980s, reports of seizures following the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus shots led to lawsuits and caused vaccination rates to drop. In 1986 — the year of J.J.'s last vaccination — Congress created the program to resolve injury claims and to ensure an adequate supply of vaccine. Funds for the program come from a 75-cents-per-dose surcharge on each vaccination. Cheri called the Wyoming attorney. J.J.'s symptoms matched those listed as possible reactions to measles vaccine. "'I think you have a case,'" Cheri recalls the lawyer saying. In 1992, 7-year-old J.J. was approved for lifetime benefits. But the money was not the most important thing. "We finally had an answer," Cheri says.
Independence
Without her mother's tireless efforts in Washington, D.C., including a two-year stint filled with countless hearings, J.J. would not be in a position to live on her own. Since 1988, 1,477 vaccine injury claims have been heard in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Of those, 638 have been judged compensable, with more than $558 million paid out. In 2003, the average award to 59 petitioners was $1.2 million. Parceled out to J.J.'s trust fund each month, the money provides for special needs from physical therapy to braces and wheelchairs through her normal life expectancy. The plan includes money for institutional care.
Cheri dreaded that prospect until 1998 when her attorney suggested a crazy idea: Build J.J. her own institution. Like a mother bear, Cheri charged back onto the paperwork trail armed with architectural plans and cost estimates. Two years later, she won approval to use some of the federal award to build J.J.'s house next door to the home where Cheri raised J.J., her sister and two brothers. Cheri got the 10-acre rural property south of Forsyth in a divorce when J.J. was 3 and will return to the old house so she can be close to her daughter.
Shots or not
Cheri gave birth to Joel when J.J. was 2. When he was 1 month old, Cheri let Joel get his first polio and DPT vaccines. Then she stopped. "It was just that nagging thing that the shots were the only thing that had happened to J.," Cheri says. Joel's doctor signed a form exempting him from Missouri's required vaccinations because of his family history of adverse reactions. Missouri grants medical and religious exemptions. Texas recently became the 18th state to allow parents to exercise a "conscientious belief exemption." J.J.'s sister Jessica and her husband Heath Silvey plan children in a few years.
"I'm pretty worried about it," says Jessica, who is a junior business education major at Southwest Missouri State University. "I just don't know whether or not to have them at all or wait until they're older and have built up an immune system." There is no clear answer to the national debate over parental rights to decide on vaccinations. Vaccines remain a safe way to prevent diseases that used to be common childhood killers, says Dr. Ben Schwartz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "Certainly, no vaccine is 100 percent safe, but serious adverse reactions are very rare, and the benefits far outweigh the risks," Schwartz says. Each year, about 4 million children are born in the United States and 90 percent get the recommended series of vaccinations, Schwartz says. There are so few serious reactions that those numbers aren't tabulated by the CDC, he says.
"When a person looks at it through the lens of what's out there today, they would not see the magnitude of what would happen without the vaccinations," Schwartz says. In countries where children are not vaccinated, diseases like pertussis and measles still kill children. The diseases are waiting in the wings, he says. Barbara Loe Fisher has a different view. Her son developed learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder following a DPT vaccination in 1980 when he was 2. In 1982, Fisher founded the National Vaccine Information Center in Vienna, Va., to lobby for parents' right to choose. In the past decade, people have become more attuned to managing their own health care. This clashes with a political and financial infrastructure set up to ensure the control of infectious diseases, Fisher says.
Parents should become informed about vaccinations and their options, she says. Over the past 20 years, more vaccines have been given to children at earlier ages. At the same time, rates have climbed for learning disabilities, autism and other childhood illnesses. Research is inadequate for placing blame on vaccines, and the causes likely are a combination of factors, but "do you think it's a fair scientific question to ask if they're contributing?" she says.
"The club that is used is: 'You're going to endanger everyone else,'" Fisher says. "But if I feel my child is at high risk, how can you force me to sacrifice my child?"
The pricey translator and the $22,000 wheelchair are among the benefits from the compensation fund and from the medical insurance from Cheri's job. J.J. got the new wheelchair this summer. Soon afterward, Cheri glanced sideways during a Sunday Mass. J.J. had lifted herself so that, like everyone else, she was standing during the hymn.
In J.J.'s senior year, the special services program is designed to get the students ready for life after school. J.J. scowled at suggestions she might volunteer at nursing homes. But she has always been happy around children.
J.J. is "a normal teenager," says her special education teacher Dana Ehrhardt. "A lot of times, people will look at her and all they see are the devices." Ehrhardt says she'd like more area employers to offer work to her students. "They need a chance to look for the things they can do instead of dwell on what they can't do," she says.
Club director Alan Catron says J.J. has been wonderful for the children and everyone else who knows her. The kids will never again be afraid of people who are a little different, he says. J.J. will always be welcome as a volunteer, and he's looking for ways to offer her a paying job.
At a ceremony last week, J.J. was named the club's Volunteer of the Year. She beamed only for a moment at the plaque and the bouquet of roses. Then she swiveled back to watch her 4-year-olds sing a rousing chorus of "Jingle Bells."
Contact reporter Kathryn Buckstaff at kbuckstaff@springfi.gannett.com.
John was born in 1992, a suprise, but deeply wanted child. Born normal, he developed normally and talked quite well early on, he was considered an early talker, as was my older son. John was just like his big brother in so many ways. Soon afer he turned 2 I knew something had gone wrong and on 12-25-94, John had his last normal day, and spoke to us for the last time. By age 3 he was "a breathing blob of humanity" nothing about him was child like or in may ways...human either. He regressed so far that he lost his physical skills and the hunt was on to uncover what happened to a once normal child. That hunt ended in 1998 with the news of 'mercury poison' from vaccines.
Coming back for John has been a 24 hour 7 day a week job, and we have not won all the way YET. Now 11 he is developmentally delayed, has speech issues, but is smart and funny and wants to be 17 more that anything. We are currently homeschooling with strong outside support for speech, physical therapy, hippotherapy, and a few other odd ball things that seem to be helping as well. John has been on chelation 4 years as of this month. So that is us, I have a 18 year old, a weekend husband (truck driver), and take care of my mom, who has a brain tumor, so my days are very full. Still this fight for vaccine education is foremost on my mind and if you see me out...I'll be the lady with the tee-shirt on about mercury poison, need I say I am not too popular around here! Thanks again for the welcome and let me know how I can help, Cheryl Bailey/ AKA another mad mercury mom
My name is Jen and I have 4 wonderful children. My oldest is 6 and is vaccine injured. I didn't know anything at the time (thought I did, LOL) and never questioned the docs about whether or not I should vaccinate. I never thought of it. Why would a doc do something to hurt your child, right? After her DPT, Marissa got a high fever. We brought it down with tylenol and motrin (I would never do that now). And she started having seizures. We put her on an anticonvulsant right away. It seemed to work, and being as ignorant of the system as I was, I completely believed the doctor when I asked "Is this from the shots?" and she said "Absolutely not!". So we kept on vaccinating. 13 days after her MMR at 13 months, we lost the Marissa we had. She had been a "normal" baby. She pulled up, she rolled and scooted around, she had seven words (I remember that because I had to answer the same stupid questions in the hospital so many times). On day 13, she went into status (seizures that don't stop). We rushed her to ER more times than I care to remember. She was hospitalized for the majority of the next three months. "We have no idea what happened" they all said when every single test came back negative. Her EEG was so flat, the neurologist told us she would never sit again, never walk, never even know who we were again. "Could this be from the shots?" I would ask him later "Quite possibly, but vaccines are important.". I had no response to such a moronic statement. I don't think he realized what he was saying. We tried all the drugs. Nothing worked. She was still seizing and her liver was failing. We had an emergency gastroenterologist appointment- she might need a new liver, they thought. So I went completely AMA and despite a neuro literally screaming at me over the phone that I was going to hurt my child, I stopped her meds. Guess what? Instant reversal of liver damage, and the seizures lessened significantly. We now work only with homeopathy and accupuncture, which we started a few months ago. We stopped vaccines immediately for Marissa. And of course our other three younger children have not received any. Heck, I can count on one hand the times all of them have even seen a doctor for anything- I don't take them when they're sick, and they only go for a well-child once a year or less because I have to play by the rules somewhat because of Marissa's disability. Otherwise I wouldn't even have one (a doctor). We are VERY far out of the mainstream now, and I can credit this awesome teacher I have in Marissa. I think she chose to sacrifice her "normal" life in order to learn her own lessons and help me and my family learn ours. Sorry to go on and on, I'm feeling rather belligerent about the whole thing right now because Marissa has not been doing well for a couple months. And I just saw my family, who all continue to vaccinate their children and inject themselves with whatever crap is in the flu shot, despite the fact that what can happen is staring them in the face. I don't get it. I don't get it at all. And they think I'm the weird one.
Jen
Mommy to Marissa (6 years, vaccine injured, medical dx cerebral palsy with
intractible seizures), Gina (4 years), Jade (2 years), Sage (8 months)
Tuesday, May 4, 2004
Milton boy loses fight against mystery ailment
Many inspired by child who remained joyful despite illness
By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The disease that claimed Stephen Brett at age 13 remained a mystery upon his death Thursday. But perhaps the true mystery of his life was how a child who could not even move himself nevertheless moved the heart of a community. The tiny town of Milton, located midway between Seattle and Tacoma just off Enchanted Parkway, embraced Stephen, who six years ago went from being a healthy, active second-grader to using a motorized wheelchair in the space of three months. His decline continued as an unknown progressive degenerative disorder eroded his nerves and paralyzed his muscles.
P-I FILE / 2001
Stephen Brett, seen receiving physical therapy, charmed with a bright smile those who met him.
Community members from local schools and businesses held a parade of fund-raisers, including baseball games and bake sales, walkathons and car washes, to help pay for some of Stephen's medication so that his parents, Caryn and Bob Brett, could continue to care for him at home. Stephen's story was detailed in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer special report, "A Childhood Stolen," in 2001.
Stephen was also among the first patients to enroll in a pilot program to provide palliative, or hospicelike, care, for children with severe, life-limiting illnesses. The pilot program started by Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle in 1997 has since been formalized and now helps 160 to 200 children a year. It helped lead to an Institute of Medicine recommendation in 2001 that all pediatric facilities adopt palliative care standards.
Palliative care helps smooth the transition between the hospital and home and provides emotional and physical support, as well as family respite and pain management for seriously ill children so they can have the best quality of life possible. Stephen died at home in his own bed with his parents by his side, five weeks after being hospitalized for a series of respiratory arrests. "It (palliative care for children) is a huge movement now across the country," said Dr. Ross Hays, who directs such care for Children's Hospital.
Stephen's life, however, seldom revolved around hospitals. He attended Hedden Elementary School and Surprise Lake Middle School, keeping up with classmates with the help of one-on-one assistance. Too weak to use even a keyboard-assisted communication device, he used his eyes and lively smile to communicate answers.
Milton boy loses fight against mystery ailment
Many inspired by child who remained joyful despite illness
By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The disease that claimed Stephen Brett at age 13 remained a mystery upon his death Thursday. But perhaps the true mystery of his life was how a child who could not even move himself nevertheless moved the heart of a community. The tiny town of Milton, located midway between Seattle and Tacoma just off Enchanted Parkway, embraced Stephen, who six years ago went from being a healthy, active second-grader to using a motorized wheelchair in the space of three months. His decline continued as an unknown progressive degenerative disorder eroded his nerves and paralyzed his muscles.
P-I FILE / 2001
Stephen Brett, seen receiving physical therapy, charmed with a bright smile those who met him.
Community members from local schools and businesses held a parade of fund-raisers, including baseball games and bake sales, walkathons and car washes, to help pay for some of Stephen's medication so that his parents, Caryn and Bob Brett, could continue to care for him at home. Stephen's story was detailed in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer special report, "A Childhood Stolen," in 2001.
Stephen was also among the first patients to enroll in a pilot program to provide palliative, or hospicelike, care, for children with severe, life-limiting illnesses. The pilot program started by Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle in 1997 has since been formalized and now helps 160 to 200 children a year. It helped lead to an Institute of Medicine recommendation in 2001 that all pediatric facilities adopt palliative care standards.
Palliative care helps smooth the transition between the hospital and home and provides emotional and physical support, as well as family respite and pain management for seriously ill children so they can have the best quality of life possible. Stephen died at home in his own bed with his parents by his side, five weeks after being hospitalized for a series of respiratory arrests. "It (palliative care for children) is a huge movement now across the country," said Dr. Ross Hays, who directs such care for Children's Hospital.
Stephen's life, however, seldom revolved around hospitals. He attended Hedden Elementary School and Surprise Lake Middle School, keeping up with classmates with the help of one-on-one assistance. Too weak to use even a keyboard-assisted communication device, he used his eyes and lively smile to communicate answers.
And his presence in the classroom was a lesson in itself.
"He teaches them joy," his fifth-grade teacher, Dan Cantillana, once said. "This is a child who knew what it was like to run and play, and there's still joy in his heart." Stephen's one true and abiding passion was the Mariners. He met catcher Dan Wilson on several occasions and had a slew of memorabilia donated by team members, family and friends. One of his prized possessions was a catcher's vest worn by Wilson and donated by an attorney who was touched by Stephen's story.
The family believes the illness, which has never been diagnosed, may have been a severe autoimmune reaction to a childhood vaccination. A claim filed with the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is pending.
P-I FILE / 2001
Bob Brett says goodbye before Stephen is taken to surgery for a feeding tube at a Tacoma hospital. He wore sunglasses because of light sensitivity.
To date, his condition has frustrated dozens of doctors around the country. He went through innumerable medical workups to rule out dozens of disorders, including a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often called Lou Gehrig's disease. His decline reversed temporarily for three months near the beginning of last year when doctors tried him on a combination of new medications that included one used for Parkinson's disease.
He went from not being able to say even one word to being able to speak in 12-word sentences within two weeks, said his father, Bob Brett. "We were overjoyed." But their hopes crashed when Stephen developed a life-threatening fever in response to the medication, which had to be discontinued. Still searching for answers, the family has permitted an autopsy in the hopes of advancing medical science.
Through it all, Stephen maintained his own sense of equilibrium, lighting up with his signature grin when visitors came and playing practical jokes when he could. He delighted in his 16-year-old brother, Daniel, his golden retriever, K.C., and in making people laugh. "He was a kid who loved everyone and did his best to find the humor in life," said Bob Brett. "He always wanted everyone to be happy." A memorial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Hedden Elementary School, 11313 Eighth St. E. in Edgewood. The family requests donations in Stephen's memory to Give Kids the World (www.gktw.org) or Starlight Children's Foundation (www.starlight-washington.org)
To read "A Childhood Stolen," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's special report about Stephen Brett, go to: www.seattlepi.com/specials/stephen
"He teaches them joy," his fifth-grade teacher, Dan Cantillana, once said. "This is a child who knew what it was like to run and play, and there's still joy in his heart." Stephen's one true and abiding passion was the Mariners. He met catcher Dan Wilson on several occasions and had a slew of memorabilia donated by team members, family and friends. One of his prized possessions was a catcher's vest worn by Wilson and donated by an attorney who was touched by Stephen's story.
The family believes the illness, which has never been diagnosed, may have been a severe autoimmune reaction to a childhood vaccination. A claim filed with the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is pending.
P-I FILE / 2001
Bob Brett says goodbye before Stephen is taken to surgery for a feeding tube at a Tacoma hospital. He wore sunglasses because of light sensitivity.
To date, his condition has frustrated dozens of doctors around the country. He went through innumerable medical workups to rule out dozens of disorders, including a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often called Lou Gehrig's disease. His decline reversed temporarily for three months near the beginning of last year when doctors tried him on a combination of new medications that included one used for Parkinson's disease.
He went from not being able to say even one word to being able to speak in 12-word sentences within two weeks, said his father, Bob Brett. "We were overjoyed." But their hopes crashed when Stephen developed a life-threatening fever in response to the medication, which had to be discontinued. Still searching for answers, the family has permitted an autopsy in the hopes of advancing medical science.
Through it all, Stephen maintained his own sense of equilibrium, lighting up with his signature grin when visitors came and playing practical jokes when he could. He delighted in his 16-year-old brother, Daniel, his golden retriever, K.C., and in making people laugh. "He was a kid who loved everyone and did his best to find the humor in life," said Bob Brett. "He always wanted everyone to be happy." A memorial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Hedden Elementary School, 11313 Eighth St. E. in Edgewood. The family requests donations in Stephen's memory to Give Kids the World (www.gktw.org) or Starlight Children's Foundation (www.starlight-washington.org)
To read "A Childhood Stolen," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's special report about Stephen Brett, go to: www.seattlepi.com/specials/stephen
I had been a vegetarian for about a year when I became pregnant with my first child. While I was pregnant I was very careful about what I ate and was so concerned about the health of my unborn child that I never allowed myself to become upset or even to dwell on negative thoughts. I never even took an aspirin. I quit coloring my hair and tried to stay away from second-hand smoke. I took vitamins and did everything I could to be healthy. I was fanatical.
When my water broke and labor did not progress I was put in the hospital and induced with pitocin (a possible culprit for autism). Since my daughter was induced she was a poor nurser and not knowing where to turn for information and assistance I gave up on breastfeeding after about 4 months and put my baby on soy formula. Because I wanted my child to be healthy and because vaccination was something you had to do to keep a child from getting a horrible childhood disease,I went promptly to the two-month check-up, although with reservations but not knowing where to go for information on the possible adverse effects of vaccination (no internet at that time!). I had read in an old PETA newsletter about a gold medal Olympian and his fashion model wife who did not vaccinate their child because they considered it "unhealthy, unnecessary and unethical". What did they know that I didn't? But where did a parent go for information?
I asked the doctor who held the needle poised at my daughter's leg what he thought about vaccination. He mentioned a few points but I remember him saying, "The benefits outweigh the risks." I asked him if he would vaccinate his own kids and he said, without looking me in the eye, "Yes. My own children are vaccinated." With that he proceeded to inject my healthy newborn with 3
vaccines. My poor baby began to cry and I felt terrible that the needle hurt her, yet I was somewhat relieved that she would now be "safe" from disease. However, the reservations were still there.
I took her for 2 more appointments and each time I was given the VIS sheets that downplayed the risks and dwelt on the benefits. Still with reservations I signed each consent sheet. I cringed with each set of shots but still had no information to prove I was doing the wrong thing. I will forever regret not trusting my mother's intuition.
I had postponed the 4th set of shots because I just didn't feel right about it but *still* had no concrete information on which to base my decision. After all, the pediatrician said they were safe and a pediatrician would never do anything to harm a helpless baby, right? Because I had postponed the 4th set my daughter was behind on her shots and, with a disgusted tone to her voice because of my tardiness, the nurse said we would have to "catch her up." That day my 23 month-old daughter received 4 shots and a TB test. As she screamed I removed a stuffed Barney doll from a bag and handed it to her in order to distract her. She clutched Barney and screamed his name over and over. Was she hoping Barney would come to life as he did on tv and save her? To this day I imagine that's what she was thinking and imagine all the fear she had when Barney could not save her as her mommy was sitting by as each needle went into her skin. Have I forgiven myself? Sometimes I feel like I have. Sometimes I feel I don't deserve forgiveness.
I told my husband after that 4th set of shots that I would never have my daughter vaccinated again. I couldn't prove it was harmful but I refused to continue unless I got some answers.
During the next preschool year (about 11 months after my daughter's last set of shots) my daughter's teacher started noticing red flags in her behavior and asked if I would mind if some specialists came in to observe her. Still wanting the best for my child I agreed. To cut a long story short, 3 months later my daughter was diagnosed with sensory integration dysfunction,what later became part of the autism spectrum disorders (medical professionals disagree on whether or not it is part of the spectrum but I believe it is). The two Ph.D.'s who diagnosed my daughter could not explain what sensory dysfunction was and had no literature on it so I had to do my own research. I could find nothing on SID; all my daughter's symptoms turned up in literature on autism.
Now desperate to find information on the adverse effects of vaccinations, I went as a last resort to a local healthfood store and found a book called "Vaccines: Are They Really Safe & Effective?" by Neil Miller. I remember reading it with horror and screaming into my pillow, knowing what I had let happen to my child.
Because we couldn't afford it we sought no treatment for our daughter. And probably because we felt the mainstream medical establishment had done enough already. I kept her on a vegetarian diet and gave her supplements, especially those that aided brain function. When she was 6 years old I saved my money and took her to a classical homeopath. Three days after taking her first remedy her appetite soared. Before then, she ate the same amount (or less) as her two year-old sister.
She is now twelve and has dramatically improved through classical homeopathy and prayer. I know she will one day be 100% cured. I've dedicated my life to warning others about the adverse effects of vaccination so that no other mother will live with the guilt I've had to live with and so no other child will be that so-called "one in a million" who is harmed by vaccination.
Lisa Jillani, director, PAVE
People Advocating Vaccine Education
werpave@yahoo.com
www.vaccineeducation.com
I have two boys one 7 and the other 4. My 7 year old is PDD-NOS, more like an asperger. He was born healthy, the doctor couldn't get over no problems considering it was a long labor. Noah always ran a temp after he was given his shots. In the hospital, Noah and I ran a temp when he was born, I didn't know that he was vaccinated anyway. He had few problems accept when given shots he cried, ran a temp and had a rash. Finally at 8-9 mths of age Noah started running a high temp with no sore throat or ear infection. His pedi took a blood sample and freaked out because he had no neutrophils, nothing to fight bacterial infections. This was the beginning of our living hell and it has only gotten worse. Noah was tested repeatedly to figure out what was wrong, all of the specialist told me one you must vaccinate him it will provide him with his only protection, two the vaccines had nothing to do with his condition. We did what we were shamed into doing, at the time it was me the mom against the world, my husband and I fought about this and he too told me that it would be very wrong for me to not vaccinate Noah. At 19 months of age Noah had his first seizure. The shots continued and so did the neutropenia. Upon Noah's 3rd birthday his brother was born, he was blood tested prior to any shots and had normal CBC's. Eli was tested each month and given his normal rounds of shots. At 4 months of age Eli had no neutrophils. We were told it was genetic and that we must vaccinate. Noah would have a seizure a year and came down with the rotavirus and was extremely ill. Finally at 41/2 years Noah was definitely regressing and at 5 was diagnosed PDD-NOS. Both boys neutropenia resolved when they were 2. Upon Noah's diagnosis Eli and Noah haven't received another shot. Eli is developing normally since the ceasing of his shots at 2 years of age. We are now fighting to reverse the damage done to Noah by his shots. His father and I live with the guilt of hurting our child and are currently doing everything in our power to help Noah get control of his seizures and feel well. We are now given a letter for Noah and Eli stating that we choose not to vaccinate our children and so far we haven't been given any trouble over it. I do not think that the vaccines are the only problem. My children couldn't handle them and no one wanted to admit that for some children they are terribly harmful However I advise anyone to at the very least wait). Sorry for the long post. I have been in the past very bitter, angry and it did nothing for my children or my family, I have put the total ignorance of others and myself behind me and tried to fix it forward and I have also given any pregnant person or new mother or father something that I didn't have, an alternative if you choose to vaccinate your child give them a chance to grow first and notice the fever, rash, and general uneasiness that a baby may feel from these shots as a sign to stop the shots immediately.
Thank you for the chance to openly address you all with what I know to be the truth.
Dawn
My name is Donna, I have been married for 22 years to Jeff. We have two boys...My daredevil, Jeffrey he just turned 20 years old last week, and my angel Kevin, He he just turned 18 three weeks ago. Kevin was born on Long Island, we moved to North Carolina right before his 4th birthday.
When Kevin was born, I had natural child birth (no anesthesia, I didn't want him to have any problems) I had a very fast labor, 2 hours from the time I arrived at the hospital until he was born, his apgar score was 9. He was born with a full head of beautiful golden blonde hair, which is very unusual for newborns.
His first well baby check up. The doctor thought Kevin was blind, Because Kevin was lying on the table and we were a few feet away, Kevin was cooing with no one around to stimulate him, The Dr said blind babies will do this..So I took him to a specialist, Kevin is not blind, I did find out a few years ago that he does have cortical blindness. I was upset with this pediatrician for putting me through this, I switched drs. I landed up at one of the top pediatrician office in suffolk county, This dr specialized in handicapped children, which I did not know at the time. He ask me why I am switching drs, so I told him, That other dr told me Kevin might be blind, and that he did not know what he was talking about because Kevin is not blind. The first pediatrician is also one of the top drs in suffolk county.
I started breastfeeding right after Kevin was born, He did fine for the first 2-3 months, Then he started having trouble sucking and developed "colic" I was careful with my diet, so he would not get colic, But he continued to scream all day all night, The dr told me he just has colic. I had to quit nursing by the time he was 4 months old...He was having more trouble sucking and the "colic" would not let up...Of course none of the formulas, soy milk, goats milk, fennel tea, Nothing worked.. He just continued to scream, his scream sounded like a wounded cat screaming. By this point he had already received two sets on vaccinations. He was very floppy and had no motor control, his pediatrician kept reassuring me that some babies are slower, He WILL catch up. I have a child that is 23 months older, My older son was a fast learner, he was walking when he was 10 months old...on his own! Kevin could not sit alone at his 12 month old check up...The nurse walks in and says angrily "Has He (the dr) said anything to you yet!" I said no, Then he walks in and tells me he thinks Kevin might have cp, and wants him to be seen by a neurologist.
Kevin went through all the testing to have different syndromes ruled out...Why did this happen to my son I ask, My answer always came back..."sometimes things just happen"
Kevin was hospitalized with his "first" seizure at age 22 months. Two months after his 4th dpt vaccine. I say first, because while he was getting his first EEG, Kevin was being really fussy, He did this often at home, I was trying to calm him down, The EEG technician looked at me and said.." you can not help him, hes in the middle of a seizure" So I have no idea when he actually had his first seizure.
Kevin's final diagnose is:
progressive microcephaly, severe spastic quadriparetic cerebral palsy, profound mental retardation, lennox gastaut syndrome (severe seizure disorder) cortical blindness, and is non verbal After having all the causes and all the syndromes ruled out..I settled for what the drs were telling me, "things just happen"
Last year, I met a woman who had been poisoned by chemicals in paint, It got me thinking about "why" with Kevin, And now with the internet...things are much easier! The only thing that I thought of was the Rhogam that I had while I was 6 months pregnant...So just for the heck of it I typed in rhogam and seizures on my search bar. There was Mercury in the Rhogam..So I search the affects of mercury on a fetus. Kevin has all the "classic" symptoms of mercury poisoning. I had a rhogam after my older son was born one while I was pregnant with Kevin another after giving birth while I was breastfeeding. He had all his vaccines on time. All of this mercury in his little body. I am not a fish eater, and had 4 fillings in my mouth. I was a stay at home mom. A lady from my Lennox gastaut support group had gone through the vaccine court and won her case, I called her on the phone, she suggested that I have Kevin's baby hair tested at Great Smokies Lab, Because he was born with a full head of hair, he had an early hair cut. (I did not want my baby boy looking like a girl!) His 6 month old baby hair tested for mercury was 13.78. This is very toxic for an adult. He only weighed 17 lbs.
That's my story...
Donna
Angel, developed rather normally as a baby and was even starting to talk then she had her first DPT shot and that is when the problems first started at the age of 15 months and by this time she was already walking she had a very bad reaction to the shot and Mom was told that she was "allergic" to the Pertussis component of the DPT shot but nothing really anything to worry about, once again with young first time parents they thought ok no big deal.
At age 5 Angel started rocking and went totally nonverbal and withdrawn in her own little world. Well the Doctor said. Well I am sorry to tell you this but your child is "AUTISTIC" this was accompanied by many fits and the need to be close to her mother who was home while dad worked after several doctors and much research Angel went to a experimental treatment called "auditory training " and it worked wonders Angel started talking again and the more active she got the more she became to love gymnastics
now her father never really bought into that Angel was a "special needs kid" and pretty much refused to help mom with her rearing. as happens in A LOT of MARRIAGES WITH DISABLED CHILDREN HER FATHER COULD NOT TAKE ANY MORE as he put it "Embarrassment" and packed his bags and left
I came into their lives about 10 months after Angel's father left her.
I noticed that Angel was showing signs of more than Autism she was hearing voices and talking to outlets and said they talked back to her too. As Her mother and I grew closer and fell in love Angel was still able to see her father on a regular basis, no biggie right? Wrong
After I moved in and Robyn <mom > And I was planning our wedding Robyn <against her better judgment> allowed Angel to go with her father to her grandmothers house in a different city and why she was in his house Angel was both physically and Mentally abused as her father and his then girlfriend thought Angel was "Just spoiled" and thought they could beat it out of her! They brought our little Angel back to us on the 31 of December 2000 and the first warning sign something was wrong was Angel <normally VERY STANDOFFISH at this time > ran to me and wrapped her arms around me and would not let go and just started sobbing and could not stop <After being terrorized like she was I was amazed she even made it home > Never the less after the final divorce was signed her father can only see Angel if Robyn or I are with her period less than a week after this incident I was home with Angel after she got home from school and she was playing in her room then it got VERY quiet I got up from my computer and went to investigate and found Angel on her knees with a screw driver in her hands crying and about to put the screwdriver in the outlet she said she was bad and needed to die !
her mother came in just then and we made the very quick decision to get her some help We took her to Cooks Children's hospital in FT Worth Texas where they tried to get her stabilized and could not so she was sent off to North Texas State hospital where after working with her for several weeks < and mom and I doing research online > Angel was re diagnosed as being Paranoid Schizophrenic,
o/c and with an IQ of only 79 mildly retarded
Every day we have to give our Angel a reason not to harm herself and NOT to listen to her voices and to fight like hell to stay out of the hospital and even some of the meds they want to put her on now have done damage to her little body < she was on a drug that was not FDA approved for her illness NUERONTIN that did neurological damage <<we are trying to get a lawsuit filed against the manufacture>> Geodone has cased a cardiac problem as she now has a heart mummer she never had before just to name 2 that have done even more damage to our little Angel
Angel is now 14 and is now having to deal with raging hormones and menstrual cycles and the fact that she almost 6' tall and boys are noticing her. We live one day at a time always prepared to handle the worse her illness brings out ,self harm violent outburst EVERY BIT OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED BY MORE COMPETENT DOCTORS AT HER BIRTH AND IF THE DRUG COMPANIES WOULD TAKE THE MERCURY OUT OF THE VACCINES
We also have a 3 year old who had her shots <1st round only without Pertussis> but will NEVER EVER HAVE ANOTHER with the exception of possible tetanus
Hope this will help you on your website when you get it up and running please send me the link so I can view your hard work!
One last point is this had I been with my wife at the birth there would have been some heads rolling then trust me but alas time has ran out on the statute of limitations even though the poor baby was not fully diagnosed until her 12 th year but no lawyer wants to touch it
Also If your Child is disabled with Paranoid Schizophrenia make sure you get them on SSI as it guarantees insurance and meds for your child plus an income once they reach 18 prior to 18 you get a little bit of income to help you with transportation etc any questions please write and I will answer as much as I can or try to get you to someone who can if anyone needs support groups we are interested in that also
Eric Federspiel
My children are almost 5 and 7. When my first was born I took her to every doctor visit and beginning at birth had her shots given to her (Hep B in the hospital). Her 2 month shots (I believe there were at least 4) did not go well. As soon as she was injected she began a high pitched horrible cry. This lasted for three days. She became chronically sickly after that. At 4 months I asked if it was wise to give her more vaccines, but I didn't really know much so I listened to the doctors who insisted it was ok. Same reaction as the first time. This continued on and on until her fifteen months shots where she received her MMR. She had the same crying etc. Then she developed a high fever and rash all over. In later years when she was given shots she would have a personality change and even would lose hair. At 12 months she was diagnosed with allergies, asthma, and an immune deficiency. She had recurrent ear infections her entire first year. My second child was a preemie. He was 6 weeks early. He had his first shots at 2 months of age. He cried excessively as well. He was already having issues with reflux and breathing too fast, but none of that improved at all after his shots. At his 12 month appt. he did not get his shots because he was too sick. He had a full body rash and severe eczema and chronic cold. He was also diagnosed with an immune deficiency. He has asthma, severe life threatening food allergies, had severe reflux and eosinophilic esophagitis. He had his next set of shots at 16 months and spent the next 3 months (along with my daughter) very ill. Eventually he ended up on IVIG for his immune system disorder, that was given by IV every 3 weeks.
The children's immunologist wanted to give them various vaccines in order to test their immune response. My oldest has had 4 DtaP's, and 2 DT's. My youngest has had 3 DTaP and one DT . Their last DT shots were also given with their 3rd dose of pneumovax. This was Oct 2002. They had terrible reactions. My daughter was lethargic for 3 months, had a total behavior change and was sick. My son spent 3 weeks barely able to walk as his left leg would totally give out with no warning. He had a drastic change in behavior, scooting only on his head to get around and banging his head
against the walls.
Both of my children have Sensory Integration Dysfunction. Our oldest has severe anxiety as well. We decided after the shots in 2002 to wise up and do some research. I feel terrible that I allowed my children to get so many vaccines. My daughter is up to date except her 2nd MMR and her last IPV. My son is lacking all MMR's, 2 IPV's, a Hep B, and varicella. He has severe egg allergy so it's not like the MMR would be a good idea anyway. We just moved to Iowa and I am having trouble finding a pediatrician who will sign the medical waiver form . Both kids had a medical waiver in Kentucky, but only because I told the pediatrician that Immunology would be giving any vaccines IF they were appropriate.
Anyway, sorry this is so long. That is the shorter version of our story.
They are both doing fairly well. It’s been two years in October since their last vaccines. My 7 year old is having severe anxiety issues and problems with her Sensory Integration Dysfunction. She has had chronic constipation since she was an infant and continues to have issues there. My 5 year old is doing ok. He is on the hyper side many days, but is making progress. He ’s somewhat behind in skills, but is catching up. His autistic type behaviors have mostly disappeared. No more scooting on his head etc. They both are doing well in terms of their immune system problems. Funny they both had the exact same lab values and problems, but they didn’t have a name for the specific disorder. I think it should be called Post Vaccine Immune Dysfunction Syndrome!
An interesting note about vaccines in myself, I was working in health care and asked to take the 3 shot series of Hep B. I took these shots and within 2 months of the 2nd dose came down with a terrible case of mononucleosis with a terribly swollen liver and spleen. I was then sick for the next year. Interesting. I just received my medical records since we recently moved and was shocked to see how closely those 2 events were timed.
Kristen
When my water broke and labor did not progress I was put in the hospital and induced with pitocin (a possible culprit for autism). Since my daughter was induced she was a poor nurser and not knowing where to turn for information and assistance I gave up on breastfeeding after about 4 months and put my baby on soy formula. Because I wanted my child to be healthy and because vaccination was something you had to do to keep a child from getting a horrible childhood disease,I went promptly to the two-month check-up, although with reservations but not knowing where to go for information on the possible adverse effects of vaccination (no internet at that time!). I had read in an old PETA newsletter about a gold medal Olympian and his fashion model wife who did not vaccinate their child because they considered it "unhealthy, unnecessary and unethical". What did they know that I didn't? But where did a parent go for information?
I asked the doctor who held the needle poised at my daughter's leg what he thought about vaccination. He mentioned a few points but I remember him saying, "The benefits outweigh the risks." I asked him if he would vaccinate his own kids and he said, without looking me in the eye, "Yes. My own children are vaccinated." With that he proceeded to inject my healthy newborn with 3
vaccines. My poor baby began to cry and I felt terrible that the needle hurt her, yet I was somewhat relieved that she would now be "safe" from disease. However, the reservations were still there.
I took her for 2 more appointments and each time I was given the VIS sheets that downplayed the risks and dwelt on the benefits. Still with reservations I signed each consent sheet. I cringed with each set of shots but still had no information to prove I was doing the wrong thing. I will forever regret not trusting my mother's intuition.
I had postponed the 4th set of shots because I just didn't feel right about it but *still* had no concrete information on which to base my decision. After all, the pediatrician said they were safe and a pediatrician would never do anything to harm a helpless baby, right? Because I had postponed the 4th set my daughter was behind on her shots and, with a disgusted tone to her voice because of my tardiness, the nurse said we would have to "catch her up." That day my 23 month-old daughter received 4 shots and a TB test. As she screamed I removed a stuffed Barney doll from a bag and handed it to her in order to distract her. She clutched Barney and screamed his name over and over. Was she hoping Barney would come to life as he did on tv and save her? To this day I imagine that's what she was thinking and imagine all the fear she had when Barney could not save her as her mommy was sitting by as each needle went into her skin. Have I forgiven myself? Sometimes I feel like I have. Sometimes I feel I don't deserve forgiveness.
I told my husband after that 4th set of shots that I would never have my daughter vaccinated again. I couldn't prove it was harmful but I refused to continue unless I got some answers.
During the next preschool year (about 11 months after my daughter's last set of shots) my daughter's teacher started noticing red flags in her behavior and asked if I would mind if some specialists came in to observe her. Still wanting the best for my child I agreed. To cut a long story short, 3 months later my daughter was diagnosed with sensory integration dysfunction,what later became part of the autism spectrum disorders (medical professionals disagree on whether or not it is part of the spectrum but I believe it is). The two Ph.D.'s who diagnosed my daughter could not explain what sensory dysfunction was and had no literature on it so I had to do my own research. I could find nothing on SID; all my daughter's symptoms turned up in literature on autism.
Now desperate to find information on the adverse effects of vaccinations, I went as a last resort to a local healthfood store and found a book called "Vaccines: Are They Really Safe & Effective?" by Neil Miller. I remember reading it with horror and screaming into my pillow, knowing what I had let happen to my child.
Because we couldn't afford it we sought no treatment for our daughter. And probably because we felt the mainstream medical establishment had done enough already. I kept her on a vegetarian diet and gave her supplements, especially those that aided brain function. When she was 6 years old I saved my money and took her to a classical homeopath. Three days after taking her first remedy her appetite soared. Before then, she ate the same amount (or less) as her two year-old sister.
She is now twelve and has dramatically improved through classical homeopathy and prayer. I know she will one day be 100% cured. I've dedicated my life to warning others about the adverse effects of vaccination so that no other mother will live with the guilt I've had to live with and so no other child will be that so-called "one in a million" who is harmed by vaccination.
Lisa Jillani, director, PAVE
People Advocating Vaccine Education
werpave@yahoo.com
www.vaccineeducation.com
I have two boys one 7 and the other 4. My 7 year old is PDD-NOS, more like an asperger. He was born healthy, the doctor couldn't get over no problems considering it was a long labor. Noah always ran a temp after he was given his shots. In the hospital, Noah and I ran a temp when he was born, I didn't know that he was vaccinated anyway. He had few problems accept when given shots he cried, ran a temp and had a rash. Finally at 8-9 mths of age Noah started running a high temp with no sore throat or ear infection. His pedi took a blood sample and freaked out because he had no neutrophils, nothing to fight bacterial infections. This was the beginning of our living hell and it has only gotten worse. Noah was tested repeatedly to figure out what was wrong, all of the specialist told me one you must vaccinate him it will provide him with his only protection, two the vaccines had nothing to do with his condition. We did what we were shamed into doing, at the time it was me the mom against the world, my husband and I fought about this and he too told me that it would be very wrong for me to not vaccinate Noah. At 19 months of age Noah had his first seizure. The shots continued and so did the neutropenia. Upon Noah's 3rd birthday his brother was born, he was blood tested prior to any shots and had normal CBC's. Eli was tested each month and given his normal rounds of shots. At 4 months of age Eli had no neutrophils. We were told it was genetic and that we must vaccinate. Noah would have a seizure a year and came down with the rotavirus and was extremely ill. Finally at 41/2 years Noah was definitely regressing and at 5 was diagnosed PDD-NOS. Both boys neutropenia resolved when they were 2. Upon Noah's diagnosis Eli and Noah haven't received another shot. Eli is developing normally since the ceasing of his shots at 2 years of age. We are now fighting to reverse the damage done to Noah by his shots. His father and I live with the guilt of hurting our child and are currently doing everything in our power to help Noah get control of his seizures and feel well. We are now given a letter for Noah and Eli stating that we choose not to vaccinate our children and so far we haven't been given any trouble over it. I do not think that the vaccines are the only problem. My children couldn't handle them and no one wanted to admit that for some children they are terribly harmful However I advise anyone to at the very least wait). Sorry for the long post. I have been in the past very bitter, angry and it did nothing for my children or my family, I have put the total ignorance of others and myself behind me and tried to fix it forward and I have also given any pregnant person or new mother or father something that I didn't have, an alternative if you choose to vaccinate your child give them a chance to grow first and notice the fever, rash, and general uneasiness that a baby may feel from these shots as a sign to stop the shots immediately.
Thank you for the chance to openly address you all with what I know to be the truth.
Dawn
My name is Donna, I have been married for 22 years to Jeff. We have two boys...My daredevil, Jeffrey he just turned 20 years old last week, and my angel Kevin, He he just turned 18 three weeks ago. Kevin was born on Long Island, we moved to North Carolina right before his 4th birthday.
When Kevin was born, I had natural child birth (no anesthesia, I didn't want him to have any problems) I had a very fast labor, 2 hours from the time I arrived at the hospital until he was born, his apgar score was 9. He was born with a full head of beautiful golden blonde hair, which is very unusual for newborns.
His first well baby check up. The doctor thought Kevin was blind, Because Kevin was lying on the table and we were a few feet away, Kevin was cooing with no one around to stimulate him, The Dr said blind babies will do this..So I took him to a specialist, Kevin is not blind, I did find out a few years ago that he does have cortical blindness. I was upset with this pediatrician for putting me through this, I switched drs. I landed up at one of the top pediatrician office in suffolk county, This dr specialized in handicapped children, which I did not know at the time. He ask me why I am switching drs, so I told him, That other dr told me Kevin might be blind, and that he did not know what he was talking about because Kevin is not blind. The first pediatrician is also one of the top drs in suffolk county.
I started breastfeeding right after Kevin was born, He did fine for the first 2-3 months, Then he started having trouble sucking and developed "colic" I was careful with my diet, so he would not get colic, But he continued to scream all day all night, The dr told me he just has colic. I had to quit nursing by the time he was 4 months old...He was having more trouble sucking and the "colic" would not let up...Of course none of the formulas, soy milk, goats milk, fennel tea, Nothing worked.. He just continued to scream, his scream sounded like a wounded cat screaming. By this point he had already received two sets on vaccinations. He was very floppy and had no motor control, his pediatrician kept reassuring me that some babies are slower, He WILL catch up. I have a child that is 23 months older, My older son was a fast learner, he was walking when he was 10 months old...on his own! Kevin could not sit alone at his 12 month old check up...The nurse walks in and says angrily "Has He (the dr) said anything to you yet!" I said no, Then he walks in and tells me he thinks Kevin might have cp, and wants him to be seen by a neurologist.
Kevin went through all the testing to have different syndromes ruled out...Why did this happen to my son I ask, My answer always came back..."sometimes things just happen"
Kevin was hospitalized with his "first" seizure at age 22 months. Two months after his 4th dpt vaccine. I say first, because while he was getting his first EEG, Kevin was being really fussy, He did this often at home, I was trying to calm him down, The EEG technician looked at me and said.." you can not help him, hes in the middle of a seizure" So I have no idea when he actually had his first seizure.
Kevin's final diagnose is:
progressive microcephaly, severe spastic quadriparetic cerebral palsy, profound mental retardation, lennox gastaut syndrome (severe seizure disorder) cortical blindness, and is non verbal After having all the causes and all the syndromes ruled out..I settled for what the drs were telling me, "things just happen"
Last year, I met a woman who had been poisoned by chemicals in paint, It got me thinking about "why" with Kevin, And now with the internet...things are much easier! The only thing that I thought of was the Rhogam that I had while I was 6 months pregnant...So just for the heck of it I typed in rhogam and seizures on my search bar. There was Mercury in the Rhogam..So I search the affects of mercury on a fetus. Kevin has all the "classic" symptoms of mercury poisoning. I had a rhogam after my older son was born one while I was pregnant with Kevin another after giving birth while I was breastfeeding. He had all his vaccines on time. All of this mercury in his little body. I am not a fish eater, and had 4 fillings in my mouth. I was a stay at home mom. A lady from my Lennox gastaut support group had gone through the vaccine court and won her case, I called her on the phone, she suggested that I have Kevin's baby hair tested at Great Smokies Lab, Because he was born with a full head of hair, he had an early hair cut. (I did not want my baby boy looking like a girl!) His 6 month old baby hair tested for mercury was 13.78. This is very toxic for an adult. He only weighed 17 lbs.
That's my story...
Donna
Angel, developed rather normally as a baby and was even starting to talk then she had her first DPT shot and that is when the problems first started at the age of 15 months and by this time she was already walking she had a very bad reaction to the shot and Mom was told that she was "allergic" to the Pertussis component of the DPT shot but nothing really anything to worry about, once again with young first time parents they thought ok no big deal.
At age 5 Angel started rocking and went totally nonverbal and withdrawn in her own little world. Well the Doctor said. Well I am sorry to tell you this but your child is "AUTISTIC" this was accompanied by many fits and the need to be close to her mother who was home while dad worked after several doctors and much research Angel went to a experimental treatment called "auditory training " and it worked wonders Angel started talking again and the more active she got the more she became to love gymnastics
now her father never really bought into that Angel was a "special needs kid" and pretty much refused to help mom with her rearing. as happens in A LOT of MARRIAGES WITH DISABLED CHILDREN HER FATHER COULD NOT TAKE ANY MORE as he put it "Embarrassment" and packed his bags and left
I came into their lives about 10 months after Angel's father left her.
I noticed that Angel was showing signs of more than Autism she was hearing voices and talking to outlets and said they talked back to her too. As Her mother and I grew closer and fell in love Angel was still able to see her father on a regular basis, no biggie right? Wrong
After I moved in and Robyn <mom > And I was planning our wedding Robyn <against her better judgment> allowed Angel to go with her father to her grandmothers house in a different city and why she was in his house Angel was both physically and Mentally abused as her father and his then girlfriend thought Angel was "Just spoiled" and thought they could beat it out of her! They brought our little Angel back to us on the 31 of December 2000 and the first warning sign something was wrong was Angel <normally VERY STANDOFFISH at this time > ran to me and wrapped her arms around me and would not let go and just started sobbing and could not stop <After being terrorized like she was I was amazed she even made it home > Never the less after the final divorce was signed her father can only see Angel if Robyn or I are with her period less than a week after this incident I was home with Angel after she got home from school and she was playing in her room then it got VERY quiet I got up from my computer and went to investigate and found Angel on her knees with a screw driver in her hands crying and about to put the screwdriver in the outlet she said she was bad and needed to die !
her mother came in just then and we made the very quick decision to get her some help We took her to Cooks Children's hospital in FT Worth Texas where they tried to get her stabilized and could not so she was sent off to North Texas State hospital where after working with her for several weeks < and mom and I doing research online > Angel was re diagnosed as being Paranoid Schizophrenic,
o/c and with an IQ of only 79 mildly retarded
Every day we have to give our Angel a reason not to harm herself and NOT to listen to her voices and to fight like hell to stay out of the hospital and even some of the meds they want to put her on now have done damage to her little body < she was on a drug that was not FDA approved for her illness NUERONTIN that did neurological damage <<we are trying to get a lawsuit filed against the manufacture>> Geodone has cased a cardiac problem as she now has a heart mummer she never had before just to name 2 that have done even more damage to our little Angel
Angel is now 14 and is now having to deal with raging hormones and menstrual cycles and the fact that she almost 6' tall and boys are noticing her. We live one day at a time always prepared to handle the worse her illness brings out ,self harm violent outburst EVERY BIT OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED BY MORE COMPETENT DOCTORS AT HER BIRTH AND IF THE DRUG COMPANIES WOULD TAKE THE MERCURY OUT OF THE VACCINES
We also have a 3 year old who had her shots <1st round only without Pertussis> but will NEVER EVER HAVE ANOTHER with the exception of possible tetanus
Hope this will help you on your website when you get it up and running please send me the link so I can view your hard work!
One last point is this had I been with my wife at the birth there would have been some heads rolling then trust me but alas time has ran out on the statute of limitations even though the poor baby was not fully diagnosed until her 12 th year but no lawyer wants to touch it
Also If your Child is disabled with Paranoid Schizophrenia make sure you get them on SSI as it guarantees insurance and meds for your child plus an income once they reach 18 prior to 18 you get a little bit of income to help you with transportation etc any questions please write and I will answer as much as I can or try to get you to someone who can if anyone needs support groups we are interested in that also
Eric Federspiel
My children are almost 5 and 7. When my first was born I took her to every doctor visit and beginning at birth had her shots given to her (Hep B in the hospital). Her 2 month shots (I believe there were at least 4) did not go well. As soon as she was injected she began a high pitched horrible cry. This lasted for three days. She became chronically sickly after that. At 4 months I asked if it was wise to give her more vaccines, but I didn't really know much so I listened to the doctors who insisted it was ok. Same reaction as the first time. This continued on and on until her fifteen months shots where she received her MMR. She had the same crying etc. Then she developed a high fever and rash all over. In later years when she was given shots she would have a personality change and even would lose hair. At 12 months she was diagnosed with allergies, asthma, and an immune deficiency. She had recurrent ear infections her entire first year. My second child was a preemie. He was 6 weeks early. He had his first shots at 2 months of age. He cried excessively as well. He was already having issues with reflux and breathing too fast, but none of that improved at all after his shots. At his 12 month appt. he did not get his shots because he was too sick. He had a full body rash and severe eczema and chronic cold. He was also diagnosed with an immune deficiency. He has asthma, severe life threatening food allergies, had severe reflux and eosinophilic esophagitis. He had his next set of shots at 16 months and spent the next 3 months (along with my daughter) very ill. Eventually he ended up on IVIG for his immune system disorder, that was given by IV every 3 weeks.
The children's immunologist wanted to give them various vaccines in order to test their immune response. My oldest has had 4 DtaP's, and 2 DT's. My youngest has had 3 DTaP and one DT . Their last DT shots were also given with their 3rd dose of pneumovax. This was Oct 2002. They had terrible reactions. My daughter was lethargic for 3 months, had a total behavior change and was sick. My son spent 3 weeks barely able to walk as his left leg would totally give out with no warning. He had a drastic change in behavior, scooting only on his head to get around and banging his head
against the walls.
Both of my children have Sensory Integration Dysfunction. Our oldest has severe anxiety as well. We decided after the shots in 2002 to wise up and do some research. I feel terrible that I allowed my children to get so many vaccines. My daughter is up to date except her 2nd MMR and her last IPV. My son is lacking all MMR's, 2 IPV's, a Hep B, and varicella. He has severe egg allergy so it's not like the MMR would be a good idea anyway. We just moved to Iowa and I am having trouble finding a pediatrician who will sign the medical waiver form . Both kids had a medical waiver in Kentucky, but only because I told the pediatrician that Immunology would be giving any vaccines IF they were appropriate.
Anyway, sorry this is so long. That is the shorter version of our story.
They are both doing fairly well. It’s been two years in October since their last vaccines. My 7 year old is having severe anxiety issues and problems with her Sensory Integration Dysfunction. She has had chronic constipation since she was an infant and continues to have issues there. My 5 year old is doing ok. He is on the hyper side many days, but is making progress. He ’s somewhat behind in skills, but is catching up. His autistic type behaviors have mostly disappeared. No more scooting on his head etc. They both are doing well in terms of their immune system problems. Funny they both had the exact same lab values and problems, but they didn’t have a name for the specific disorder. I think it should be called Post Vaccine Immune Dysfunction Syndrome!
An interesting note about vaccines in myself, I was working in health care and asked to take the 3 shot series of Hep B. I took these shots and within 2 months of the 2nd dose came down with a terrible case of mononucleosis with a terribly swollen liver and spleen. I was then sick for the next year. Interesting. I just received my medical records since we recently moved and was shocked to see how closely those 2 events were timed.
Kristen
Hello, my name is Jill. Our son Jacob died on 02/01/00 at the age of 4 months and 8 days old. He was seen at his pediatricians office for his "well" check up and vaccinations only days before his death. The Medical Examiner ruled his death as apparent SIDS, and his death certificate states "Natural". How can a healthy 4 month old baby die of Natural causes?
After Jacob died, the medical professionals here assured me that there was no possible way SIDS was related to the vaccinations....they quickly dismissed all of the questions that I had telling me the benefits of vaccinations outweighed the risks. They say because immunizations are given at 2 and 4 months in age that it is just a coincidence that it is the peak SIDS age....HELLO?!?!
How is it that the government intimidates parents into getting their children vaccinated, but then turns around and financially compensates them? Its very sad that our government knows something is bad for us and perpetuates it.
I wish I knew then what I know now. I did what I felt was right at the time and that is something that I will always have to live with and wonder about. Would Jacob be here if I had not immunized him, or would he have been a vicitm of SIDS anyhow???
As a matter of fact, I finally got up the courage to get his medical records from the pediatricians office so I could send it to VAERS. I picked them up today, and although it was extremely difficult I hope in my heart that somehow it will help someone. From what I can tell he was given 1)DTap 2)IPV 3)HepB 4)HIB on that day.
When our subsequent baby was born, we struggled with whether or not we would/should immunize her...of course everyone has an opinion on the subject. We ended up unbundling her vaccinations and waited til she was a bit older, but I'm finding out that that doesn't necessarily help at all. The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning towards ceasing to vaccinate her altogether (which is why I am here, to learn and gain knowledge).
My husband wasn't immunized and he is one of the healthiest people I know!!!
Thanks for listening,
Jill/CA
I am Stephanie, mom to dd age 4.5, ds age 3, ds age 1.5, and #4 edd 11-2-04.
Slowly over the course of our first 3 years of parenting, some things happened that lead me to not trust the medical profession. I got bad advice about breastfeeding, encouragement to use cereals and unnatural foods over human milk, I had a bad reaction from a pre-natal vitamin (hyper, fast heartbeat, uncontrollable crying) and called the OB who said, 'oh that has copper in it and we're not sure what that does to people, stop taking it right away'. Also, I'd give my son, child #2, cold medicine the doctor gave and he'd wail and arch all night. So, I realized they didn't know it all, and I needed to have more information before just doing what they said.
Our first child had all of her required vaccinations from her birth in 1999 to age 3. She was breastfed exclusively for 6 months and then still until 14 months, and was overall pretty healthy. Our 2nd child, William (Will), was vaccinated through 12 months I believe. He developed normally, was speaking several words at 9 months as he should. After he turned 1, he started verbalizing everything into an 'ess ess' sound. He'd grunt or just say 'ess ess' whenever he wanted something. We thought it was his way of saying please and he had just generalized all words into the word please and that's how he got what he wanted. He developed some digestive problems, just weird poops, bad smells, more foods coming through, didn't seem serious, but was obviously not right. At this time, I never considered that vaccinations were causing any of this, but we were considering not doing vaccinations any more because I didn't believe the benefits outweighed the risks. So at his 15 month appointment, I said no more, and we haven't done any since.
When Will was 2, he was still only saying, ess ess. Before and around age one, he had a normal baby version of the words, mommy, daddy, fish, grace, Phyllis, and more . definitely more than just ess ess. His pediatrician recommended we have him evaluated for speech therapy. He was 2 months from turning 2, I didn't think it was necessary, thought he'd talk when he was ready, just figured the loss of language after age 1 was a normal thing. But we had the evaluation done anyway. He qualified and had an hour of therapy in our home each week. His behavior wasn't horrible, but there were signs of not following directions, throwing things for attention or for no apparent reason, little focus. To me, these were just toddler behaviors and not strange for our first little boy even though our first little girl was easy-going and seemed bright.
The speech pathologist recommended he have his hearing tested. He was found to have fluid in his ears. The theory was that he had had fluid in his ears since birth (he had chronic runny nose his first year) and this caused him to not be able to hear and therefore not learn to talk. I was really just going through the motions that these doctors requested, I never said, well why did he talk then, but then stop. The pediatrician thought this was very strange, he had always been found to have "gorgeous" ears at every well-check. I was told he could have antibiotics and/or tubes. I wasn't going to do that to a 2 year old. The research isn't even promising that they work. So I took him to a friend who is a chiropractor. He sent us to another chiropractor whose work coincided with his runny nose clearing up. Then I took him to Fox Hollow Clinic near Crestwood, Kentucky, which does natural medicine, etc. An osteopath said he may have some aspergers-like symptoms, but didn't see any clear signs. Hair analysis showed over the top levels of lead and arsenic, as well as a zinc deficiency, things that are often found in autistic children also. He also had other abnormal metal levels. The doctor prescribed supplements, vitamins, chlorella-a metal detox liquid, gave dietary recommendations, and we continued chiropractic care. By the time Will was 2 and a half, he was talking again, within 2 more months, he was released from speech therapy as 'on track'. He had large jumps in progress when we started higher doses of the EFAs (essential fatty acids) and fish oils. I do believe it was this run of treatment that 'cured' his speech delay.
Looking back, we know that he was almost always sick after a well-child check. We'd take in a healthy baby, he'd be looked at and given his shots, we'd go home, and he'd get sick! I was so fed up, because I thought that he was just picking up germs every time we went in there. He'd react with fevers, crying, up all night, couldn't relax unless I was holding him. I would call, and they'd say, did he have his shots? I'd say yes, they'd say, then he's fine, just give him Tylenol or Robitussin. This happened several times. I thought he'd react from the meds, but was it the shots too or only? He didn't always have the meds and he reacted that way. I remember one awful night when I literally didn't go to bed all night. He was very uncomfortable and squirmy in my arms, but was less likely to scream. I'd try to put him down and he'd squirm and scream, so I'd pick him up and hold him while he screamed, and sometimes he'd sleep on me. I tried to nurse him all I could, but often he'd refuse. We made it through the night and he seemed fine by the next night.
I believe Will was on an early side of the ADD/Autism spectrum. One more vaccine, and we would have had a lot more to deal with.
Another note: we mentioned to the Osteopathic doctor that we were quitting vaccines and felt they may be the cause of Will's troubles. He said, "as a physician in the commonwealth of Kentucky, I have to tell you that vaccines are the best choice for your child," He went on, 'with the high fevers and reactions he has had, it seems that he may not be a candidate, "read between the lines". What is in '..' are his words paraphrased. Between "quotes" and "read between the lines" were his actual words.
Will turned 3 in April. His digestion is great. He can tolerate milk (we don't drink it, but it was something he'd react to after drinking, and after cutting it from his diet just in time, he can now tolerate it when he happens upon it at grandmas or something).
A book that started me really noticing that Will's symptoms were all connected was Karen Seroussi's "unraveling the mysteries of autism and pdd". I recommend it to all. A friend whose normal daughter stopped talking and became autistic-like (they don't diagnose at that age here) at age 2 or 3 after vaccinations told me to read it. I never would have seen before that ill's symptoms were connected: digestive issues, speech delay, mother who doesn't hold the titer for rubella (what a wake-up this was, I was revaccinated after giving birth to our first child because I showed up non-immune to rubella-but I knew I had had MMRs throughout my life even as an adult! Who knows, they could have given me a whole MMR at that time-another thing to consider, I was also given rhogam during all 3 pregnancies, something else that could have thimerosal and other bad things that would have been passed to our children). He also often woke up crying for a period of his baby/toddler life, also had a large belly-signifying potential gas, digestion troubles. this is just all I can think of as of now.
Thanks for letting me share.
Stephanie :-)
It was January 15, 1981 and as I was bundling up our son Bryan to bring to his second “well baby” check up, I thought of the fun we would have when the weather warmed up and I could take him and his sister Alyssa for long walks outside. He was born on September 18, 1980 weighing 8lbs 8oz. What immediately followed his “well baby” check was far from typical. I certainly wanted what was best for my child so no questions where asked when it came to his immunizations. No warning of adverse reactions was given. I blindly handed my son over as a human sacrifice. Trusting the medical profession knew what was best for my child.
I had to work for a couple of hours so I dropped Bryan and Alyssa off at the babysitters house. I told her I would be gone for two hours. I told Marilyn he would not eat for me and perhaps she could get him to drink his bottle.
I returned to Marilyn’s house at around 2:45 and went to the living room to pick up Bryan he appeared to be sleeping. As I leaned over to pick him up, I felt his limp, lifeless body in my arms. I screamed a cry that would never be repeated. I desperately tried calling an ambulance but I fumbled at the phone. Marilyn’s husband happened to be home, and he drove us to the hospital. I burst through the front doors of the hospital holding Bryan in my arms and screaming words I will never remember and feeling a desperation I will never forget. My recall is that of telling the emergency room nurse that Bryan had just had his shots, maybe he was reacting….
He was pronounced dead at 3;33 p.m. four hours after his vaccines. The doctors’ report said Cause of death: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
My son progressed normally up until about 10 months. We moved into a rental house while our new house was being built and it all began. He was constantly congested (so was my husband) which lead to chronic upper respiratory infections. He was given repeated doses of antibiotics never off for more than a week or two all the while being vaccinated. It was a continuous cycle and I began noticing changes in him. He was playing by himself a lot, stools were terrible, could sit and watch TV forever, etc. I can't say that I took him in to receive a particular vaccine and the next day he was gone. What I do know is that the combination of antibiotics and vaccinations did something to him. He changed fairly rapidly in that particular frame of time. I am an educated, proactive mom and at the time did and tried everything to keep him well and had alot of disagreements with my doctor. But I can tell you that there was a huge turning point in my mind when it came to vaccinations. Very new to all of this I made the HUGE mistake of giving him the flu vaccine. As sickly as he was I just knew that without it he would be one of those immunosuppressed children to die from the flu. I called the pharmaceutical company that dispensed his flu vaccine and asked them tons of questions. I know so much more about all of this stuff now than I did then. I found out that there is so much stuff they do not have to tell me. Anyway, the day after the flu vaccine we saw severe regression. Not with speech but with everything else. He was toe-walking, hand-flapping, couldn't be touched even lightly. The list goes on and on. It was a terrible experience and luckily he came out of rather quickly with very intense sensory integration therapy. I knew that these vaccinations must have had a profound effect on him. I saw the damage done by this one vaccine so I knew what all of the others must have done to him also. Honestly, I feel like my education and occupation brainwashed me against the horrors and damage vaccinations can have. I wish I had been smarter, but at the time I wasn't. Thankfully, he is doing so well now that his doctors are already questioning his diagnosis. He is not even three yet. We have a lot to be thankful for but also a lot yet to work on. I know that was long but that was just a brief glimpse at my vaccine history. I hope to learn so much more and educate others on this issue.
Thanks.
Cindy
My son was a sweet, happy, healthy baby boy who imitated, cooed, and flirted with his mama. Nine days after his 4 month shots he had 3 grand mal seizures and was never the same. He stopped imitating, cooing, looking for me, and eye contact. I asked my husband the day we brought him home from the hospital, “Why won’t he look at me?”. I then went on-line to research adverse reactions to vaccines. I was horrified by what I had read because I knew what I was reading was what happened to my son. All these parents had the exact same thing happen to them (vaccines+seizures+change in behavior = autism). I told everyone, including the doctors, what I thought had happened and they all told me I was crazy and to stay off of the Internet. Well, low and behold, nobody thinks I’m crazy now because he is now 18 months and has been evaluated by two separate autism experts who both believe he is somewhere on the spectrum. Vaccines do cause autism and anyone who thinks differently is either in denial, isn’t fully educated, or is trying to cover up this truth. Feel free to use this story on your web page or share it with other if you would like. Take care and God bless you and your family.
Sheryl
My daughter was a normal child from the get go. 3 days after her 9 months vaccines, which were hib, hbv, and prevnar, she started with her eyes rolling back in her head, I immediately rushed her to the doctor and was told she had a severe ear infection, and she was holding her head back to drain the infection from her head, sometimes kids do that. But she was actually having a seizure right in the doctors office. She started having what we call startle spells. I took her to her pediatrician and was actually told she was doing this for attention, I said what!! After a year of having so many of these spells and so many goose eggs and cuts on her head from hitting the floor, table, anything she was around, I finally begged enough and got an EEG for her, which showed nothing. 2 MRI's and 5 EEG's later nothing. They just diagnosed her with epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and stuck on her seizure medication.. All of her spells are always associated with noise, a cough, a fork hitting the plate, a sneeze, or even your voice. If she is standing when a noise takes place, it is certain she will fall, She has a lot of visits to the chiropractor because when she falls she throws her hips out, neck and back. Then the second awful thing, was another ear infection that was so bad, I ended up in the ER with her one night, and they gave her an antibiotic shot, when the nurse gave it to her, I told her she wasn't holding still, and she said I know she is a wiggle worm and just jabbed her, which was the starting of something awful. For 3 weeks she laid in screaming pain day and night. She couldn't crawl, walk or sit. I took her to a total of 13 doctors in that 3 weeks that told me she was just sore from the shots, in that 3 weeks she had another total of 2 more antibiotic shots. I finally got sick of messing with the doc's and took her to a chiropractor, in which I found out her pelvis had been thrown out with the first shot, her neck was so severely out of place that she couldn't hold her head up, eat or even drink without me holding her in a lying down position. The chiropractor has been my daughters guardian angel. With out her, my daughters body would have grown together this way, out of place, I certainly think this is what's wrong with a lot of kids who have physical problems moving. Two years ago she started having tonic clonic seizures from hitting her head so much, She was then placed on 8 different seizure med's which only caused her to lose weight and lose her hair, all of it, we are talking waist length hair. The last tonic seizure she had was may 22, o3, due to cranial manipulation. She had a seizure and I went straight to the chiropractor and she did this manipulation on her skull, and that was the last seizure of that kind she has had. In May of 04, we decided after the neurologist told us there were no other med's her could give to her, because nothing was working, he could refer us to another children's hospital, or do surgery on her, they wanted to intrude on her brain, don't think so. We found the power of herbs. She had a black like substance in her ears that looked like car grease, that of course the ear specialist told us was normal, of course, in just 3 days of being on the herbs the stuff was completely gone from her ears, 13 months and counting. Her eyes would dilate abnormally and her walking was almost nothing. Her speech well, she was talking before all of this happened, then just stopped, and now it is coming along quit nicely, and her eyes have completely stopped doing this and she is almost running now, her legs are still hyperflexed, she doesn't walk like normal children, and probably never will, but she is learning how to cope with her body being out of wack. Thanks to the herbs and definitely not the moron doctors. When I first took her the these herb people, I thought what a bunch of quacks!! But they really did know what they were doing. No my children don't go the doctor unless they get hurt, or some kind of emergency arises I can't handle. When my children would get an ear infection or sinus thing, it would last for months, and I think it's because of the med's the doc's put them on hurt them more than helped. When they get sick, I treat them myself. My children will not ever get another vaccine!! ever!!! I always ask people would you sit your child down at the table and give them a bowl of antifreeze to eat? I don't think so. from OHIO
True measure of QB's heart found at home
Flutie family faces challenge of autism
By Jackie MacMullan, Globe Staff | July 24, 2005
NATICK -- This time there are no boxes, no moving vans, no harried coast-to-coast transports of the dogs, the kids, the stuff. Doug Flutie is home. His new job, backup quarterback for the New
England Patriots, enables his daughter, Alexa, to complete her senior year of high school alongside her lifelong friends -- not to mention cousins -- from Natick. It allows his son, Dougie, to sleep in the same room all year, with his toy box and his hockey stick and his big old bear.
Dougie is 13 now. He loves music and the ocean. Sometimes, when the family is at the beach, he'll bolt toward the water without warning, and Doug will have to chase him down. Dougie will hear his father coming, his steely legs frantically pounding the sand in pursuit, and he'll wheel around and smile. You know what he'd be saying if he could talk: Gotcha, Dad.
He loves it when his mother, Laurie Flutie, plays the ''Hey" song. When he was 2, before autism overtook him, he would croon right along with her. You know the tune. It's ''What I Like About You" by the Romantics. When they sang, ''You really know how to dance," Dougie would bust a move, smiling and laughing, like always.
Dougie doesn't dance so much anymore. He often sits in his stroller, a state-of-the-art contraption that helps contain him and provide comfort from the swirl of life's activity that is, at times, just too overwhelming. He has a habit of drifting off to his own place, where nobody -- not his mother, his father, his sister, or a team of top-flight physicians -- can penetrate.
Autism is heartbreaking that way. One minute, your son is smiling at you, and the next, he is looking right through you. ''He's always looking away," said Doug Flutie, wistfully. ''You wonder what he's thinking." But his parents believe Dougie is happy. He doesn't know he's autistic, doesn't notice when others gawk at him when he's shouting, or chewing on a plastic bottle, or twirling objects again and again and again. Some people stare, others recoil. His parents have long ago accepted that.
The rest of the world simply does not see the Dougie they see.
''People ask me how he's doing," Doug Flutie said. ''It's not that he's doing any one specific skill. It's little things. He follows directions better. He gets in and out of the car by himself. That's a huge improvement. Before that, it used to be a procedure." Here is one of the most celebrated athletes in New England sports history, a Heisman Trophy winner who married his high school sweetheart in a storybook wedding. The Fluties were millionaires by the time Doug was 25, yet his own son, his namesake, can't even begin to carry on the legacy. It's likely Dougie will never read or write. He will never be able to take care of himself. He probably will never speak. The Random House Dictionary defines autism as a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by impaired communication, excessive rigidity, and emotional detachment. Heartbreaking? Of course it is. But don't you dare feel sorry for the Fluties.
''We don't really like that poor, poor pitiful me thing," Doug explained. They started the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism in 1998, three years after their son was diagnosed. As they learned more about Dougie's condition, they recognized the need for heightened awareness, education, and research. When Laurie purchased a special tricycle for Dougie with wider handlebars and a bigger seat, the price tag was more than $1,000. His special stroller cost $2,000. It rankled her. How could average families afford this?
The foundation. It supports people who need financial assistance in caring for their autistic children. It funds research and helps develop new programs and services. ''I feel like Dougie was meant to do this," Laurie said. ''Without him, there is no foundation. It wouldn't have happened. It's in Dougie's name. It's his legacy. It gives us peace."
Still, it's not easy sometimes. Doug and Laurie have nieces and nephews who are growing and prospering all around them. Bill Flutie's son Brett is the same age as Dougie and he's an athlete,
just like his older brother Billy, who just committed to Boston College to play football. The Flutie family is close; Doug's brothers, Bill and Darren, and sister Denise, all live in town. Laurie's mother is still there. There are daily reminders of what could have been.
''We were at one of Brett's basketball tournaments recently," said Doug. ''He came out and said, 'I could use one more guy on the court with me. I need one more guy who thinks like I do.'
''I turned to him and said, 'Brett, you know, that's supposed to be Dougie.' "Brett blanched. Doug's brother Bill turned away, his eyes moist. But the quarterback no longer cries for his son.
''They see what Brett is doing, and they want that for us," he said. ''But we don't miss it as much as they might think, because we never had it. We love Dougie just the way he is."
Devastating diagnosis
When Dougie Flutie was just 2, if he concentrated really hard, he could practically reach the hoop with a regulation-size ball. He loved to shoot baskets with his father, and would happily sit with
his little arms and legs curled around Doug watching an entire NBA game.
He was an active, alert, mischievous child.
''When he wanted juice, I'd ask him, 'Now, Dougie, what do you say?' " Laurie recalled. ''He'd giggle a few times, but wouldn't answer. I'd say again, 'Dougie, what do you say?' He'd laugh, then he'd shout, 'Please, beauty mom!' "
When his father went down to the basement to practice his drums, little Dougie would trail behind, climb into his lap, and bang on the cymbals. They lived in Calgary at the time, when Flutie was starring in the Canadian Football League, and their house included a master bedroom with a fireplace that also connected to the living room. Dougie loved to stick his hand through the grate from one room o another, shouting with glee to his sister, ''Lexa, grab the hand!"
''He was one of those kids who hated going to bed," Doug said. ''We'd put him in, and the next thing you know he'd be standing on the balcony. We'd say, 'Dougie, go to bed,' and he'd say
to us in that sweet little voice, 'Good night!' "The memories are like precious stones, to be coveted and admired and preserved. Dougie was once like all of his cousins. He talked and he
sang and he cried and he giggled and he looked right into his parents' eyes and told them he loved them.
It changed shortly before Dougie turned 3, when Laurie and the kids went back to Natick to enroll Alexa in school. All of a sudden, the sunny boy was subdued. He talked less and less. Laurie called the pediatrician. He told her it was not uncommon for younger siblings to stop talking for periods of time, because their older brother or sister did the talking for them.
Two months passed. Dougie barely spoke at all now. The only time he managed to articulate much of anything was to repeat what Laurie said to him. Laurie went back to the doctor. She mentioned Dougie's symptoms developed shortly after he had his immunization shots. She was referred to a neurologist, who recommended the boy be admitted to New England Medical Center.
Dougie underwent a battery of tests. He was scared. He had wires coming out of his head. They put him in a crib that looked like a cage. He looked away, and he never looked back. ''I remember being in the doctor's office," Doug said. ''They told me Dougie wouldn't make eye contact with anyone. But when I looked at him, I saw the old Dougie."
The doctors surmised that Dougie was developmentally challenged from birth. Laurie put together a video of her child when he was a completely healthy, vibrant, communicative 2 1/2-year-old -- ''his highlight film," she joked. The doctors viewed it, then grew silent. ''I watched and said, 'Oh my God,' " Doug said. ''I didn't realize how far he'd regressed." The diagnosis -- autism -- was devastating. But, within a week, Doug and Laurie were moving forward.
''We just started focusing on, 'Where do we go, who do we see?' " Doug said. ''I've had to do that a lot in my career. I know how to put last week behind me."
Questions are raised
Doug Flutie was always the little guy who defied the odds. He was a United States Football League bonus baby. He was a Canadian Football League legend. He was a replacement player in New England, a controversial figure in Buffalo, a sage veteran in San Diego. Along the way, he used his notoriety to start the Doug Flutie Jr. Celebrity Golf Classic, an all-star basketball tournament, and a 5K road race, all to benefit the foundation.
''It always amazes me when I work with families like the Fluties, who truly do not feel sorry for themselves," said Lisa Borges, executive director of the foundation. ''It would be easy to be bitter, or angry. No one would blame them. But they don't say, 'Why me?' They say, 'What can I do?' "
According to the Center for Disease Control, 1 in 166 children develop some form of autism, ranging from mild and somewhat high functioning (like Dan Marino's son) to severe. The number is staggering, and Bill Flutie does not understand why there hasn't been a more urgent look at the preservative containing mercury that is used in immunizations.
''You've got to shake your head at it," Bill said. ''Dougie is a normal little boy, then after the shots he's not? Autism is reaching epidemic proportions. I wish someone like Doug, with so much visibility, could pressure the government to do something.
''I'm afraid to discuss it with Doug. It's so personal. It's a tough subject. It upsets them, sometimes." Doug and Laurie have struggled with this issue. They, too, believe the immunizations are the cause of Dougie's autism, even though no studies have proven a direct link. ''The government will never admit it, but we've got a big problem," Doug Flutie said. ''They did a study. Great. Happy for them. But there's no doubt in my mind we need to get the mercury out of these shots.
''We can't get into the lab ourselves and prove it, so we're trying to raise funds for research. No matter what they find it's not going to make Dougie better. But it could help others." They are wrapped up in Dougie; they admit it. There are excellent facilities that house autistic patients, but the Fluties have rejected that option. ''Some members of our family have said, 'You know, the sad day will come when you are going to have to put him someplace,' " Doug said. ''I say no. Screw that. I want him with us. If he's 20, 25, 30, 35, I want him here."
''I will never put him in a home as long as I can possibly help it," Laurie said emphatically. Dougie remains a challenge. He needs constant attention. He is apt to suddenly sprint off into a crowd. He rarely cries, so if he's hurt, or suffering, his family is often unaware. He cannot swim, so he must be supervised near water at all times. This past summer, Dougie was sitting in the hot tub when he suddenly popped out, scooted down the slide of the family pool, and plopped into the water without his life vest on. Alexa quickly pulled him to the surface; her brother, quite pleased with himself, merely grinned at her.
Doug worries his son doesn't eat enough. Dougie is thin, and he never indicates he's hungry, so his father leaves a trail of easily accessible snacks throughout the house. Laurie worries that Dougie might become sick and be unable to tell them. Alexa needs glasses; how would Dougie ever let them know if he did?
''We were home recently and Dougie was crouched down, just staring out the window," Doug said. ''He had been doing it quite a while, so I said, 'Dougie, come over here.' He didn't move. That's when we realized his finger was stuck in the vent. The poor kid couldn't tell us." One night, Laurie tiptoed up to check on Dougie in his room. He was looking out the window with his hand sticking through the net of his little plastic basketball hoop. His finger had become caught and was turning blue. Dougie never made a sound. The net is no longer in his room.
Realistic about the future
Who knows what Dougie would have been like? Is it a coincidence that the first thing he reaches for in his toy box is the hockey stick, the basketball, or the football? Doug tries to play catch with
Dougie sometimes. He'll say, ''Get ready, I'm going to pass you the ball." His son, his expression blank, will not turn around. His father will throw the ball anyway. Most times, Dougie will expertly
snatch it without looking.
''There are moments when you get a little bummed out," Laurie admitted. ''You watch Brett playing sports, and you think to yourself, 'These would be the kids Dougie would be hanging out
with.' There are at least eight kids in the neighborhood Dougie's age who are running around, doing what boys do. You wish Dougie could be out there with them. But you can't dwell on it."
They are realistic about their son's future. He may improve in increments, or this may be as good as it will ever get. ''I believe Dougie can understand the majority of what we're saying to him," Doug said. ''I just don't think he's able to respond. ''Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the [Philadelphia] Eagles, had a brother who was autistic who didn't speak his first word until he was 35. He told Jeffrey, 'Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot.' "
When Doug signed with the Patriots, he sat down and explained to his kids how he had met coach Bill Belichick years ago at rocker Jon Bon Jovi's 30th birthday party, and how he thought this job with New England was a good fit. Flutie had seriously considered playing one more year in the CFL with his brother Darren before the Patriots made their pitch. NFL offers from the Giants, Seattle, and Tampa Bay were more lucrative, but they couldn't guarantee he'd be able to
watch his nephew Billy play for Natick High every Friday night. Flutie reports to Patriots camp today knowing his son is settled. Dougie can hang out in his ''hot pool" and continue his schooling at a collaborative program in Framingham.
The unknown comes into play years from now, when Doug and Laurie grow older. Laurie had a nightmare about it two weeks ago, and woke up sobbing, shaking. ''I told Alexa about it," Laurie said. ''She said, 'Mom, stop worrying. I'll take care of Dougie.' "
''People think he's a burden," Doug said. ''He's not. I love going up to his room and lying with him on that big old bear he's got on is bed." The Flutie family went to dinner recently. They were in the middle of a conversation when Dougie suddenly picked up the rectangular menus and began twirling them. ''He's got them in both hands, and he's spinning them around, and we can't believe it," said Doug Flutie, with wonder in his voice. ''So we all start trying it. But we can't. We can't do it."
The stunned waiter stared at this nearly grown kid in a stroller making strange guttural noises while spinning these menus like some kind of juggler. He had recognized Doug Flutie when they came in, and now his facial expression betrayed his thoughts: how sad. No. It's not sad at all. Look at them. Do they look unhappy? So Doug Flutie Jr. will never be a quarterback. So what? His father does not care. Dougie's legacy -- his foundation -- is so much more meaningful.
We should all be able to see that.
Donations to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism can be sent
to P.O. Box 767, Framingham, MA 01701
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2005/07/24/
true_measure_of_qbs_heart_found_at_home/?page=full
More stories from the Web:
Brianna
www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/8537
Stephanie
http://noshots.homestead.com/homepage.html
Bryan
http://childvaccinesinjury.homestead.com/index.html
Amanda
http://www.eaglefoundation.net/Amanda.htm
http://www.unc.edu/~aphillip/www/vaccine/stories.htm
Kirk
http://www.vran.org/story/story_05302002.asp
Ashley
http://www.sidsfamilies.com/families/ashley.shtml
Alyssa
www.geocities.com/odajem/index
Colby
http://www.babycolby.homestead.com/OurStory.html
Hayden
http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/villa/2009/
Brandy
www.momtoanangel.net/ingred.htm
George
georgesfirststep.port5.com
http://home.sprynet.com/~gyrene/injured.htm
www.momtoanangel.net/ingred.htm
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?q
3=u70RDcVeUJ0%253d
As a parent of an Autistic child, it is difficult to describe the pain and resentment that is felt by having a perfect baby and then having that baby snatched from you at about 16 months old. The brain damage that my child received should not have happened. The U.S. healthcare industry is the best in the World. There are safeguards and redundancies built into the system. However, in this case, the system failed and failed badly. My child and countless others were injected with a substance known as Thimerosal.
Thimerosal is an additive to baby vaccines that contains 49.6% Mercury. This substance was banned by the pet vaccination industry over ten years ago because of known health risks. The pharmaceutical industry kept this additive in the baby vaccines, knowing full well the risks to our children’s health.
According to my child’s weight and the amount of vaccines he received that contained this additive, my child and thousands of other children have received over 40 times the legal safety limit for mercury exposure as established by the Environmental Protection Agency. I speak for literarily thousands of concerned and angry parents who basically got burned by a system that has been perverted by Greed, Politics, and Corruption. In the last several years, the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ), the Centers of Disease Control ( CDC ) and the National Institutes of Health ( NIH ) have granted
hundreds of waivers of the conflict of interest rule in favor of the drug giants and their “paid consultants”. Has the U.S. health care system been unduly influenced? Thousands of children have suffered the consequences of these people’s greed and short sightedness. My child was born perfectly healthy, full of life. He had the potential to achieve anything in life that he would have chosen to do. Because of a short sighted medical system that failed, my child is now a semi vegetative little boy who is lost in his own tortured world of mercury induced autism.
This book talks about the cause and the arrogant atmosphere that abounds in the vaccine community that has caused this tragedy. If you look at an autistic child, you will notice fear and profound sadness on their little faces. They are imprisoned in a world where they desperately want to escape, but can’t. The frustration that these children feel and their cries for help have been ignored by the very system that caused this atrocity.
When I look upon other healthy six year old children who are playing, communicating and living normal lives, I wonder what might have been with my little boy. I am sure I am not alone in my thoughts. This is a painful and very tragic occurrence. Instead of concern, sympathy and needed help, the Pharmaceutical industry and the “system” that caused this tragedy has been for the most part un sympathetic, evasive and full of legal denials.
This book will anger many people, which is precisely what it is intended to do. My desire is to light a fire under the bureaucrats, politicians and the medical community to get off their asses and do something to help these children. These children did not deserve what they got. The parents of these brain damaged children have suffered terrible pain and financial hardship as a result of the greed and political corruption from the very segment of our society that was supposed to invoke trust and medical excellence.
Is this book critical? You bet it is. I know I speak for thousands of people who, like myself want answers. The tragic truth is that every time a question is asked, all that is given in return is deception, distorted truths and out right lies from the very people we trusted the most. Lastly, it is my hope that this book will at least get people asking the questions of HOW? , WHO? And most importantly, WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT CHILDREN?
Disabled child's family looks for assistance, relief
06:46 PM CDT on Friday, October 29, 2004
By LAURA GRIFFIN / Special contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Editor's note: This story was originally published in The Dallas Morning News on Aug. 10, 1996.
Most images the Liebos have of who their son once was are disappearing fast. From exposure to heat, videotapes of Eric as a typical, talkative 4-year-old are now jumpy and full of snow. The color is fading.
But one is left. On it, Eric dances around the living room, plays with his little brother and catches a ball. As he does, he squeals with glee, "I'm the winner!"
As they watch the images on the screen, the strain and sadness show on his parents' faces.
"He was so fun and so smart," says Jim Liebo. "He was my best friend. Now his brain is destroyed. That's the toughest thing."
Eric, the oldest of three, had no problems until he was a year old. A few weeks after he was immunized for mumps, measles and rubella, he had his first in a series of seizures that would end in a stroke, causing severe brain damage when he was 4 years old.
Now, three years later, after living in a rehabilitation center in Austin, Eric is back home in Far North Dallas and not only testing the limits of his family, but also of the few social services the region has to offer such a child.
"He doesn't have Down syndrome or cerebral palsy or autism; he's `other impaired,' " said his mother, Tina Liebo, who has searched all summer for proper day care for her son. "He doesn't fall in their categories. Everyone says, `We can't help you.' "
During the school year, Eric can attend special classes in public school, but during the summer there's almost nothing for him.
In fact, statewide, the options are limited for disabled children, particularly in day care centers or group homes, said Dorothy Loeper, admissions coordinator for Collin County Mental Health and Mental Retardation.
"It's really tough for parents like the Liebos," she said. "They have to scramble to find things, especially day care. It's unbelievable to me that an area as big as the Dallas-Fort Worth area has so little to offer."
Difficult ride
Even though he was born healthy, Eric is now diagnosed as mentally retarded, which gives the Liebos the opportunity to work through MHMR, but it still has not been easy.
Since January, Eric has been through two "shared parenting" foster homes and about 20 nurses or nurse aids. Each time he stayed with a family to give his own some respite, he was sent home within weeks because the families could not handle his disruptive behavior.
Because the Liebos are new to traversing the system, it's been a difficult ride.
"They're not seasoned veterans like a lot of parents whose children are born with difficulties," Ms. Loeper said. "Those parents become warriors; they know how to work the system. Eric was normal for four years. They're really rookies in the system and it's frustrating.
"For them, it's been like grieving a death and the birth of a kid with disabilities at the same time," she said.
While they struggle to learn how to deal with Eric's problems, the Liebos are also trying to plan for his future and make a difference for other mentally disabled children.
"It seems nobody cares about these kids," said Mr. Liebo, who has been trying to develop a public-private partnership plan to build a facility that would include services for the disabled. "So many of these children are wasted because there's not enough funding. I want to be the next Jerry Lewis for these kids."
At first glance, Eric looks like any other 7-year-old. He has a mop of sandy curls and big blue eyes. He smiles easily and often, even showing strangers his gap-toothed grin.
But within minutes, the differences become clear.
He never speaks, but only moans or grunts.
From the time he wakes up at about 6 a.m. until he goes to sleep as late as midnight, he is almost constantly on the move, ripping paper and plant leaves into tiny bits and chewing anything he finds.
He is fed strapped into a high chair. He is not toilet trained and wears diapers.
He roams from room to room and slams into his brother and sister - 4-year-old Zak and 2-year-old Alexis - who are often shaken by his behavior.
"Physically, he's 7, but mentally, he's about 6 months old," Mr. Liebo said. "Zak wants him to play with him. We tell him that Eric has a boo-boo on his brain, and he can't do those things. Zak can't understand why we can't make the boo-boo better.
"Alexis is afraid of him."
Memories of their son
Eric will sit for about 15 minutes if Barney, Sesame Street or Beauty & The Beast are on TV. Those shows mesmerize him. But videos of himself upset and agitate him.
If his picture is on the screen, he moans and hits the VCR buttons to turn it off.
"He doesn't like looking in the mirror either," Mrs. Liebo said.
But when the Liebos look at Eric, they still see traces of the boy in the video. The boy whose finger-paint handprints hang on the wall. The boy who used to make strangers laugh with his jokes and his witty comments.
Eric was the boy teachers once called bright and described as "always excited about his accomplishments. Eric loves all the children. He greets his friends as they come in."
He used to love to color, paint, cut and paste and work puzzles. He sat raptured at story time.
"He was definitely a delightful child. There was something very special about him. He could walk into a room and light it up in a minute," said Amanda Holsapple, assistant director of child care services at the Jewish Community Center. "To see him in this condition is very painful."
The JCC also tried to find services for him. But because of his condition and the one-on-one attention he needs, it has been difficult, Ms. Holsapple said. It is for that reason that he has been unable to attend the JCC's after-school program as well, she said.
"We really don't have the capability to deal with the difficulties of someone like Eric," she said. "He needs highly trained people."
The Liebos tried to put Eric in a YMCA program this summer, but he was kicked out after one day.
"He tore everyone's artwork into little pieces," Mr. Liebo said. "They asked that he not come back."
The only program they managed to get Eric into was a summer camp for disabled children. There he was able to tear paper to his heart's content, and his parents were given a break for five days.
Dealing with Eric and his problems has taken an emotional and financial toll on the Liebos.
When Eric first came home from Austin, the Liebos could not keep up with him and their two younger children in their two bedroom apartment. So Zak and Alexis stayed with Mrs. Liebo's parents at night.
"I just physically couldn't handle it all," Mrs. Liebo said. "But it was breaking my heart."
Then for a while, only Alexis slept at her grandparents. When she was with the Liebos, she was very clingy with Mrs. Liebo and cried when she left each night.
"I feel guilty about all of them, especially Alexis because she's so young," Mrs. Liebo said. "I already felt guilty because I'm a working mother, but now I have so much more. I think maybe I'm not giving him enough attention or I'm spending too much time with him and not enough with them. I love them all, but I don't want my other children to feel like they don't have their mother because of Eric."
Medical expenses
They've set up a payment system for the $60,000 that insurance didn't cover for Eric's medical bills. And they pay $900 a month insurance just to keep him covered along with the rest of the family, Mr. Liebo said. This summer, they've been paying $14 an hour for a nurse to stay with him during the day. But nurses don't stay long.
"First they make excuses, like they've got car trouble," Mr. Liebo said. "But you know when they don't answer their pages, that they're not coming back."
The day Eric had his stroke, he had gone to day camp, then came home, ate dinner, took a bath and started getting ready for bed. He had a seizure and his parents rushed him to the hospital.
"This seizure was much longer, and it seemed to take forever for them to start working on Eric in the emergency room," Mr. Liebo said. "It was hell. We thought it was going to be just another bad evening, never that this would happen."
Since that night, their marriage has been tested.
Eric was in a coma for a month, then he was in rehab in Dallas and then in Austin.
"We're in counseling to help us deal with it all," Mr. Liebo said. "But we made it through the worst, we'll make it through this."
In addition, they've filed a claim against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - which provides doctors with immunizations - relating to the immunization Eric received at his pediatrician's office when he was a year old.
"He deserves to have his life back, but since that's not going to happen, he deserves to have the best life he can," Mr. Liebo said. "We can't afford the best places in the country, but maybe we can some how give that to him."
Though extremely rare, the federal government does receive 10,000 to 12,000 reports a year of people with some type of adverse reaction to various immunizations, according to the National Vaccine Information Center in Virginia. So far, the government settled on about 1,000 claims under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, said center director and co-founder Kathi Williams.
Because Eric's first seizure occurred a few days after the allotted time frame for automatic compensation, and the government disputes the claim, they must find a doctor to review his 4,000 pages of medical records and testify that there is no other reasonable cause for his seizures, Brian Arnold, the family's lawyer, said.
"The record is so voluminous, a doctor's going to have to spend hours plowing through it," Mr. Arnold said. "The Liebos can't afford that, so it's taking a long time, and that's frustrating."
Even if they were to win, he said, it could take years before they are compensated.
"I have another case where a little girl is brain damaged, and the government accepted it two years ago," he said. "We're still waiting. These cases are tough, I can't even look at the pictures of them as they were before. Poor Eric. He is a cute little kid, and he'll never grow up to be an adult. His body will, but his brain will never be that age."
New hope
Meanwhile, as far as Eric is concerned, the Liebos still have something to hope for. Because they've moved from Collin to Dallas counties, they had to transfer Eric to Dallas County schools and programs. Recently, they were accepted into a Dallas County MHMR program and assigned another "shared parenting" support foster home.
The purpose of the program, which grew from a need for community-based services after some state schools were closed, is to gradually move children back into their parents' lives, instead of just dropping them into the family setting without support.
A little over a week ago, the Liebos, exhausted, relieved and sad, drove Eric from their Far North Dallas apartment to the Rowlett foster home, where he will stay during the week. Though the Liebos can visit any time and he'll come home on weekends, it was still bittersweet.
"I'll really miss having him around," Mr. Liebo said.
Eventually, if all goes well with Eric and the support family, the Liebos will bring him back when they get a home of their own and get used to doing the work it takes.
At best it's a temporary fix. When he does get back home, there will still be the burden of finding after-school care and day care in the summers. And they fear that in a couple of weeks, they'll be asked to pick him up, and they'll be back to square one.
"We've been through this before," Mr. Liebo said.
-------------------------
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/
texasliving/stories/103104dnlivliebo.aff4a.html
Joking aside, accident couldn't have come at a worse time
06:48 PM CDT on Friday, October 29, 2004
By LAURA GRIFFIN / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
PLANO – For more than a decade, Jim Liebo fought for the well-being of his son Eric, who at age 4 suffered a stroke that caused brain damage.
But now Jim is fighting for himself.
This summer, the Plano father of three stumbled in his bedroom and injured his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
Now both Jim and Eric, who is still unable to speak, require full-time care.
Jim, 43, speaks with the same determination and hope about his future as he did when planning for his son.
Eric, now 15, still has the mental capacity of a toddler and can follow only the simplest of commands.
"I talked to a guy with the same [spinal cord] injury, and he's been in the chair for three years – he just gave up," Jim says. "He said, 'Man, you're so positive.' But you have to be. When you hit rock bottom, you can't go any lower than that.
"You might as well look up."
But the reality is that it can be overwhelming. And in the quiet of the night, Jim cries.
"That's when it hits me," he says.
Sometimes, says his wife, Tina, "I can't even think about it." The only way to deal with the family's heartache, she says, is to take each day as it comes – minute by minute.
She still has to work at her parents' clothing boutique, keep track of her children's school and sports activities, and keep the household running.
"I'm trying to get back to some sense of normal," she says. "You don't know how much you depend on someone until you can't do it anymore. Jim always took really good care of me, and now I have to take care of him.
"But there are times when I think there's no way I can do this. If you told me before that this is what we'd have to go through, I'd say, 'I can't do that. No way.' It was the same with Eric. But you just deal with it."
During the day, the Liebos use humor to deal with it all.
"We joke that if we didn't have bad luck, we'd have no luck at all. They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Jim says. "Well, we ought to be two of the strongest people on Earth by now." The Liebos' community of friends is "pretty shook up" by what's happened, says family friend Mike Stefani, who coached children's hockey with Jim. "You think how easily something like that can happen to anyone," Mr. Stefani says. "In the blink of an eye, your whole life can change."
A precocious son
In 1996, the Liebos were the subject of a story in The Dallas Morning News after a stroke left their precocious son mentally retarded. At the time, Eric's condition tested the limits of his family and of social services in North Texas. Though the federal government disputed the idea, the Liebos were convinced Eric's stroke was the result of seizures brought on by an immunization for mumps, measles and rubella. Injuries from immunizations are rare, but the government receives about 12,000 reports a year of people with some type of adverse reaction to various immunizations.
They applied for compensation under a federal program for vaccine injuries, but their claim was denied because Eric's seizures began a few days after the time frame allowed by the government. Additionally, no evidence linked the stroke to the vaccine. Jim vigorously appealed, hiring lawyers and medical experts – but his appeal, too, was rejected.
No matter how it happened, nothing could change the fact that their eldest son would never grow up the way they imagined.
After the story appeared, the Liebos received help from a doctor who brought Eric's volatile behavior under control with therapy and medication. They also found a "shared parenting" foster home that allows Eric to be with his family on weekends, while providing them respite during the week.
Eric is small for his age and has a hard time focusing. In a noisy place, such as a hockey arena, he is apt to occasionally scream for no reason. But his behavior has improved from the days when he did nothing but scream, moan or cry and obsessively shred all paper in the house, including wallpaper. He still needs help eating and never relearned how to use the toilet.
Though they eventually got used to life with the changed Eric, the Liebos say they never completely got over the grief of losing the brilliant, talkative little boy they once knew.
THE LIEBO FOUNDATION
The Liebos have set up the Liebo Foundation (www.liebofoundation.org) and are planning charity events such as a golf tournament and a 5K fun run that will help not only their family, but others with spinal-cord injuries.
Because of Eric's disabilities, the Liebos have experience in partnering with charities and plan now to do the same with national groups dedicated to spinal-cord injury research such as the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and the National Spinal Cord Injury Association.
"Christopher Reeve was doing so much. I was trying to get in touch with his organization when he died," Jim says. "Since this happened to me, I've thought a lot about him. So it was really depressing when he died." "I miss his voice and the things that would come out of his mouth," Tina says. "He had the cutest personality. This thing with Jim has made those feelings resurface."
Even from his wheelchair, Jim looks at Eric and mourns the milestones he's missed.
"You think about it when you see other kids his age," he says. "He'd be learning to drive now. He'd be starting to date. I wonder what our relationship would be like. When he was little, he was my best friend."
Making a difference
After Eric's stroke, Jim started, and eventually lost, a high-tech consulting business that earmarked a percentage of its proceeds to the National Stroke Association and brain injury organizations.
Although it was too late to help Eric, the Liebos wanted to make a difference for other children. And meanwhile, the Liebos did their best to make sure their other children, Zak, now 12, and Lexi, 10, led normal lives.
Jim coached their soccer and hockey teams. He also coached coaches, played hockey and managed other teams as well, making him a beloved figure in the world of kids' sports in Plano and Frisco.
Then came July 9.
Earlier this year, Jim started having fainting spells attributed by his doctors to high blood pressure. One night, on his way to bed, he started to faint. He stumbled, hitting the bedroom dresser and landing on the floor.
"I heard my neck snap," Jim says. "And I couldn't feel anything in my body. Tina woke up, and I told her to call paramedics."
An ambulance took Jim to Centennial Medical Center in Frisco. The rest of the family followed by car. When they got there, they learned that Jim's injuries were so severe that a helicopter would have to fly him to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
"It was terrifying," says Tina. "But never in my wildest dreams did I think it was going to be so catastrophic."
In the helicopter, Jim thought he was dying.
"I could see the stars, and I thought I was going to heaven," he says.
'Life-changing accident'
At Baylor, doctors told Tina that Jim's fall was a "life-changing accident" and it was unlikely her husband would ever walk again.
Still, they held out a sliver of hope. If her husband had surgery to repair his spinal cord, which was partially severed, he might have a chance at some mobility. But the operation came with risks.
"I thought, 'This can't be happening,' " Tina says. "Jim was always my rock, and here he was in ICU, and I had to make decisions for him without his help."
After the surgery and a week in the hospital, Jim moved to Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation. People there knew him because Eric had spent several weeks at the institute after his stroke. When Tina took Eric to see his father, he threw a tantrum and didn't want to go inside.
"It was like he remembered it and thought he was going back," Jim says.
After six weeks of therapy, Jim moved to a nursing home in Plano, where he spent five weeks.
Through physical therapy, Jim regained some of the movement in his arms, allowing him to feed himself – even though he can only hold a fork precariously with his thumb and forefinger. One recent morning at the nursing home, Jim walked about 150 feet down a hallway and climbed three steps using rails, relying on a walker and his therapist. It was hard: With each step, he grimaced and groaned with effort and pain.
"That was scary," he said, as he came down the last step.
The fact that Jim is able to walk at all is "a miracle," says Margie Snell, a therapist who worked with him at the nursing home.
"His spinal cord injury is not complete, which means a portion of it was severed, not the entire thing," she says. "So a few messages are still getting through."
The nursing home discharged Jim at the end of September because his health insurance included no more inpatient care.
Elation, for a while
Jim had feelings of both fear and elation about going home. He couldn't wait to spend more time with his family. But none of them knew how to take care of him, and their home had no ramps or wider doorways and showers, or lower countertops and tables – things that make it easier to get around in a wheelchair.
On his second night at home, Jim fell and lay on the floor for an hour before his wife heard him calling. Tina couldn't lift her husband, so although it was 2:30 a.m., they called a friend and asked him to come pick Jim up off the floor.
"Now I wear a cellphone on my belt all the time," Jim says. "I'm really afraid of falling and being on the floor all day. I tried to get to my knees when I fell, but I kept falling flat. It was like trying to pick up Jell-O."
Ms. Snell says Jim needs to have at least an hour a day of both physical and occupational therapy in order to progress. The Liebos' insurance will pay for only 20 days, which began in early October, Jim says.
"Any time lost," Ms. Snell says, "you can never get back."
With two days of therapy a week, he'll be finished in early December. After that, he says, he'll be on his own. He's looking to raise money to pay for it. He's looking for ways to work so he might be able to afford more therapy.
As the bills pile up, Jim becomes more stressed out about not working. "We're going to have to have more income," he says. "We can't live for long on what Tina makes. I really believe I can walk again, but I'm afraid that I'm going to have to make a choice between working to support my family and walking again."
Fighters
Slowly, Jim is regaining some of his mobility. When he tries to walk, his right leg shakes and bounces until he puts enough weight on it to settle it down. That can be difficult: Not only does he experience pain, his legs don't receive the messages his brain sends him about what to do.
"Just lifting myself up is like an out-of-body experience," he says. "It's hard to explain. My brain is saying one thing, and my body's not responding." It has given him a better understanding of what Eric's gone through. "I've always felt Eric's inside there, understanding more than it seems, but unable to respond. He's kind of trapped inside his head," Jim says. "Now I'm trapped inside my body."
But, he says, he knows that someday he'll walk again. Eric's condition and now his own have taught him that, if nothing else, he's a fighter. "What else can I do?" he says. "I can't give up. I know it's in me."
Laura Griffin is a Dallas freelance writer.
E-mail lauramgriffin@yahoo.com
This is long but explains how are children received 33 viruses
(includes the three in ones) by the time they are four years old.
I attended the CDC meeting on the 27th of October in Atlanta, Georgia. . rs. This committee makes the recommendations to the CDC NIP for vaccines and then the CDC adoptsadops their recommendations and then all the professional associates like the AAP, AAFP, etc adopt their recommendations then individual states make it law. Also, one of the members held the patent on a rotavirus vaccine and sat on the committee and voted to make it mandatory. Fishy? Anyway, it would be great if parents would share their stories with this committee. Right now, all that seems to be there was the vaccine makers and other doctors. Our children's voices need to be heard.
I was able to see the presentation on the Meningococcal Conjugate Vaccine in the afternoon. I have to say it was sickening. They want start the vaccine at age 11 year so that they will catch everyone before they go to college. Not because 11 year olds need it. Also, no study to show ll years olds are ok with this vaccine. They want to tie it to their driver's permits to make sure no one gets around it. Anyway, they had a few mothers speak at the public comment to say that they lost their children in college because they did not have this meningococal vaccine. It was so staged. They did not call me for public comment, so I went up to the mike and told them they did not call my name. Well, Mr Levin (Chairman) was not happy with me but asked me to sit down and I could speak after the next presentation. When I finally had my turn, I started with my story about my aunt, who died when I was a teenager from stepping on a rust nail. She had missed her tennus shot. She died waiting for a liver transplant. I wanted them to know that where I was at before my son's vaccine problem.
I told them my story as below:
I have a 4 year old son who was reading and writing before he turned 4 years old on April 11. He was diagnosed with an allergy to milk protein in March 2004. He was active for his age so I put him on a gfcf diet. He was doing great. On April 28, 2004 the doctor informed me that he should have received an MMR at at 12 - 15 months of age. Some how they missed this shot. He was given MMR, Polio, Hep B and DTAP on April 28, 2004. The first day he fell down a couple times. By the fourth day his leg swelled up and he told me did not feel well. He had a seizure. The doctor told me he was fine.
He started with whining and crying at silly things that never bothered him before the shot. By the 2nd week he was hiding behind furniture and growling at me. It was not all day, but a slow process. He would not let me rub his back or feet like I did before the vaccines. He would scream at me don't touch me. I noticed he was funny about going to the bathroom. He would get feces on the toilet seat and leave it there. He had never done this before the shot. The third week he was biting me and hitting me and making funny faces and laughing for no reason. He became very aggressive at times. He started to bang his head against the walk and walk in circles. To the point I had to hold him to keep him from hurting me or himself. All he could do was watch tv. His facial expression was very strange. He was withdrawn. His speech regressed. My doctor sent us to several specialists who thought I was crazy. They all said vaccines do not cause behavior problems. My husband searched the web and found some info on the MMR and mercury. I called my doctor and asked him and he said the shot did not contain mercury. I asked him to mail me the info on the shots. The Hep B showed it contained (.5 mercury) in the info sheet that comes with the shot. I called my doctor and he said the bottle said it was free of mercury. In my search and by the grace of God I found the Autism Research Institute.
My son was treated by a DAN Doctor on May 27, 2004. He was able to read and write his name within one week of treatment. They found his measles titer test to be 5.97. A high titer test is 1.34. The doctor also ran lab work and found serious bacteria infection in his gut lining and treated it. I found out the DTaP is grown on casein (milk protein) which my doctor was not aware of it. I talked to the vaccine maker and they confirmed that anyone who has a milk allergy should not have DTaP. Their insert does not clearly state this and the doctors have no idea. The vaccine maker said it is the doctor's responsibility to read the insert and ask questions. Also, confirmed with vaccine maker that there has never been any test done on MMR and DTaP given together. They are not sure what reaction could happen combine these together. They pushed the responsibility off on the doctors. My son is doing much better but we have a lot of healing work. Now, he asks me to rub his feet and back everyday. I know in my heart if he would have not received treatment, he would have been a mess for the rest of his live. I am not a parent who hates vaccines. I believed the day I took my child in to receive his vaccines that I was doing what a mother should do for her child. I believe vaccines serve a very important purpose. I now believe they have not been done responsible and doctors are giving to many doses of vaccines at one time. I am not sure if this saves insurance companies money or what the purpose is but there is no limit on how many vaccines to give on one day. Besides the fact we are vaccinating for illness that are not life threaten. My son had received a total of 33 vaccines in all by the time he turned four. I received only 12.
I also asked if they were doing any research to prescreen children before vaccines, like IgA blood work? Well, you could have heard a pin drop. No one said a word. Mr. Levin said I had asked a question that is to hard to answer at the moment and if I would sit down he would talk with me after the meeting. I said I really do not know what was difficult about my question and asked it again. You could tell he was not happy. I sat down and waited until after the meeting. We talked after the meeting. He was rude and tried to bully me as other doctors have treated me in the past. He tried to skirt around the facts and tell me that my son could have been sick with the measles even before the vaccines. His remark was, "Well, we will never know". I stood my ground and asked who he was and how he qualified to be on the board. I was polite but firm. I kept going back to my facts (I had all of my labs with me and letters from DAN doctor). He finally said he was not going to argue with me. I said my son's titer test was sky high and he ask me what a titer test was; they had just talked about titer test in the meningococcal presentation and he is a professor of Pediatrics and Medicine for the University of Colorado School Medicine. I explained I was not arguing with him but I had facts. Also, we got into a discussion about the DTaP being grown on casein. He tried to tell me that just because it is grown on casein that casein is not part of the vaccine. Ugh! So I said if grease the bottom of a pan with olive oil when you bake a cake then there is olive oil in the cake. I then told him that the vaccine maker confirmed that anyone who has an allergy to casein should not have this vaccine. Well, he did not know what to say. I also showed him the 8 ½ by 11 insert of the vaccine I had the vaccine company mail me. I explained it is not clear about the casein issue and the insert needs to be changed. He then tried to throw it off to the FDA. He said the FDA enforces the inserts. UGH! I have his email and he wants me to email him next week and he will email the FDA Robert Chen's email address. I explained to him that the vaccine makers are passing the buck onto the doctors and the CDC when I ask questions. He was not happy with this info.
The following is their schedule for next year:
February 10-11, 2005
June 29, 30, 2005
October 26-27, 2005
I was also surprised that the gov makes .75 cents off of each flu shot that is given out. Wow, big money. They make 2.75 off of each three in one. I worked in state government for seven years before I decided to stay home with my children. It has been awhile but I know this ball game well. It is sick to thing this is how my children received so many vaccines.
Please email of list if you need anymore info. Thanks.
Lynn, IgA def, G-Alpha Def,
Nathan, 2, Celiac,
Madison, 4, autism,
Steven, 15, Bipolar,
http://readthehook.com/stories/2005/04/07/coverGenerationHgIsAutismP.html
COVER- Generation Hg? Is Autism puzzle solved?
Published April 7, 2005, in issue 0414 of the Hook
BY COY BAREFOOT and ALISON BELL COY@READTHEHOOK.COM
PHOTOS BY JEN FARIELLO JEN@READTHEHOOK.COM
She was a beautiful baby with her mother's eyes. Daddy was there with the video camera when she took her first steps. She loved to play tickle monster. She was about 18 months old when she stopped smiling and stopped talking. She didn't want to play anymore. She stopped looking at people. She started waking up in the middle of the night and screaming for hours.
The pediatrician told the parents they were worrying for no reason. He said every child is different. He said, "Let's wait and see." By the time she was two, she had chronic diarrhea and drooled uncontrollably. She walked on her toes, flapped her hands, and spent much of her time staring into the middle distance. The distraught parents rushed her from one doctor to another, begging for an explanation. An answer finally came: Your child has autism. It's a genetic brain disorder. We don't know what causes it, and there is no cure. Forty hours a week of therapy might make her behavior more acceptable, but it's not going to "cure" her. You need to start looking at institutions now because the good ones have long waiting lists. The doctor sent the parents home with a video, and they sobbed as they watched children like their own daughter rocking, flapping their hands, and screaming. The narrator said, "We all have great dreams for our children. With the diagnosis of autism, the dream dies."
***
Thousands of Virginia families and millions worldwide are living through similar versions of the autism nightmare. Lanier Rossignol, a Charlottesville mother of two young boys diagnosed with autism, recalls a similar experience with her first son. "By the time he was 10 months old," says Rossignol, "he never looked at me, never responded to his name, and he was obsessed with spinning objects. I knew something was wrong, but no one believed me. Everyone said, 'He's fine, you're just imagining things.'" Seven months later, her son was diagnosed with autism. Rossignol describes how her second boy "totally regressed" when he was six months old. "He stopped responding to his name," she says. "He started hand-flapping." Twenty years ago, autism affected fewer than one in 2,000 children; now the Centers for Disease Control estimates it's one in every 166. But just as the numbers of cases are growing, so is skepticism that it's a genetic disorder.
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll "Mad as a hatter"-- the phrase originated not in Lewis Carroll's story, but in a psychiatric illness common among 19th-century hat makers that became known as Hatter's Disease. Physicians were baffled throughout the first half of the 20th century when they were confronted with an epidemic of sick babies suffering from skin rashes, poor circulation, and respiratory distress. Thousands of babies died. The illness became known as Pink Disease because the fingertips, toes, and nose turn pink.
In the mid-1950s, in a fishing village on Minamata Bay, Japan, cats started shaking and inexplicably jumping into the bay. Then the villagers got terribly sick. Some died. Babies were born with mental retardation, uncontrolled tremors, and permanent palsy. Before mercury dumped by a nearby factory was pegged as the culprit, doctors dubbed it Minamata Disease. Hatter's, Pink, Minamata, Barometer Maker's Disease-- no matter what doctors labeled the disorders, each was later conclusively found to be mercury poisoning.
"There are doctors out there telling parents they need to accept this, that there's nothing they can do. Do not listen to whoever tells you that! They are talking out of ignorance."-- Amanda Slim, a Charlottesville-area mother of a six-year-old child diagnosed with autism Slim is among the growing numbers of people who believe that mercury, well known as among the most neurotoxic substances on the planet, is the culprit in autism. To chemists, Mercury is "Hg," the only metal that is liquid at room temperature. That seemingly playful property earned it the moniker "quicksilver" from ancient Greeks. But inside the body, its effects are insidious. Hundreds of times more toxic than lead, mercury wrecks the immune system and can serve as the spark that leads to a blazing spectrum of physical and psychiatric symptoms-- some of which take months to manifest.
"If what I write in the book is all true, we have just experienced one of the largest medical catastrophes of our time, putting a generation of American children at terrible risk with possibly devastating results" says David Kirby, author of Evidence of Harm, Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, released in March by St. Martin's Press. (Kirby, a health/science contributor to the New York Times, will be speaking in Charlottesville later this month.)
Kirby's not alone in asking whether autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning. An increasing number of families, physicians, scientists, and some in Congress point to a growing body of evidence linking mercury toxicity with otherwise unexplained disorders like autism, Asperger's Syndrome, ADD, ADHD, and a host of escalating illnesses that afflict today's children in great numbers. "Autism, Asperger's, PDD, ADD, ADHD, all of that stuff I think it's all the same thing," says Nell Goddin, a Charlottesville mother of a child diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. "Until we get to a point where the labels are something other than subjective behavioral descriptions, that isn't science. That's just spinning your wheels."
The fact is that unprecedented concentrations of mercury were injected into children via vaccines beginning in the late 1980s. And the symptoms of mercury toxicity and autism are nearly identical. Intriguingly, according to Kirby's book, autism rates began falling in California in 2004 after the removal of mercury compounds from vaccines. And many parents of children already suffering with autism are celebrating the fact that a growing number of children diagnosed early are making progress undreamed of a decade ago through "heavy metal chelation," a therapy that binds a sulphur compound with heavy metals such as mercury to flush them from the body. While chelation can be dangerous, many parents swear by it and are telling the world that the mysterious puzzle of autism has been solved.
Yet there are powerful forces who aren't about to swallow that pill. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the Institutes of Medicine, the entire pharmaceutical industry, its lobbyists, and influential allies in Washington-- virtually the entire medical establishment-- stand united in opposition to the theory that mercury toxicity has something to do with autism.
"I believe that my grandson became autistic at least in part because he received vaccinations. He received nine in one day, and six of those contained mercury. He acted like any other normal child. Yet within one week he was running around flapping his arms, walking on his toes, banging his head against the wall, and he could not speak clearly anymore." Congressman Dan Burton, 2001 Mercury has been in vaccines since the 1930s in the form of a preservative called Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethylmercury. In the early 1990s Thimerosal was banned from animal vaccines because it was too toxic. In 1998, it was removed from over-the-counter products because of safety concerns.
"Current scientific evidence does not support the theory that vaccines have caused autism," the American Academy of Pediatrics announced in 2003. And yet that same year, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness wrote, "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is likely related to the autism epidemic. This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding injected Thimerosal and the sharp rise of infant exposure to this known neurotoxin."
Thimerosol is still legal for and widely used in vaccines and flu shots. But it is hardly the only way for mercury to get into human bodies. It's in our teeth. A so-called "silver" filling is at least 50 percent mercury, purportedly enough to pollute a 10-acre lake. Some studies suggest mercury vapor enters the bloodstream every time we chew or grind our teeth.
It's in the air. The EPA estimates that the nation's 1,100 coal-burning power plants spew 50 tons of mercury each year. It collects in the water, builds up in fish (as it did in Minamata, Japan), and becomes more concentrated as it moves up the food supply. It's in breast milk. According to the CDC, one in 12 childbearing women "already has unsafe blood levels of mercury," enough to cause neurological damage in her unborn children. When her six-month-old began exhibiting many of the autistic symptoms that his older brother had, Rossignol had her breast milk tested. She discovered that her baby was getting 10 times the EPA daily limit of mercury.
Generation Mercury was born in 1988, the year Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man made autism a household world (even though the character Hoffman played also had Savant Syndrome, a rare and separate disorder). That was also the year that, beginning with the Hib vaccine, several new shots were added to the vaccine schedule. Over the next few years, the number of vaccinations recommended for children under the age of two went from 8 to 20. The amount of ethylmercury injected into the bloodstreams of babies and toddlers jumped 246 percent. Within the first six months of life, a baby received 187.5 micrograms of ethylmercury, far beyond EPA safety limits. And infants don't produce the bile necessary to excrete mercury from their bodies.
It was not until 1999 that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the FDA, and the National Institutes of Health issued a joint statement "urging" vaccine manufacturers to remove Thimerosal. Despite an agreement to phase Thimerosal out of vaccines for children, existing stocks of Thimerosal-laced vaccines could still remain on shelves. Thimerosal is still present in most flu shots. It is used in the manufacturing process of a variety of pharmaceutical products. And vaccines currently being shipped overseas have high concentrations of Thimerosal.
Receiving the Hib vaccine with Thimerosal on the first day of birth is the equivalent of a 200-pound adult male consuming 1,400 cans of tuna in a single day. The analogy is not exactly fair unless the adult male stops producing enough bile to excrete the mercury. Generationrescue.org
Dr. Neal Halsey was in charge of the vaccine program at the American Academy of Pediatrics from1995 to 1999. When asked about the mercury that babies received under his watch, he told a reporter, "My first reaction was simply disbelief... what I believed, and what everybody else believed, was that [mercury] was truly a trace, a biologically insignificant amount. My honest belief is that if the labels had had the mercury content in micrograms, this would have been uncovered years ago. But the fact is, no one did the calculation."
Someone evidently did. A 1991 Merck memo obtained by the LA Times warned that six-month-old children would get a mercury dose up to 87 times higher than the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish. But whoever wrote it-- and whoever read it-- kept quiet. Over the decade that followed, the rate of autism shot up 1000 percent nationwide.
"The injection of Thimerosal into expectant mothers and newborn infants represents without a doubt a severe, major toxic exposure and is most likely causal in autism spectrum disorders."Boyd Haley, Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky, 2002 Dr. Susan Anderson is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Virginia and director of the autism program at the Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center. Does she believe autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning? "I think not," she says. "If it was, then we would be seeing a lot more of it than we do. I mean, everybody got the immunizations." Like the majority of her colleagues, Anderson believes that autism is a genetic condition that causes a disorder in brain neurochemistry and not a manifestation of heavy metal toxicity-- and that it has nothing to do with vaccines. As Anderson puts it, "Tying [the increase in autism] to the change in the vaccine schedule is wrong."
Dr. Anderson, like most pediatricians, does not see an epidemic of autism. Genetic epidemics are, after all, a scientific impossibility. While she agrees that the numbers of children diagnosed with autism, Asperger's, and pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), have climbed (an increase of 726 percent in Virginia between 1990 and 2003), she attributes most of that to better diagnostic tools.
Dr. Mary Megson disagrees. A Richmond-based developmental pediatrician, Megson specializes in biomedical approaches to the treatment of autism. "Are we just better at diagnosing [autism]?" Megson asks. "Well, you don't miss a child who's been talking and then becomes nonverbal, flaps, paces, and doesn't look you in the eye."
For most pediatricians, the fact that autism shares over 100 symptoms and characteristics with mercury poisoning [see sidebar], the fact that its incidence has increased among American children as the mercury load in vaccines has gone up, and the fact that autism was not diagnosed in the U.S. until after mercury was added to vaccines in the 1930s, are all unfortunate coincidences. They form a regrettable pattern that has led many desperate parents and some in the medical community to draw hyperbolic conclusions that can't be substantiated with, in Anderson's words, "convincing, evidence-based research."
Dr. Elizabeth Mumper is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Family Medicine at the University of Virginia and president of Advocates for Children, a pediatric clinic in Lynchburg. Mumper believes the evidence supports a connection between mercury and autism. "I have seen a bibliography of well over a thousand articles looking at Thimerosal and showing the various ways in which it's harmful," she says. "The evidence is there-- good, reliable scientific evidence. Getting physicians to look at it is another story."
Mumper regrets that few of her colleagues share her belief in the connection between autism and mercury exposure. "I've made very little inroads with my mainstream colleagues because I have not been very successful at getting them to come to meetings," says Mumper, who is speaking at one such meeting April 30. [See sidebar] Another local physician familiar with autism who asked not to be identified in this article says, "The research is there. But [physicians] won't take the time to look at it. These kids have been poisoned. I think pediatricians have been in denial for a long time. And they're in denial because they are too horrified at the possibility.
"We're looking at a generation of babies who've been poisoned due to negligence and incompetence. I can't be more clear about this: there is no hope for a child with autism today in mainstream medicine. Twenty years from now, the fact that we even debated [the autism/mercury link] will be ludicrous."
Results of one powerful study were published last month. Led by Raymond F. Palmer of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, the study, forthcoming in the quarterly Health and Place, found an association between rates of autism and mercury pollution. Every 1000 pounds of environmentally released mercury corresponded to a 61 percent increase in the rate of autism, the study showed. While the CDC, the FDA, and the American Academy of Pediatrics concede that babies and children vaccinated in the late 1980s and throughout the '90s were exposed to cumulative mercury levels far beyond what is considered safe, they still maintain that a connection between concentrations of mercury in vaccines and the epidemic rates of autism among America's youngest generation cannot be proved. In other words, according to this logic, there's no proof excessive mercury exposure can cause the symptoms of mercury poisoning.
The authors live in Albemarle County. They have a three-year-old child diagnosed with autism who has made dramatic improvements following chelation and biomedical treatments. Bell is an assistant professor of anthropology at Washington and Lee University. Barefoot's books include The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson on Leadership.
SIDEBAR- Autism Awareness Month noted locally
April 14-15, Thursday and Friday, Cavalier Inn
"Behavioral Approaches to the Education of Children with Autism," conference sponsored by the Virginia Institute of Autism. 923-8252 viaschool.org
April 19, Tuesday, New Dominion Bookshop, 5:30pm
New York Times Science/Health contributor David Kirby discusses his new book, Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. evidenceofharm.com
April 30, Saturday, Omni Hotel, 8:30am-4:45pm
"Recent Advances in the Biology of Autism," conference sponsored by the Virginia chapter of the National Autism Association. Speakers include Drs. Andrew Wakefield, Jeffrey Bradstreet, Sandra Jill James, and Elizabeth Mumper. 977-4198 naa-va.org
SIDEBAR- Evidence or coincidence?
Some of the over 100 symptoms and characteristics shared by both mercury poisoning and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Social withdrawal
Lack of eye contact
Delayed language use
Loss of speech
Hand flapping
Rocking
Toe walking
Anxiety and Irrational fears
Hypersalivation
Hypersensitivity to light, noise, touch
Uncoordination, poor motor skills
Head banging
Staring spells
Sleep difficulties
Visual impairment
Gastrointestinal disorders
Eczema, rashes
ADD and ADHD traits
Source: "Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning," Journal of Medical Hypotheses, April 2001
SIDEBAR- Mercurial data
Thimerosal is 49.6 percent ethylmercury. Ethylmercury is many times more toxic than the organic mercury that permeates our environment. Thimerosal was added to vaccines as a preservative beginning in the early 1930s and has been in use ever since.
Autism was first diagnosed in America around 1940.
In the 1990s, the number of vaccines mandated for American children under the age of two went from 8 to 20. The amount of ethylmercury received by children jumped 246 percent. Since that time, the incidence rate of autism has shot up approximately 1000 percent nationwide. A child is diagnosed with autism every 20 minutes. Rates have also skyrocketed for ADD, ADHD, speech delays, childhood diabetes, eczema, asthma, and allergies. According to the CDC, 1 in 6 children now has some type of developmental or behavioral disorder.
Lanier Rossignol with her sons, 4-year-old Isaiah and almost-2 year old Joshua (both diagnosed with autism)
The 1972 Life magazine publication of this photograph of a mother bathing her severely mercury-disabled teenage daughter woke up the world to what happened in Minamata, Japan.
W. EUGENE SMITH (1918-1978)
Julian Baumer
Nell Goddin with family: Nellie Baumer (age 4), Julian Baumer (age 6), and Chris Baumer
David Kirby, longtime health/science contributor to the New York Times, speaks in Charlottesville April 19.
Kathy Young, a resident of Albemarle County and president of the Virginia chapter of the National Autism Association, has a seven-year-old daughter diagnosed with autism. "When Anna was about 18-months old we began worrying about her speech delay. She was sick a lot too with ear infections. She had no eye contact. The doctors kept telling us the same thing: wait and see, wait and see. Two years later Anna was diagnosed with autism."
100 2nd st nw . charlottesville va 22902 . 434.295.8700 . fax 434.295.8097 >> buy HooK schwag
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We became pregnant in September 2003, after being told by a fertility specialist that it would be against all odds and only with the use of fertility drugs. I became pregnant on one tube with NO fertility drugs with our beautiful twins. We were excited to say the least and extremely surprised. During the pregnancy we opted out of all of the new testing...CVS, Amnio, genetic testing, etc. as we do not believe in abortion. We felt that the worse thing that could happen was Down Syndrome and we would graciously handle this if it were to happen...[God wanted our boys here and I knew this more than anyone]
But it didn't. You see, we had 2 perfectly healthy baby boys. Identical twins at that. [I had to have Terbutaline via IV during the latter part of my pregnancy due to contractions, had gestational diabetes which I controlled through diet, Shingles which I was told was due to the stress of a multiple pregnancy and edema and borderline pre-eclampsia at the end.]
On May 13, 2004, our twins, Steven Jr. and Samuel were born. Everything was normal. [They were born via an emergency c-section due to my quick labor. My water broke at home and I was 4 centimeters when we arrived and didn't feel any contractions.] I received an MMR shot 5 days post partum as they told me that I didn't have a titer to one of them. Being a new mom of twins, I asked if this would affect them via breast milk and was told "No." My breast milk disappeared 3 days later. [Within 24 hours of receiving the MMR shot I had bumps on the back of my throat, my lips swelled, I had difficulty breathing and felt horrible, the doctor told me to take Benadryl as it was some sort of allergic reaction that he blamed on Organic bananas. I am not allergic to ANY bananas.]
We were told that they had an allergy to milk based formula so we started the formula roller coaster. Going from one to the next. They began vomiting on Soy based formula and reflux. Prevacid caused both infants severe diarrhea and neither were fond of infant Zantac so we decided "no meds." We were told to add cereal. At one point, Sam was extremely bloated due to the cereal and Stevie has problems with constipation. At this time, we had to see a pediatric GI.
Stevie and Sammy received all of their vaccinations on schedule. [with the exception of the Hep B which they did not receive until March and April 2005] Our boys were developing somewhat slowly and we were told that it was normal for twins. They had continuous breathing issues and ongoing upper respiratory infections and slept upright in their infant carseats for the first 8 months. They also had continuous ear infections and were on a continuous round of antibiotics. We asked about tubes and were told that the ear infections weren't bad enough.
Last year, 2004, the flu scare was horrible and the previous pediatrician made sure that Stevie and Sammy received their flu vaccines, 27 days apart to be exact. On top of it, as I looked back through their records, they received between 5-6 vaccines at one time and a couple of times they were on antibiotics for ear infections. In fact, Sam was on 4 different antibiotics for the same ear infection and when we questioned the pediatrician, he stated that it was normal/common for some children. At some point in late November, the pediatrician referred us to Infants and Toddlers to have them evaluated for developmental delays.
On December 25, 2004, Sam began what I called "flailing" and Stevie started some odd behaviors as well...studying objects closely, loosing eye contact and what language he had started he had lost. Stevie also stopped eating baby food. Sam seemed more agitated. Both were exhibiting behaviors that I was not familiar with nor could I put my finger on it. Neither enjoyed being held. Nothing seemed to comfort them. They were beginning to go into their own little worlds. It was gradual and we didn't even begin putting the pieces together until...
April 28, 2005, my good friend Marion called me from PA. [Marion and Bill have no children. Marion is a retired English Professor but originally was interested in becoming a teacher for autistic children.] Marion had asked me about tuna fish during the pregnancy, Imus In the Morning and David Kirby's "Evidence of Harm?" I thought she was little bizarre at first. We then talked about Thimerosal, vaccines and autism. She had listened to our conversations about the twins and their development. She had suggested autism. I got on the internet immediately and began to do some research. I was sick to my stomach and could not believe all of the information that I found. [By the way, with many thanks to our friend Marion, the boys did NOT received their MMR vaccines.]
After our conversation on April 28, I called the pediatrician and asked him about Thimerosal containing vaccines and he assured me that they had been off the market since 1999. He also had a very defensive tone and was unhappy with my line of questioning to say the least. He went on to say that NONE of their vaccines contained Thimerosal. On May 10, my girlfriend accompanied the twins and I to their doctor's appointment. Sam was flailing (AKA:self-stimming) and when she had questioned him, he replied "That's just self-stimulation and is normal in some kids." She was irate to say the least and when she asked why, he replied, "They have Severe Global Developmental Delay." He NEVER once told my husband or I that before now. My husband and I went back May 13, 2004 for a developmental check/physical (for an upcoming MRI) and to discuss why we were not vaccinating. We questioned the pediatrician again regarding Thimerosal containing vaccines, I brought up mercury in the flu vaccines and he agreed that the 2 shots that they had received 27 days apart did indeed contain Thimerosal.
On August 10, 2005, we took the boys to see a neuropsychiatrist and she gave them the dx of autism spectrum disorder.
Our boys and my other 2 children will NEVER receive another vaccine until the vaccines are proven SAFE. We believe beyond a "shadow of a doubt" that the flu vaccines triggered our boys autism/mercury poisoning. Everyday, I can not believe all of the info regarding how unsafe vaccines truly are. It makes me sick that our government is using our children as guinea pigs and there is nothing we can do. It is disheartening to say the least. I look at my boys and feel so guilty as I had NO idea that vaccines would have ever caused them harm.
Now, we are hopping from pediatrician to DAN doc to pediatric gastroenterologist, pediatric neurologist, neuropthamologist, neuropsychiatrist, nutritionist, massage therapist, etc. etc. No matter how discouraging there seems to be a glimmer of hope. They receive services from Infants and Toddlers such as Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Special Education but it just not enough. I now make my own baby food and they are GFCF and we are doing biomedical but it is just not enough. Sam has started banging his head on the floor, though it is mild, I am sure it is a prelude to what's to come. Stevie tries to be a drill and rolls in a drill position on the floor. I think, "Will one bang his head and the other spin in circles at some point?"
Everyday, I feel so consumed by information flying across the internet and feel so bad for all of the parents who haven't got a clue. You see, I was one of those parents at one time not long ago. I hate the government for using our children for greed and power. I hate that they have such a grip on the media that the truth is yet to be told. I hate that this has happened to my children and the many others and yet many more to come. Just what kind of government do we have? When will this nightmare end? What will it take? Who decides? Why?
After Jacob died, the medical professionals here assured me that there was no possible way SIDS was related to the vaccinations....they quickly dismissed all of the questions that I had telling me the benefits of vaccinations outweighed the risks. They say because immunizations are given at 2 and 4 months in age that it is just a coincidence that it is the peak SIDS age....HELLO?!?!
How is it that the government intimidates parents into getting their children vaccinated, but then turns around and financially compensates them? Its very sad that our government knows something is bad for us and perpetuates it.
I wish I knew then what I know now. I did what I felt was right at the time and that is something that I will always have to live with and wonder about. Would Jacob be here if I had not immunized him, or would he have been a vicitm of SIDS anyhow???
As a matter of fact, I finally got up the courage to get his medical records from the pediatricians office so I could send it to VAERS. I picked them up today, and although it was extremely difficult I hope in my heart that somehow it will help someone. From what I can tell he was given 1)DTap 2)IPV 3)HepB 4)HIB on that day.
When our subsequent baby was born, we struggled with whether or not we would/should immunize her...of course everyone has an opinion on the subject. We ended up unbundling her vaccinations and waited til she was a bit older, but I'm finding out that that doesn't necessarily help at all. The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning towards ceasing to vaccinate her altogether (which is why I am here, to learn and gain knowledge).
My husband wasn't immunized and he is one of the healthiest people I know!!!
Thanks for listening,
Jill/CA
I am Stephanie, mom to dd age 4.5, ds age 3, ds age 1.5, and #4 edd 11-2-04.
Slowly over the course of our first 3 years of parenting, some things happened that lead me to not trust the medical profession. I got bad advice about breastfeeding, encouragement to use cereals and unnatural foods over human milk, I had a bad reaction from a pre-natal vitamin (hyper, fast heartbeat, uncontrollable crying) and called the OB who said, 'oh that has copper in it and we're not sure what that does to people, stop taking it right away'. Also, I'd give my son, child #2, cold medicine the doctor gave and he'd wail and arch all night. So, I realized they didn't know it all, and I needed to have more information before just doing what they said.
Our first child had all of her required vaccinations from her birth in 1999 to age 3. She was breastfed exclusively for 6 months and then still until 14 months, and was overall pretty healthy. Our 2nd child, William (Will), was vaccinated through 12 months I believe. He developed normally, was speaking several words at 9 months as he should. After he turned 1, he started verbalizing everything into an 'ess ess' sound. He'd grunt or just say 'ess ess' whenever he wanted something. We thought it was his way of saying please and he had just generalized all words into the word please and that's how he got what he wanted. He developed some digestive problems, just weird poops, bad smells, more foods coming through, didn't seem serious, but was obviously not right. At this time, I never considered that vaccinations were causing any of this, but we were considering not doing vaccinations any more because I didn't believe the benefits outweighed the risks. So at his 15 month appointment, I said no more, and we haven't done any since.
When Will was 2, he was still only saying, ess ess. Before and around age one, he had a normal baby version of the words, mommy, daddy, fish, grace, Phyllis, and more . definitely more than just ess ess. His pediatrician recommended we have him evaluated for speech therapy. He was 2 months from turning 2, I didn't think it was necessary, thought he'd talk when he was ready, just figured the loss of language after age 1 was a normal thing. But we had the evaluation done anyway. He qualified and had an hour of therapy in our home each week. His behavior wasn't horrible, but there were signs of not following directions, throwing things for attention or for no apparent reason, little focus. To me, these were just toddler behaviors and not strange for our first little boy even though our first little girl was easy-going and seemed bright.
The speech pathologist recommended he have his hearing tested. He was found to have fluid in his ears. The theory was that he had had fluid in his ears since birth (he had chronic runny nose his first year) and this caused him to not be able to hear and therefore not learn to talk. I was really just going through the motions that these doctors requested, I never said, well why did he talk then, but then stop. The pediatrician thought this was very strange, he had always been found to have "gorgeous" ears at every well-check. I was told he could have antibiotics and/or tubes. I wasn't going to do that to a 2 year old. The research isn't even promising that they work. So I took him to a friend who is a chiropractor. He sent us to another chiropractor whose work coincided with his runny nose clearing up. Then I took him to Fox Hollow Clinic near Crestwood, Kentucky, which does natural medicine, etc. An osteopath said he may have some aspergers-like symptoms, but didn't see any clear signs. Hair analysis showed over the top levels of lead and arsenic, as well as a zinc deficiency, things that are often found in autistic children also. He also had other abnormal metal levels. The doctor prescribed supplements, vitamins, chlorella-a metal detox liquid, gave dietary recommendations, and we continued chiropractic care. By the time Will was 2 and a half, he was talking again, within 2 more months, he was released from speech therapy as 'on track'. He had large jumps in progress when we started higher doses of the EFAs (essential fatty acids) and fish oils. I do believe it was this run of treatment that 'cured' his speech delay.
Looking back, we know that he was almost always sick after a well-child check. We'd take in a healthy baby, he'd be looked at and given his shots, we'd go home, and he'd get sick! I was so fed up, because I thought that he was just picking up germs every time we went in there. He'd react with fevers, crying, up all night, couldn't relax unless I was holding him. I would call, and they'd say, did he have his shots? I'd say yes, they'd say, then he's fine, just give him Tylenol or Robitussin. This happened several times. I thought he'd react from the meds, but was it the shots too or only? He didn't always have the meds and he reacted that way. I remember one awful night when I literally didn't go to bed all night. He was very uncomfortable and squirmy in my arms, but was less likely to scream. I'd try to put him down and he'd squirm and scream, so I'd pick him up and hold him while he screamed, and sometimes he'd sleep on me. I tried to nurse him all I could, but often he'd refuse. We made it through the night and he seemed fine by the next night.
I believe Will was on an early side of the ADD/Autism spectrum. One more vaccine, and we would have had a lot more to deal with.
Another note: we mentioned to the Osteopathic doctor that we were quitting vaccines and felt they may be the cause of Will's troubles. He said, "as a physician in the commonwealth of Kentucky, I have to tell you that vaccines are the best choice for your child," He went on, 'with the high fevers and reactions he has had, it seems that he may not be a candidate, "read between the lines". What is in '..' are his words paraphrased. Between "quotes" and "read between the lines" were his actual words.
Will turned 3 in April. His digestion is great. He can tolerate milk (we don't drink it, but it was something he'd react to after drinking, and after cutting it from his diet just in time, he can now tolerate it when he happens upon it at grandmas or something).
A book that started me really noticing that Will's symptoms were all connected was Karen Seroussi's "unraveling the mysteries of autism and pdd". I recommend it to all. A friend whose normal daughter stopped talking and became autistic-like (they don't diagnose at that age here) at age 2 or 3 after vaccinations told me to read it. I never would have seen before that ill's symptoms were connected: digestive issues, speech delay, mother who doesn't hold the titer for rubella (what a wake-up this was, I was revaccinated after giving birth to our first child because I showed up non-immune to rubella-but I knew I had had MMRs throughout my life even as an adult! Who knows, they could have given me a whole MMR at that time-another thing to consider, I was also given rhogam during all 3 pregnancies, something else that could have thimerosal and other bad things that would have been passed to our children). He also often woke up crying for a period of his baby/toddler life, also had a large belly-signifying potential gas, digestion troubles. this is just all I can think of as of now.
Thanks for letting me share.
Stephanie :-)
It was January 15, 1981 and as I was bundling up our son Bryan to bring to his second “well baby” check up, I thought of the fun we would have when the weather warmed up and I could take him and his sister Alyssa for long walks outside. He was born on September 18, 1980 weighing 8lbs 8oz. What immediately followed his “well baby” check was far from typical. I certainly wanted what was best for my child so no questions where asked when it came to his immunizations. No warning of adverse reactions was given. I blindly handed my son over as a human sacrifice. Trusting the medical profession knew what was best for my child.
I had to work for a couple of hours so I dropped Bryan and Alyssa off at the babysitters house. I told her I would be gone for two hours. I told Marilyn he would not eat for me and perhaps she could get him to drink his bottle.
I returned to Marilyn’s house at around 2:45 and went to the living room to pick up Bryan he appeared to be sleeping. As I leaned over to pick him up, I felt his limp, lifeless body in my arms. I screamed a cry that would never be repeated. I desperately tried calling an ambulance but I fumbled at the phone. Marilyn’s husband happened to be home, and he drove us to the hospital. I burst through the front doors of the hospital holding Bryan in my arms and screaming words I will never remember and feeling a desperation I will never forget. My recall is that of telling the emergency room nurse that Bryan had just had his shots, maybe he was reacting….
He was pronounced dead at 3;33 p.m. four hours after his vaccines. The doctors’ report said Cause of death: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
My son progressed normally up until about 10 months. We moved into a rental house while our new house was being built and it all began. He was constantly congested (so was my husband) which lead to chronic upper respiratory infections. He was given repeated doses of antibiotics never off for more than a week or two all the while being vaccinated. It was a continuous cycle and I began noticing changes in him. He was playing by himself a lot, stools were terrible, could sit and watch TV forever, etc. I can't say that I took him in to receive a particular vaccine and the next day he was gone. What I do know is that the combination of antibiotics and vaccinations did something to him. He changed fairly rapidly in that particular frame of time. I am an educated, proactive mom and at the time did and tried everything to keep him well and had alot of disagreements with my doctor. But I can tell you that there was a huge turning point in my mind when it came to vaccinations. Very new to all of this I made the HUGE mistake of giving him the flu vaccine. As sickly as he was I just knew that without it he would be one of those immunosuppressed children to die from the flu. I called the pharmaceutical company that dispensed his flu vaccine and asked them tons of questions. I know so much more about all of this stuff now than I did then. I found out that there is so much stuff they do not have to tell me. Anyway, the day after the flu vaccine we saw severe regression. Not with speech but with everything else. He was toe-walking, hand-flapping, couldn't be touched even lightly. The list goes on and on. It was a terrible experience and luckily he came out of rather quickly with very intense sensory integration therapy. I knew that these vaccinations must have had a profound effect on him. I saw the damage done by this one vaccine so I knew what all of the others must have done to him also. Honestly, I feel like my education and occupation brainwashed me against the horrors and damage vaccinations can have. I wish I had been smarter, but at the time I wasn't. Thankfully, he is doing so well now that his doctors are already questioning his diagnosis. He is not even three yet. We have a lot to be thankful for but also a lot yet to work on. I know that was long but that was just a brief glimpse at my vaccine history. I hope to learn so much more and educate others on this issue.
Thanks.
Cindy
My son was a sweet, happy, healthy baby boy who imitated, cooed, and flirted with his mama. Nine days after his 4 month shots he had 3 grand mal seizures and was never the same. He stopped imitating, cooing, looking for me, and eye contact. I asked my husband the day we brought him home from the hospital, “Why won’t he look at me?”. I then went on-line to research adverse reactions to vaccines. I was horrified by what I had read because I knew what I was reading was what happened to my son. All these parents had the exact same thing happen to them (vaccines+seizures+change in behavior = autism). I told everyone, including the doctors, what I thought had happened and they all told me I was crazy and to stay off of the Internet. Well, low and behold, nobody thinks I’m crazy now because he is now 18 months and has been evaluated by two separate autism experts who both believe he is somewhere on the spectrum. Vaccines do cause autism and anyone who thinks differently is either in denial, isn’t fully educated, or is trying to cover up this truth. Feel free to use this story on your web page or share it with other if you would like. Take care and God bless you and your family.
Sheryl
My daughter was a normal child from the get go. 3 days after her 9 months vaccines, which were hib, hbv, and prevnar, she started with her eyes rolling back in her head, I immediately rushed her to the doctor and was told she had a severe ear infection, and she was holding her head back to drain the infection from her head, sometimes kids do that. But she was actually having a seizure right in the doctors office. She started having what we call startle spells. I took her to her pediatrician and was actually told she was doing this for attention, I said what!! After a year of having so many of these spells and so many goose eggs and cuts on her head from hitting the floor, table, anything she was around, I finally begged enough and got an EEG for her, which showed nothing. 2 MRI's and 5 EEG's later nothing. They just diagnosed her with epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and stuck on her seizure medication.. All of her spells are always associated with noise, a cough, a fork hitting the plate, a sneeze, or even your voice. If she is standing when a noise takes place, it is certain she will fall, She has a lot of visits to the chiropractor because when she falls she throws her hips out, neck and back. Then the second awful thing, was another ear infection that was so bad, I ended up in the ER with her one night, and they gave her an antibiotic shot, when the nurse gave it to her, I told her she wasn't holding still, and she said I know she is a wiggle worm and just jabbed her, which was the starting of something awful. For 3 weeks she laid in screaming pain day and night. She couldn't crawl, walk or sit. I took her to a total of 13 doctors in that 3 weeks that told me she was just sore from the shots, in that 3 weeks she had another total of 2 more antibiotic shots. I finally got sick of messing with the doc's and took her to a chiropractor, in which I found out her pelvis had been thrown out with the first shot, her neck was so severely out of place that she couldn't hold her head up, eat or even drink without me holding her in a lying down position. The chiropractor has been my daughters guardian angel. With out her, my daughters body would have grown together this way, out of place, I certainly think this is what's wrong with a lot of kids who have physical problems moving. Two years ago she started having tonic clonic seizures from hitting her head so much, She was then placed on 8 different seizure med's which only caused her to lose weight and lose her hair, all of it, we are talking waist length hair. The last tonic seizure she had was may 22, o3, due to cranial manipulation. She had a seizure and I went straight to the chiropractor and she did this manipulation on her skull, and that was the last seizure of that kind she has had. In May of 04, we decided after the neurologist told us there were no other med's her could give to her, because nothing was working, he could refer us to another children's hospital, or do surgery on her, they wanted to intrude on her brain, don't think so. We found the power of herbs. She had a black like substance in her ears that looked like car grease, that of course the ear specialist told us was normal, of course, in just 3 days of being on the herbs the stuff was completely gone from her ears, 13 months and counting. Her eyes would dilate abnormally and her walking was almost nothing. Her speech well, she was talking before all of this happened, then just stopped, and now it is coming along quit nicely, and her eyes have completely stopped doing this and she is almost running now, her legs are still hyperflexed, she doesn't walk like normal children, and probably never will, but she is learning how to cope with her body being out of wack. Thanks to the herbs and definitely not the moron doctors. When I first took her the these herb people, I thought what a bunch of quacks!! But they really did know what they were doing. No my children don't go the doctor unless they get hurt, or some kind of emergency arises I can't handle. When my children would get an ear infection or sinus thing, it would last for months, and I think it's because of the med's the doc's put them on hurt them more than helped. When they get sick, I treat them myself. My children will not ever get another vaccine!! ever!!! I always ask people would you sit your child down at the table and give them a bowl of antifreeze to eat? I don't think so. from OHIO
True measure of QB's heart found at home
Flutie family faces challenge of autism
By Jackie MacMullan, Globe Staff | July 24, 2005
NATICK -- This time there are no boxes, no moving vans, no harried coast-to-coast transports of the dogs, the kids, the stuff. Doug Flutie is home. His new job, backup quarterback for the New
England Patriots, enables his daughter, Alexa, to complete her senior year of high school alongside her lifelong friends -- not to mention cousins -- from Natick. It allows his son, Dougie, to sleep in the same room all year, with his toy box and his hockey stick and his big old bear.
Dougie is 13 now. He loves music and the ocean. Sometimes, when the family is at the beach, he'll bolt toward the water without warning, and Doug will have to chase him down. Dougie will hear his father coming, his steely legs frantically pounding the sand in pursuit, and he'll wheel around and smile. You know what he'd be saying if he could talk: Gotcha, Dad.
He loves it when his mother, Laurie Flutie, plays the ''Hey" song. When he was 2, before autism overtook him, he would croon right along with her. You know the tune. It's ''What I Like About You" by the Romantics. When they sang, ''You really know how to dance," Dougie would bust a move, smiling and laughing, like always.
Dougie doesn't dance so much anymore. He often sits in his stroller, a state-of-the-art contraption that helps contain him and provide comfort from the swirl of life's activity that is, at times, just too overwhelming. He has a habit of drifting off to his own place, where nobody -- not his mother, his father, his sister, or a team of top-flight physicians -- can penetrate.
Autism is heartbreaking that way. One minute, your son is smiling at you, and the next, he is looking right through you. ''He's always looking away," said Doug Flutie, wistfully. ''You wonder what he's thinking." But his parents believe Dougie is happy. He doesn't know he's autistic, doesn't notice when others gawk at him when he's shouting, or chewing on a plastic bottle, or twirling objects again and again and again. Some people stare, others recoil. His parents have long ago accepted that.
The rest of the world simply does not see the Dougie they see.
''People ask me how he's doing," Doug Flutie said. ''It's not that he's doing any one specific skill. It's little things. He follows directions better. He gets in and out of the car by himself. That's a huge improvement. Before that, it used to be a procedure." Here is one of the most celebrated athletes in New England sports history, a Heisman Trophy winner who married his high school sweetheart in a storybook wedding. The Fluties were millionaires by the time Doug was 25, yet his own son, his namesake, can't even begin to carry on the legacy. It's likely Dougie will never read or write. He will never be able to take care of himself. He probably will never speak. The Random House Dictionary defines autism as a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by impaired communication, excessive rigidity, and emotional detachment. Heartbreaking? Of course it is. But don't you dare feel sorry for the Fluties.
''We don't really like that poor, poor pitiful me thing," Doug explained. They started the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism in 1998, three years after their son was diagnosed. As they learned more about Dougie's condition, they recognized the need for heightened awareness, education, and research. When Laurie purchased a special tricycle for Dougie with wider handlebars and a bigger seat, the price tag was more than $1,000. His special stroller cost $2,000. It rankled her. How could average families afford this?
The foundation. It supports people who need financial assistance in caring for their autistic children. It funds research and helps develop new programs and services. ''I feel like Dougie was meant to do this," Laurie said. ''Without him, there is no foundation. It wouldn't have happened. It's in Dougie's name. It's his legacy. It gives us peace."
Still, it's not easy sometimes. Doug and Laurie have nieces and nephews who are growing and prospering all around them. Bill Flutie's son Brett is the same age as Dougie and he's an athlete,
just like his older brother Billy, who just committed to Boston College to play football. The Flutie family is close; Doug's brothers, Bill and Darren, and sister Denise, all live in town. Laurie's mother is still there. There are daily reminders of what could have been.
''We were at one of Brett's basketball tournaments recently," said Doug. ''He came out and said, 'I could use one more guy on the court with me. I need one more guy who thinks like I do.'
''I turned to him and said, 'Brett, you know, that's supposed to be Dougie.' "Brett blanched. Doug's brother Bill turned away, his eyes moist. But the quarterback no longer cries for his son.
''They see what Brett is doing, and they want that for us," he said. ''But we don't miss it as much as they might think, because we never had it. We love Dougie just the way he is."
Devastating diagnosis
When Dougie Flutie was just 2, if he concentrated really hard, he could practically reach the hoop with a regulation-size ball. He loved to shoot baskets with his father, and would happily sit with
his little arms and legs curled around Doug watching an entire NBA game.
He was an active, alert, mischievous child.
''When he wanted juice, I'd ask him, 'Now, Dougie, what do you say?' " Laurie recalled. ''He'd giggle a few times, but wouldn't answer. I'd say again, 'Dougie, what do you say?' He'd laugh, then he'd shout, 'Please, beauty mom!' "
When his father went down to the basement to practice his drums, little Dougie would trail behind, climb into his lap, and bang on the cymbals. They lived in Calgary at the time, when Flutie was starring in the Canadian Football League, and their house included a master bedroom with a fireplace that also connected to the living room. Dougie loved to stick his hand through the grate from one room o another, shouting with glee to his sister, ''Lexa, grab the hand!"
''He was one of those kids who hated going to bed," Doug said. ''We'd put him in, and the next thing you know he'd be standing on the balcony. We'd say, 'Dougie, go to bed,' and he'd say
to us in that sweet little voice, 'Good night!' "The memories are like precious stones, to be coveted and admired and preserved. Dougie was once like all of his cousins. He talked and he
sang and he cried and he giggled and he looked right into his parents' eyes and told them he loved them.
It changed shortly before Dougie turned 3, when Laurie and the kids went back to Natick to enroll Alexa in school. All of a sudden, the sunny boy was subdued. He talked less and less. Laurie called the pediatrician. He told her it was not uncommon for younger siblings to stop talking for periods of time, because their older brother or sister did the talking for them.
Two months passed. Dougie barely spoke at all now. The only time he managed to articulate much of anything was to repeat what Laurie said to him. Laurie went back to the doctor. She mentioned Dougie's symptoms developed shortly after he had his immunization shots. She was referred to a neurologist, who recommended the boy be admitted to New England Medical Center.
Dougie underwent a battery of tests. He was scared. He had wires coming out of his head. They put him in a crib that looked like a cage. He looked away, and he never looked back. ''I remember being in the doctor's office," Doug said. ''They told me Dougie wouldn't make eye contact with anyone. But when I looked at him, I saw the old Dougie."
The doctors surmised that Dougie was developmentally challenged from birth. Laurie put together a video of her child when he was a completely healthy, vibrant, communicative 2 1/2-year-old -- ''his highlight film," she joked. The doctors viewed it, then grew silent. ''I watched and said, 'Oh my God,' " Doug said. ''I didn't realize how far he'd regressed." The diagnosis -- autism -- was devastating. But, within a week, Doug and Laurie were moving forward.
''We just started focusing on, 'Where do we go, who do we see?' " Doug said. ''I've had to do that a lot in my career. I know how to put last week behind me."
Questions are raised
Doug Flutie was always the little guy who defied the odds. He was a United States Football League bonus baby. He was a Canadian Football League legend. He was a replacement player in New England, a controversial figure in Buffalo, a sage veteran in San Diego. Along the way, he used his notoriety to start the Doug Flutie Jr. Celebrity Golf Classic, an all-star basketball tournament, and a 5K road race, all to benefit the foundation.
''It always amazes me when I work with families like the Fluties, who truly do not feel sorry for themselves," said Lisa Borges, executive director of the foundation. ''It would be easy to be bitter, or angry. No one would blame them. But they don't say, 'Why me?' They say, 'What can I do?' "
According to the Center for Disease Control, 1 in 166 children develop some form of autism, ranging from mild and somewhat high functioning (like Dan Marino's son) to severe. The number is staggering, and Bill Flutie does not understand why there hasn't been a more urgent look at the preservative containing mercury that is used in immunizations.
''You've got to shake your head at it," Bill said. ''Dougie is a normal little boy, then after the shots he's not? Autism is reaching epidemic proportions. I wish someone like Doug, with so much visibility, could pressure the government to do something.
''I'm afraid to discuss it with Doug. It's so personal. It's a tough subject. It upsets them, sometimes." Doug and Laurie have struggled with this issue. They, too, believe the immunizations are the cause of Dougie's autism, even though no studies have proven a direct link. ''The government will never admit it, but we've got a big problem," Doug Flutie said. ''They did a study. Great. Happy for them. But there's no doubt in my mind we need to get the mercury out of these shots.
''We can't get into the lab ourselves and prove it, so we're trying to raise funds for research. No matter what they find it's not going to make Dougie better. But it could help others." They are wrapped up in Dougie; they admit it. There are excellent facilities that house autistic patients, but the Fluties have rejected that option. ''Some members of our family have said, 'You know, the sad day will come when you are going to have to put him someplace,' " Doug said. ''I say no. Screw that. I want him with us. If he's 20, 25, 30, 35, I want him here."
''I will never put him in a home as long as I can possibly help it," Laurie said emphatically. Dougie remains a challenge. He needs constant attention. He is apt to suddenly sprint off into a crowd. He rarely cries, so if he's hurt, or suffering, his family is often unaware. He cannot swim, so he must be supervised near water at all times. This past summer, Dougie was sitting in the hot tub when he suddenly popped out, scooted down the slide of the family pool, and plopped into the water without his life vest on. Alexa quickly pulled him to the surface; her brother, quite pleased with himself, merely grinned at her.
Doug worries his son doesn't eat enough. Dougie is thin, and he never indicates he's hungry, so his father leaves a trail of easily accessible snacks throughout the house. Laurie worries that Dougie might become sick and be unable to tell them. Alexa needs glasses; how would Dougie ever let them know if he did?
''We were home recently and Dougie was crouched down, just staring out the window," Doug said. ''He had been doing it quite a while, so I said, 'Dougie, come over here.' He didn't move. That's when we realized his finger was stuck in the vent. The poor kid couldn't tell us." One night, Laurie tiptoed up to check on Dougie in his room. He was looking out the window with his hand sticking through the net of his little plastic basketball hoop. His finger had become caught and was turning blue. Dougie never made a sound. The net is no longer in his room.
Realistic about the future
Who knows what Dougie would have been like? Is it a coincidence that the first thing he reaches for in his toy box is the hockey stick, the basketball, or the football? Doug tries to play catch with
Dougie sometimes. He'll say, ''Get ready, I'm going to pass you the ball." His son, his expression blank, will not turn around. His father will throw the ball anyway. Most times, Dougie will expertly
snatch it without looking.
''There are moments when you get a little bummed out," Laurie admitted. ''You watch Brett playing sports, and you think to yourself, 'These would be the kids Dougie would be hanging out
with.' There are at least eight kids in the neighborhood Dougie's age who are running around, doing what boys do. You wish Dougie could be out there with them. But you can't dwell on it."
They are realistic about their son's future. He may improve in increments, or this may be as good as it will ever get. ''I believe Dougie can understand the majority of what we're saying to him," Doug said. ''I just don't think he's able to respond. ''Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the [Philadelphia] Eagles, had a brother who was autistic who didn't speak his first word until he was 35. He told Jeffrey, 'Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot.' "
When Doug signed with the Patriots, he sat down and explained to his kids how he had met coach Bill Belichick years ago at rocker Jon Bon Jovi's 30th birthday party, and how he thought this job with New England was a good fit. Flutie had seriously considered playing one more year in the CFL with his brother Darren before the Patriots made their pitch. NFL offers from the Giants, Seattle, and Tampa Bay were more lucrative, but they couldn't guarantee he'd be able to
watch his nephew Billy play for Natick High every Friday night. Flutie reports to Patriots camp today knowing his son is settled. Dougie can hang out in his ''hot pool" and continue his schooling at a collaborative program in Framingham.
The unknown comes into play years from now, when Doug and Laurie grow older. Laurie had a nightmare about it two weeks ago, and woke up sobbing, shaking. ''I told Alexa about it," Laurie said. ''She said, 'Mom, stop worrying. I'll take care of Dougie.' "
''People think he's a burden," Doug said. ''He's not. I love going up to his room and lying with him on that big old bear he's got on is bed." The Flutie family went to dinner recently. They were in the middle of a conversation when Dougie suddenly picked up the rectangular menus and began twirling them. ''He's got them in both hands, and he's spinning them around, and we can't believe it," said Doug Flutie, with wonder in his voice. ''So we all start trying it. But we can't. We can't do it."
The stunned waiter stared at this nearly grown kid in a stroller making strange guttural noises while spinning these menus like some kind of juggler. He had recognized Doug Flutie when they came in, and now his facial expression betrayed his thoughts: how sad. No. It's not sad at all. Look at them. Do they look unhappy? So Doug Flutie Jr. will never be a quarterback. So what? His father does not care. Dougie's legacy -- his foundation -- is so much more meaningful.
We should all be able to see that.
Donations to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism can be sent
to P.O. Box 767, Framingham, MA 01701
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2005/07/24/
true_measure_of_qbs_heart_found_at_home/?page=full
More stories from the Web:
Brianna
www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/8537
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http://noshots.homestead.com/homepage.html
Bryan
http://childvaccinesinjury.homestead.com/index.html
Amanda
http://www.eaglefoundation.net/Amanda.htm
http://www.unc.edu/~aphillip/www/vaccine/stories.htm
Kirk
http://www.vran.org/story/story_05302002.asp
Ashley
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As a parent of an Autistic child, it is difficult to describe the pain and resentment that is felt by having a perfect baby and then having that baby snatched from you at about 16 months old. The brain damage that my child received should not have happened. The U.S. healthcare industry is the best in the World. There are safeguards and redundancies built into the system. However, in this case, the system failed and failed badly. My child and countless others were injected with a substance known as Thimerosal.
Thimerosal is an additive to baby vaccines that contains 49.6% Mercury. This substance was banned by the pet vaccination industry over ten years ago because of known health risks. The pharmaceutical industry kept this additive in the baby vaccines, knowing full well the risks to our children’s health.
According to my child’s weight and the amount of vaccines he received that contained this additive, my child and thousands of other children have received over 40 times the legal safety limit for mercury exposure as established by the Environmental Protection Agency. I speak for literarily thousands of concerned and angry parents who basically got burned by a system that has been perverted by Greed, Politics, and Corruption. In the last several years, the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ), the Centers of Disease Control ( CDC ) and the National Institutes of Health ( NIH ) have granted
hundreds of waivers of the conflict of interest rule in favor of the drug giants and their “paid consultants”. Has the U.S. health care system been unduly influenced? Thousands of children have suffered the consequences of these people’s greed and short sightedness. My child was born perfectly healthy, full of life. He had the potential to achieve anything in life that he would have chosen to do. Because of a short sighted medical system that failed, my child is now a semi vegetative little boy who is lost in his own tortured world of mercury induced autism.
This book talks about the cause and the arrogant atmosphere that abounds in the vaccine community that has caused this tragedy. If you look at an autistic child, you will notice fear and profound sadness on their little faces. They are imprisoned in a world where they desperately want to escape, but can’t. The frustration that these children feel and their cries for help have been ignored by the very system that caused this atrocity.
When I look upon other healthy six year old children who are playing, communicating and living normal lives, I wonder what might have been with my little boy. I am sure I am not alone in my thoughts. This is a painful and very tragic occurrence. Instead of concern, sympathy and needed help, the Pharmaceutical industry and the “system” that caused this tragedy has been for the most part un sympathetic, evasive and full of legal denials.
This book will anger many people, which is precisely what it is intended to do. My desire is to light a fire under the bureaucrats, politicians and the medical community to get off their asses and do something to help these children. These children did not deserve what they got. The parents of these brain damaged children have suffered terrible pain and financial hardship as a result of the greed and political corruption from the very segment of our society that was supposed to invoke trust and medical excellence.
Is this book critical? You bet it is. I know I speak for thousands of people who, like myself want answers. The tragic truth is that every time a question is asked, all that is given in return is deception, distorted truths and out right lies from the very people we trusted the most. Lastly, it is my hope that this book will at least get people asking the questions of HOW? , WHO? And most importantly, WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT CHILDREN?
Disabled child's family looks for assistance, relief
06:46 PM CDT on Friday, October 29, 2004
By LAURA GRIFFIN / Special contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Editor's note: This story was originally published in The Dallas Morning News on Aug. 10, 1996.
Most images the Liebos have of who their son once was are disappearing fast. From exposure to heat, videotapes of Eric as a typical, talkative 4-year-old are now jumpy and full of snow. The color is fading.
But one is left. On it, Eric dances around the living room, plays with his little brother and catches a ball. As he does, he squeals with glee, "I'm the winner!"
As they watch the images on the screen, the strain and sadness show on his parents' faces.
"He was so fun and so smart," says Jim Liebo. "He was my best friend. Now his brain is destroyed. That's the toughest thing."
Eric, the oldest of three, had no problems until he was a year old. A few weeks after he was immunized for mumps, measles and rubella, he had his first in a series of seizures that would end in a stroke, causing severe brain damage when he was 4 years old.
Now, three years later, after living in a rehabilitation center in Austin, Eric is back home in Far North Dallas and not only testing the limits of his family, but also of the few social services the region has to offer such a child.
"He doesn't have Down syndrome or cerebral palsy or autism; he's `other impaired,' " said his mother, Tina Liebo, who has searched all summer for proper day care for her son. "He doesn't fall in their categories. Everyone says, `We can't help you.' "
During the school year, Eric can attend special classes in public school, but during the summer there's almost nothing for him.
In fact, statewide, the options are limited for disabled children, particularly in day care centers or group homes, said Dorothy Loeper, admissions coordinator for Collin County Mental Health and Mental Retardation.
"It's really tough for parents like the Liebos," she said. "They have to scramble to find things, especially day care. It's unbelievable to me that an area as big as the Dallas-Fort Worth area has so little to offer."
Difficult ride
Even though he was born healthy, Eric is now diagnosed as mentally retarded, which gives the Liebos the opportunity to work through MHMR, but it still has not been easy.
Since January, Eric has been through two "shared parenting" foster homes and about 20 nurses or nurse aids. Each time he stayed with a family to give his own some respite, he was sent home within weeks because the families could not handle his disruptive behavior.
Because the Liebos are new to traversing the system, it's been a difficult ride.
"They're not seasoned veterans like a lot of parents whose children are born with difficulties," Ms. Loeper said. "Those parents become warriors; they know how to work the system. Eric was normal for four years. They're really rookies in the system and it's frustrating.
"For them, it's been like grieving a death and the birth of a kid with disabilities at the same time," she said.
While they struggle to learn how to deal with Eric's problems, the Liebos are also trying to plan for his future and make a difference for other mentally disabled children.
"It seems nobody cares about these kids," said Mr. Liebo, who has been trying to develop a public-private partnership plan to build a facility that would include services for the disabled. "So many of these children are wasted because there's not enough funding. I want to be the next Jerry Lewis for these kids."
At first glance, Eric looks like any other 7-year-old. He has a mop of sandy curls and big blue eyes. He smiles easily and often, even showing strangers his gap-toothed grin.
But within minutes, the differences become clear.
He never speaks, but only moans or grunts.
From the time he wakes up at about 6 a.m. until he goes to sleep as late as midnight, he is almost constantly on the move, ripping paper and plant leaves into tiny bits and chewing anything he finds.
He is fed strapped into a high chair. He is not toilet trained and wears diapers.
He roams from room to room and slams into his brother and sister - 4-year-old Zak and 2-year-old Alexis - who are often shaken by his behavior.
"Physically, he's 7, but mentally, he's about 6 months old," Mr. Liebo said. "Zak wants him to play with him. We tell him that Eric has a boo-boo on his brain, and he can't do those things. Zak can't understand why we can't make the boo-boo better.
"Alexis is afraid of him."
Memories of their son
Eric will sit for about 15 minutes if Barney, Sesame Street or Beauty & The Beast are on TV. Those shows mesmerize him. But videos of himself upset and agitate him.
If his picture is on the screen, he moans and hits the VCR buttons to turn it off.
"He doesn't like looking in the mirror either," Mrs. Liebo said.
But when the Liebos look at Eric, they still see traces of the boy in the video. The boy whose finger-paint handprints hang on the wall. The boy who used to make strangers laugh with his jokes and his witty comments.
Eric was the boy teachers once called bright and described as "always excited about his accomplishments. Eric loves all the children. He greets his friends as they come in."
He used to love to color, paint, cut and paste and work puzzles. He sat raptured at story time.
"He was definitely a delightful child. There was something very special about him. He could walk into a room and light it up in a minute," said Amanda Holsapple, assistant director of child care services at the Jewish Community Center. "To see him in this condition is very painful."
The JCC also tried to find services for him. But because of his condition and the one-on-one attention he needs, it has been difficult, Ms. Holsapple said. It is for that reason that he has been unable to attend the JCC's after-school program as well, she said.
"We really don't have the capability to deal with the difficulties of someone like Eric," she said. "He needs highly trained people."
The Liebos tried to put Eric in a YMCA program this summer, but he was kicked out after one day.
"He tore everyone's artwork into little pieces," Mr. Liebo said. "They asked that he not come back."
The only program they managed to get Eric into was a summer camp for disabled children. There he was able to tear paper to his heart's content, and his parents were given a break for five days.
Dealing with Eric and his problems has taken an emotional and financial toll on the Liebos.
When Eric first came home from Austin, the Liebos could not keep up with him and their two younger children in their two bedroom apartment. So Zak and Alexis stayed with Mrs. Liebo's parents at night.
"I just physically couldn't handle it all," Mrs. Liebo said. "But it was breaking my heart."
Then for a while, only Alexis slept at her grandparents. When she was with the Liebos, she was very clingy with Mrs. Liebo and cried when she left each night.
"I feel guilty about all of them, especially Alexis because she's so young," Mrs. Liebo said. "I already felt guilty because I'm a working mother, but now I have so much more. I think maybe I'm not giving him enough attention or I'm spending too much time with him and not enough with them. I love them all, but I don't want my other children to feel like they don't have their mother because of Eric."
Medical expenses
They've set up a payment system for the $60,000 that insurance didn't cover for Eric's medical bills. And they pay $900 a month insurance just to keep him covered along with the rest of the family, Mr. Liebo said. This summer, they've been paying $14 an hour for a nurse to stay with him during the day. But nurses don't stay long.
"First they make excuses, like they've got car trouble," Mr. Liebo said. "But you know when they don't answer their pages, that they're not coming back."
The day Eric had his stroke, he had gone to day camp, then came home, ate dinner, took a bath and started getting ready for bed. He had a seizure and his parents rushed him to the hospital.
"This seizure was much longer, and it seemed to take forever for them to start working on Eric in the emergency room," Mr. Liebo said. "It was hell. We thought it was going to be just another bad evening, never that this would happen."
Since that night, their marriage has been tested.
Eric was in a coma for a month, then he was in rehab in Dallas and then in Austin.
"We're in counseling to help us deal with it all," Mr. Liebo said. "But we made it through the worst, we'll make it through this."
In addition, they've filed a claim against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - which provides doctors with immunizations - relating to the immunization Eric received at his pediatrician's office when he was a year old.
"He deserves to have his life back, but since that's not going to happen, he deserves to have the best life he can," Mr. Liebo said. "We can't afford the best places in the country, but maybe we can some how give that to him."
Though extremely rare, the federal government does receive 10,000 to 12,000 reports a year of people with some type of adverse reaction to various immunizations, according to the National Vaccine Information Center in Virginia. So far, the government settled on about 1,000 claims under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, said center director and co-founder Kathi Williams.
Because Eric's first seizure occurred a few days after the allotted time frame for automatic compensation, and the government disputes the claim, they must find a doctor to review his 4,000 pages of medical records and testify that there is no other reasonable cause for his seizures, Brian Arnold, the family's lawyer, said.
"The record is so voluminous, a doctor's going to have to spend hours plowing through it," Mr. Arnold said. "The Liebos can't afford that, so it's taking a long time, and that's frustrating."
Even if they were to win, he said, it could take years before they are compensated.
"I have another case where a little girl is brain damaged, and the government accepted it two years ago," he said. "We're still waiting. These cases are tough, I can't even look at the pictures of them as they were before. Poor Eric. He is a cute little kid, and he'll never grow up to be an adult. His body will, but his brain will never be that age."
New hope
Meanwhile, as far as Eric is concerned, the Liebos still have something to hope for. Because they've moved from Collin to Dallas counties, they had to transfer Eric to Dallas County schools and programs. Recently, they were accepted into a Dallas County MHMR program and assigned another "shared parenting" support foster home.
The purpose of the program, which grew from a need for community-based services after some state schools were closed, is to gradually move children back into their parents' lives, instead of just dropping them into the family setting without support.
A little over a week ago, the Liebos, exhausted, relieved and sad, drove Eric from their Far North Dallas apartment to the Rowlett foster home, where he will stay during the week. Though the Liebos can visit any time and he'll come home on weekends, it was still bittersweet.
"I'll really miss having him around," Mr. Liebo said.
Eventually, if all goes well with Eric and the support family, the Liebos will bring him back when they get a home of their own and get used to doing the work it takes.
At best it's a temporary fix. When he does get back home, there will still be the burden of finding after-school care and day care in the summers. And they fear that in a couple of weeks, they'll be asked to pick him up, and they'll be back to square one.
"We've been through this before," Mr. Liebo said.
-------------------------
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/
texasliving/stories/103104dnlivliebo.aff4a.html
Joking aside, accident couldn't have come at a worse time
06:48 PM CDT on Friday, October 29, 2004
By LAURA GRIFFIN / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
PLANO – For more than a decade, Jim Liebo fought for the well-being of his son Eric, who at age 4 suffered a stroke that caused brain damage.
But now Jim is fighting for himself.
This summer, the Plano father of three stumbled in his bedroom and injured his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
Now both Jim and Eric, who is still unable to speak, require full-time care.
Jim, 43, speaks with the same determination and hope about his future as he did when planning for his son.
Eric, now 15, still has the mental capacity of a toddler and can follow only the simplest of commands.
"I talked to a guy with the same [spinal cord] injury, and he's been in the chair for three years – he just gave up," Jim says. "He said, 'Man, you're so positive.' But you have to be. When you hit rock bottom, you can't go any lower than that.
"You might as well look up."
But the reality is that it can be overwhelming. And in the quiet of the night, Jim cries.
"That's when it hits me," he says.
Sometimes, says his wife, Tina, "I can't even think about it." The only way to deal with the family's heartache, she says, is to take each day as it comes – minute by minute.
She still has to work at her parents' clothing boutique, keep track of her children's school and sports activities, and keep the household running.
"I'm trying to get back to some sense of normal," she says. "You don't know how much you depend on someone until you can't do it anymore. Jim always took really good care of me, and now I have to take care of him.
"But there are times when I think there's no way I can do this. If you told me before that this is what we'd have to go through, I'd say, 'I can't do that. No way.' It was the same with Eric. But you just deal with it."
During the day, the Liebos use humor to deal with it all.
"We joke that if we didn't have bad luck, we'd have no luck at all. They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Jim says. "Well, we ought to be two of the strongest people on Earth by now." The Liebos' community of friends is "pretty shook up" by what's happened, says family friend Mike Stefani, who coached children's hockey with Jim. "You think how easily something like that can happen to anyone," Mr. Stefani says. "In the blink of an eye, your whole life can change."
A precocious son
In 1996, the Liebos were the subject of a story in The Dallas Morning News after a stroke left their precocious son mentally retarded. At the time, Eric's condition tested the limits of his family and of social services in North Texas. Though the federal government disputed the idea, the Liebos were convinced Eric's stroke was the result of seizures brought on by an immunization for mumps, measles and rubella. Injuries from immunizations are rare, but the government receives about 12,000 reports a year of people with some type of adverse reaction to various immunizations.
They applied for compensation under a federal program for vaccine injuries, but their claim was denied because Eric's seizures began a few days after the time frame allowed by the government. Additionally, no evidence linked the stroke to the vaccine. Jim vigorously appealed, hiring lawyers and medical experts – but his appeal, too, was rejected.
No matter how it happened, nothing could change the fact that their eldest son would never grow up the way they imagined.
After the story appeared, the Liebos received help from a doctor who brought Eric's volatile behavior under control with therapy and medication. They also found a "shared parenting" foster home that allows Eric to be with his family on weekends, while providing them respite during the week.
Eric is small for his age and has a hard time focusing. In a noisy place, such as a hockey arena, he is apt to occasionally scream for no reason. But his behavior has improved from the days when he did nothing but scream, moan or cry and obsessively shred all paper in the house, including wallpaper. He still needs help eating and never relearned how to use the toilet.
Though they eventually got used to life with the changed Eric, the Liebos say they never completely got over the grief of losing the brilliant, talkative little boy they once knew.
THE LIEBO FOUNDATION
The Liebos have set up the Liebo Foundation (www.liebofoundation.org) and are planning charity events such as a golf tournament and a 5K fun run that will help not only their family, but others with spinal-cord injuries.
Because of Eric's disabilities, the Liebos have experience in partnering with charities and plan now to do the same with national groups dedicated to spinal-cord injury research such as the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and the National Spinal Cord Injury Association.
"Christopher Reeve was doing so much. I was trying to get in touch with his organization when he died," Jim says. "Since this happened to me, I've thought a lot about him. So it was really depressing when he died." "I miss his voice and the things that would come out of his mouth," Tina says. "He had the cutest personality. This thing with Jim has made those feelings resurface."
Even from his wheelchair, Jim looks at Eric and mourns the milestones he's missed.
"You think about it when you see other kids his age," he says. "He'd be learning to drive now. He'd be starting to date. I wonder what our relationship would be like. When he was little, he was my best friend."
Making a difference
After Eric's stroke, Jim started, and eventually lost, a high-tech consulting business that earmarked a percentage of its proceeds to the National Stroke Association and brain injury organizations.
Although it was too late to help Eric, the Liebos wanted to make a difference for other children. And meanwhile, the Liebos did their best to make sure their other children, Zak, now 12, and Lexi, 10, led normal lives.
Jim coached their soccer and hockey teams. He also coached coaches, played hockey and managed other teams as well, making him a beloved figure in the world of kids' sports in Plano and Frisco.
Then came July 9.
Earlier this year, Jim started having fainting spells attributed by his doctors to high blood pressure. One night, on his way to bed, he started to faint. He stumbled, hitting the bedroom dresser and landing on the floor.
"I heard my neck snap," Jim says. "And I couldn't feel anything in my body. Tina woke up, and I told her to call paramedics."
An ambulance took Jim to Centennial Medical Center in Frisco. The rest of the family followed by car. When they got there, they learned that Jim's injuries were so severe that a helicopter would have to fly him to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
"It was terrifying," says Tina. "But never in my wildest dreams did I think it was going to be so catastrophic."
In the helicopter, Jim thought he was dying.
"I could see the stars, and I thought I was going to heaven," he says.
'Life-changing accident'
At Baylor, doctors told Tina that Jim's fall was a "life-changing accident" and it was unlikely her husband would ever walk again.
Still, they held out a sliver of hope. If her husband had surgery to repair his spinal cord, which was partially severed, he might have a chance at some mobility. But the operation came with risks.
"I thought, 'This can't be happening,' " Tina says. "Jim was always my rock, and here he was in ICU, and I had to make decisions for him without his help."
After the surgery and a week in the hospital, Jim moved to Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation. People there knew him because Eric had spent several weeks at the institute after his stroke. When Tina took Eric to see his father, he threw a tantrum and didn't want to go inside.
"It was like he remembered it and thought he was going back," Jim says.
After six weeks of therapy, Jim moved to a nursing home in Plano, where he spent five weeks.
Through physical therapy, Jim regained some of the movement in his arms, allowing him to feed himself – even though he can only hold a fork precariously with his thumb and forefinger. One recent morning at the nursing home, Jim walked about 150 feet down a hallway and climbed three steps using rails, relying on a walker and his therapist. It was hard: With each step, he grimaced and groaned with effort and pain.
"That was scary," he said, as he came down the last step.
The fact that Jim is able to walk at all is "a miracle," says Margie Snell, a therapist who worked with him at the nursing home.
"His spinal cord injury is not complete, which means a portion of it was severed, not the entire thing," she says. "So a few messages are still getting through."
The nursing home discharged Jim at the end of September because his health insurance included no more inpatient care.
Elation, for a while
Jim had feelings of both fear and elation about going home. He couldn't wait to spend more time with his family. But none of them knew how to take care of him, and their home had no ramps or wider doorways and showers, or lower countertops and tables – things that make it easier to get around in a wheelchair.
On his second night at home, Jim fell and lay on the floor for an hour before his wife heard him calling. Tina couldn't lift her husband, so although it was 2:30 a.m., they called a friend and asked him to come pick Jim up off the floor.
"Now I wear a cellphone on my belt all the time," Jim says. "I'm really afraid of falling and being on the floor all day. I tried to get to my knees when I fell, but I kept falling flat. It was like trying to pick up Jell-O."
Ms. Snell says Jim needs to have at least an hour a day of both physical and occupational therapy in order to progress. The Liebos' insurance will pay for only 20 days, which began in early October, Jim says.
"Any time lost," Ms. Snell says, "you can never get back."
With two days of therapy a week, he'll be finished in early December. After that, he says, he'll be on his own. He's looking to raise money to pay for it. He's looking for ways to work so he might be able to afford more therapy.
As the bills pile up, Jim becomes more stressed out about not working. "We're going to have to have more income," he says. "We can't live for long on what Tina makes. I really believe I can walk again, but I'm afraid that I'm going to have to make a choice between working to support my family and walking again."
Fighters
Slowly, Jim is regaining some of his mobility. When he tries to walk, his right leg shakes and bounces until he puts enough weight on it to settle it down. That can be difficult: Not only does he experience pain, his legs don't receive the messages his brain sends him about what to do.
"Just lifting myself up is like an out-of-body experience," he says. "It's hard to explain. My brain is saying one thing, and my body's not responding." It has given him a better understanding of what Eric's gone through. "I've always felt Eric's inside there, understanding more than it seems, but unable to respond. He's kind of trapped inside his head," Jim says. "Now I'm trapped inside my body."
But, he says, he knows that someday he'll walk again. Eric's condition and now his own have taught him that, if nothing else, he's a fighter. "What else can I do?" he says. "I can't give up. I know it's in me."
Laura Griffin is a Dallas freelance writer.
E-mail lauramgriffin@yahoo.com
This is long but explains how are children received 33 viruses
(includes the three in ones) by the time they are four years old.
I attended the CDC meeting on the 27th of October in Atlanta, Georgia. . rs. This committee makes the recommendations to the CDC NIP for vaccines and then the CDC adoptsadops their recommendations and then all the professional associates like the AAP, AAFP, etc adopt their recommendations then individual states make it law. Also, one of the members held the patent on a rotavirus vaccine and sat on the committee and voted to make it mandatory. Fishy? Anyway, it would be great if parents would share their stories with this committee. Right now, all that seems to be there was the vaccine makers and other doctors. Our children's voices need to be heard.
I was able to see the presentation on the Meningococcal Conjugate Vaccine in the afternoon. I have to say it was sickening. They want start the vaccine at age 11 year so that they will catch everyone before they go to college. Not because 11 year olds need it. Also, no study to show ll years olds are ok with this vaccine. They want to tie it to their driver's permits to make sure no one gets around it. Anyway, they had a few mothers speak at the public comment to say that they lost their children in college because they did not have this meningococal vaccine. It was so staged. They did not call me for public comment, so I went up to the mike and told them they did not call my name. Well, Mr Levin (Chairman) was not happy with me but asked me to sit down and I could speak after the next presentation. When I finally had my turn, I started with my story about my aunt, who died when I was a teenager from stepping on a rust nail. She had missed her tennus shot. She died waiting for a liver transplant. I wanted them to know that where I was at before my son's vaccine problem.
I told them my story as below:
I have a 4 year old son who was reading and writing before he turned 4 years old on April 11. He was diagnosed with an allergy to milk protein in March 2004. He was active for his age so I put him on a gfcf diet. He was doing great. On April 28, 2004 the doctor informed me that he should have received an MMR at at 12 - 15 months of age. Some how they missed this shot. He was given MMR, Polio, Hep B and DTAP on April 28, 2004. The first day he fell down a couple times. By the fourth day his leg swelled up and he told me did not feel well. He had a seizure. The doctor told me he was fine.
He started with whining and crying at silly things that never bothered him before the shot. By the 2nd week he was hiding behind furniture and growling at me. It was not all day, but a slow process. He would not let me rub his back or feet like I did before the vaccines. He would scream at me don't touch me. I noticed he was funny about going to the bathroom. He would get feces on the toilet seat and leave it there. He had never done this before the shot. The third week he was biting me and hitting me and making funny faces and laughing for no reason. He became very aggressive at times. He started to bang his head against the walk and walk in circles. To the point I had to hold him to keep him from hurting me or himself. All he could do was watch tv. His facial expression was very strange. He was withdrawn. His speech regressed. My doctor sent us to several specialists who thought I was crazy. They all said vaccines do not cause behavior problems. My husband searched the web and found some info on the MMR and mercury. I called my doctor and asked him and he said the shot did not contain mercury. I asked him to mail me the info on the shots. The Hep B showed it contained (.5 mercury) in the info sheet that comes with the shot. I called my doctor and he said the bottle said it was free of mercury. In my search and by the grace of God I found the Autism Research Institute.
My son was treated by a DAN Doctor on May 27, 2004. He was able to read and write his name within one week of treatment. They found his measles titer test to be 5.97. A high titer test is 1.34. The doctor also ran lab work and found serious bacteria infection in his gut lining and treated it. I found out the DTaP is grown on casein (milk protein) which my doctor was not aware of it. I talked to the vaccine maker and they confirmed that anyone who has a milk allergy should not have DTaP. Their insert does not clearly state this and the doctors have no idea. The vaccine maker said it is the doctor's responsibility to read the insert and ask questions. Also, confirmed with vaccine maker that there has never been any test done on MMR and DTaP given together. They are not sure what reaction could happen combine these together. They pushed the responsibility off on the doctors. My son is doing much better but we have a lot of healing work. Now, he asks me to rub his feet and back everyday. I know in my heart if he would have not received treatment, he would have been a mess for the rest of his live. I am not a parent who hates vaccines. I believed the day I took my child in to receive his vaccines that I was doing what a mother should do for her child. I believe vaccines serve a very important purpose. I now believe they have not been done responsible and doctors are giving to many doses of vaccines at one time. I am not sure if this saves insurance companies money or what the purpose is but there is no limit on how many vaccines to give on one day. Besides the fact we are vaccinating for illness that are not life threaten. My son had received a total of 33 vaccines in all by the time he turned four. I received only 12.
I also asked if they were doing any research to prescreen children before vaccines, like IgA blood work? Well, you could have heard a pin drop. No one said a word. Mr. Levin said I had asked a question that is to hard to answer at the moment and if I would sit down he would talk with me after the meeting. I said I really do not know what was difficult about my question and asked it again. You could tell he was not happy. I sat down and waited until after the meeting. We talked after the meeting. He was rude and tried to bully me as other doctors have treated me in the past. He tried to skirt around the facts and tell me that my son could have been sick with the measles even before the vaccines. His remark was, "Well, we will never know". I stood my ground and asked who he was and how he qualified to be on the board. I was polite but firm. I kept going back to my facts (I had all of my labs with me and letters from DAN doctor). He finally said he was not going to argue with me. I said my son's titer test was sky high and he ask me what a titer test was; they had just talked about titer test in the meningococcal presentation and he is a professor of Pediatrics and Medicine for the University of Colorado School Medicine. I explained I was not arguing with him but I had facts. Also, we got into a discussion about the DTaP being grown on casein. He tried to tell me that just because it is grown on casein that casein is not part of the vaccine. Ugh! So I said if grease the bottom of a pan with olive oil when you bake a cake then there is olive oil in the cake. I then told him that the vaccine maker confirmed that anyone who has an allergy to casein should not have this vaccine. Well, he did not know what to say. I also showed him the 8 ½ by 11 insert of the vaccine I had the vaccine company mail me. I explained it is not clear about the casein issue and the insert needs to be changed. He then tried to throw it off to the FDA. He said the FDA enforces the inserts. UGH! I have his email and he wants me to email him next week and he will email the FDA Robert Chen's email address. I explained to him that the vaccine makers are passing the buck onto the doctors and the CDC when I ask questions. He was not happy with this info.
The following is their schedule for next year:
February 10-11, 2005
June 29, 30, 2005
October 26-27, 2005
I was also surprised that the gov makes .75 cents off of each flu shot that is given out. Wow, big money. They make 2.75 off of each three in one. I worked in state government for seven years before I decided to stay home with my children. It has been awhile but I know this ball game well. It is sick to thing this is how my children received so many vaccines.
Please email of list if you need anymore info. Thanks.
Lynn, IgA def, G-Alpha Def,
Nathan, 2, Celiac,
Madison, 4, autism,
Steven, 15, Bipolar,
http://readthehook.com/stories/2005/04/07/coverGenerationHgIsAutismP.html
COVER- Generation Hg? Is Autism puzzle solved?
Published April 7, 2005, in issue 0414 of the Hook
BY COY BAREFOOT and ALISON BELL COY@READTHEHOOK.COM
PHOTOS BY JEN FARIELLO JEN@READTHEHOOK.COM
She was a beautiful baby with her mother's eyes. Daddy was there with the video camera when she took her first steps. She loved to play tickle monster. She was about 18 months old when she stopped smiling and stopped talking. She didn't want to play anymore. She stopped looking at people. She started waking up in the middle of the night and screaming for hours.
The pediatrician told the parents they were worrying for no reason. He said every child is different. He said, "Let's wait and see." By the time she was two, she had chronic diarrhea and drooled uncontrollably. She walked on her toes, flapped her hands, and spent much of her time staring into the middle distance. The distraught parents rushed her from one doctor to another, begging for an explanation. An answer finally came: Your child has autism. It's a genetic brain disorder. We don't know what causes it, and there is no cure. Forty hours a week of therapy might make her behavior more acceptable, but it's not going to "cure" her. You need to start looking at institutions now because the good ones have long waiting lists. The doctor sent the parents home with a video, and they sobbed as they watched children like their own daughter rocking, flapping their hands, and screaming. The narrator said, "We all have great dreams for our children. With the diagnosis of autism, the dream dies."
***
Thousands of Virginia families and millions worldwide are living through similar versions of the autism nightmare. Lanier Rossignol, a Charlottesville mother of two young boys diagnosed with autism, recalls a similar experience with her first son. "By the time he was 10 months old," says Rossignol, "he never looked at me, never responded to his name, and he was obsessed with spinning objects. I knew something was wrong, but no one believed me. Everyone said, 'He's fine, you're just imagining things.'" Seven months later, her son was diagnosed with autism. Rossignol describes how her second boy "totally regressed" when he was six months old. "He stopped responding to his name," she says. "He started hand-flapping." Twenty years ago, autism affected fewer than one in 2,000 children; now the Centers for Disease Control estimates it's one in every 166. But just as the numbers of cases are growing, so is skepticism that it's a genetic disorder.
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll "Mad as a hatter"-- the phrase originated not in Lewis Carroll's story, but in a psychiatric illness common among 19th-century hat makers that became known as Hatter's Disease. Physicians were baffled throughout the first half of the 20th century when they were confronted with an epidemic of sick babies suffering from skin rashes, poor circulation, and respiratory distress. Thousands of babies died. The illness became known as Pink Disease because the fingertips, toes, and nose turn pink.
In the mid-1950s, in a fishing village on Minamata Bay, Japan, cats started shaking and inexplicably jumping into the bay. Then the villagers got terribly sick. Some died. Babies were born with mental retardation, uncontrolled tremors, and permanent palsy. Before mercury dumped by a nearby factory was pegged as the culprit, doctors dubbed it Minamata Disease. Hatter's, Pink, Minamata, Barometer Maker's Disease-- no matter what doctors labeled the disorders, each was later conclusively found to be mercury poisoning.
"There are doctors out there telling parents they need to accept this, that there's nothing they can do. Do not listen to whoever tells you that! They are talking out of ignorance."-- Amanda Slim, a Charlottesville-area mother of a six-year-old child diagnosed with autism Slim is among the growing numbers of people who believe that mercury, well known as among the most neurotoxic substances on the planet, is the culprit in autism. To chemists, Mercury is "Hg," the only metal that is liquid at room temperature. That seemingly playful property earned it the moniker "quicksilver" from ancient Greeks. But inside the body, its effects are insidious. Hundreds of times more toxic than lead, mercury wrecks the immune system and can serve as the spark that leads to a blazing spectrum of physical and psychiatric symptoms-- some of which take months to manifest.
"If what I write in the book is all true, we have just experienced one of the largest medical catastrophes of our time, putting a generation of American children at terrible risk with possibly devastating results" says David Kirby, author of Evidence of Harm, Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, released in March by St. Martin's Press. (Kirby, a health/science contributor to the New York Times, will be speaking in Charlottesville later this month.)
Kirby's not alone in asking whether autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning. An increasing number of families, physicians, scientists, and some in Congress point to a growing body of evidence linking mercury toxicity with otherwise unexplained disorders like autism, Asperger's Syndrome, ADD, ADHD, and a host of escalating illnesses that afflict today's children in great numbers. "Autism, Asperger's, PDD, ADD, ADHD, all of that stuff I think it's all the same thing," says Nell Goddin, a Charlottesville mother of a child diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. "Until we get to a point where the labels are something other than subjective behavioral descriptions, that isn't science. That's just spinning your wheels."
The fact is that unprecedented concentrations of mercury were injected into children via vaccines beginning in the late 1980s. And the symptoms of mercury toxicity and autism are nearly identical. Intriguingly, according to Kirby's book, autism rates began falling in California in 2004 after the removal of mercury compounds from vaccines. And many parents of children already suffering with autism are celebrating the fact that a growing number of children diagnosed early are making progress undreamed of a decade ago through "heavy metal chelation," a therapy that binds a sulphur compound with heavy metals such as mercury to flush them from the body. While chelation can be dangerous, many parents swear by it and are telling the world that the mysterious puzzle of autism has been solved.
Yet there are powerful forces who aren't about to swallow that pill. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the Institutes of Medicine, the entire pharmaceutical industry, its lobbyists, and influential allies in Washington-- virtually the entire medical establishment-- stand united in opposition to the theory that mercury toxicity has something to do with autism.
"I believe that my grandson became autistic at least in part because he received vaccinations. He received nine in one day, and six of those contained mercury. He acted like any other normal child. Yet within one week he was running around flapping his arms, walking on his toes, banging his head against the wall, and he could not speak clearly anymore." Congressman Dan Burton, 2001 Mercury has been in vaccines since the 1930s in the form of a preservative called Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethylmercury. In the early 1990s Thimerosal was banned from animal vaccines because it was too toxic. In 1998, it was removed from over-the-counter products because of safety concerns.
"Current scientific evidence does not support the theory that vaccines have caused autism," the American Academy of Pediatrics announced in 2003. And yet that same year, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness wrote, "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is likely related to the autism epidemic. This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding injected Thimerosal and the sharp rise of infant exposure to this known neurotoxin."
Thimerosol is still legal for and widely used in vaccines and flu shots. But it is hardly the only way for mercury to get into human bodies. It's in our teeth. A so-called "silver" filling is at least 50 percent mercury, purportedly enough to pollute a 10-acre lake. Some studies suggest mercury vapor enters the bloodstream every time we chew or grind our teeth.
It's in the air. The EPA estimates that the nation's 1,100 coal-burning power plants spew 50 tons of mercury each year. It collects in the water, builds up in fish (as it did in Minamata, Japan), and becomes more concentrated as it moves up the food supply. It's in breast milk. According to the CDC, one in 12 childbearing women "already has unsafe blood levels of mercury," enough to cause neurological damage in her unborn children. When her six-month-old began exhibiting many of the autistic symptoms that his older brother had, Rossignol had her breast milk tested. She discovered that her baby was getting 10 times the EPA daily limit of mercury.
Generation Mercury was born in 1988, the year Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man made autism a household world (even though the character Hoffman played also had Savant Syndrome, a rare and separate disorder). That was also the year that, beginning with the Hib vaccine, several new shots were added to the vaccine schedule. Over the next few years, the number of vaccinations recommended for children under the age of two went from 8 to 20. The amount of ethylmercury injected into the bloodstreams of babies and toddlers jumped 246 percent. Within the first six months of life, a baby received 187.5 micrograms of ethylmercury, far beyond EPA safety limits. And infants don't produce the bile necessary to excrete mercury from their bodies.
It was not until 1999 that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the FDA, and the National Institutes of Health issued a joint statement "urging" vaccine manufacturers to remove Thimerosal. Despite an agreement to phase Thimerosal out of vaccines for children, existing stocks of Thimerosal-laced vaccines could still remain on shelves. Thimerosal is still present in most flu shots. It is used in the manufacturing process of a variety of pharmaceutical products. And vaccines currently being shipped overseas have high concentrations of Thimerosal.
Receiving the Hib vaccine with Thimerosal on the first day of birth is the equivalent of a 200-pound adult male consuming 1,400 cans of tuna in a single day. The analogy is not exactly fair unless the adult male stops producing enough bile to excrete the mercury. Generationrescue.org
Dr. Neal Halsey was in charge of the vaccine program at the American Academy of Pediatrics from1995 to 1999. When asked about the mercury that babies received under his watch, he told a reporter, "My first reaction was simply disbelief... what I believed, and what everybody else believed, was that [mercury] was truly a trace, a biologically insignificant amount. My honest belief is that if the labels had had the mercury content in micrograms, this would have been uncovered years ago. But the fact is, no one did the calculation."
Someone evidently did. A 1991 Merck memo obtained by the LA Times warned that six-month-old children would get a mercury dose up to 87 times higher than the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish. But whoever wrote it-- and whoever read it-- kept quiet. Over the decade that followed, the rate of autism shot up 1000 percent nationwide.
"The injection of Thimerosal into expectant mothers and newborn infants represents without a doubt a severe, major toxic exposure and is most likely causal in autism spectrum disorders."Boyd Haley, Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky, 2002 Dr. Susan Anderson is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Virginia and director of the autism program at the Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center. Does she believe autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning? "I think not," she says. "If it was, then we would be seeing a lot more of it than we do. I mean, everybody got the immunizations." Like the majority of her colleagues, Anderson believes that autism is a genetic condition that causes a disorder in brain neurochemistry and not a manifestation of heavy metal toxicity-- and that it has nothing to do with vaccines. As Anderson puts it, "Tying [the increase in autism] to the change in the vaccine schedule is wrong."
Dr. Anderson, like most pediatricians, does not see an epidemic of autism. Genetic epidemics are, after all, a scientific impossibility. While she agrees that the numbers of children diagnosed with autism, Asperger's, and pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), have climbed (an increase of 726 percent in Virginia between 1990 and 2003), she attributes most of that to better diagnostic tools.
Dr. Mary Megson disagrees. A Richmond-based developmental pediatrician, Megson specializes in biomedical approaches to the treatment of autism. "Are we just better at diagnosing [autism]?" Megson asks. "Well, you don't miss a child who's been talking and then becomes nonverbal, flaps, paces, and doesn't look you in the eye."
For most pediatricians, the fact that autism shares over 100 symptoms and characteristics with mercury poisoning [see sidebar], the fact that its incidence has increased among American children as the mercury load in vaccines has gone up, and the fact that autism was not diagnosed in the U.S. until after mercury was added to vaccines in the 1930s, are all unfortunate coincidences. They form a regrettable pattern that has led many desperate parents and some in the medical community to draw hyperbolic conclusions that can't be substantiated with, in Anderson's words, "convincing, evidence-based research."
Dr. Elizabeth Mumper is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Family Medicine at the University of Virginia and president of Advocates for Children, a pediatric clinic in Lynchburg. Mumper believes the evidence supports a connection between mercury and autism. "I have seen a bibliography of well over a thousand articles looking at Thimerosal and showing the various ways in which it's harmful," she says. "The evidence is there-- good, reliable scientific evidence. Getting physicians to look at it is another story."
Mumper regrets that few of her colleagues share her belief in the connection between autism and mercury exposure. "I've made very little inroads with my mainstream colleagues because I have not been very successful at getting them to come to meetings," says Mumper, who is speaking at one such meeting April 30. [See sidebar] Another local physician familiar with autism who asked not to be identified in this article says, "The research is there. But [physicians] won't take the time to look at it. These kids have been poisoned. I think pediatricians have been in denial for a long time. And they're in denial because they are too horrified at the possibility.
"We're looking at a generation of babies who've been poisoned due to negligence and incompetence. I can't be more clear about this: there is no hope for a child with autism today in mainstream medicine. Twenty years from now, the fact that we even debated [the autism/mercury link] will be ludicrous."
Results of one powerful study were published last month. Led by Raymond F. Palmer of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, the study, forthcoming in the quarterly Health and Place, found an association between rates of autism and mercury pollution. Every 1000 pounds of environmentally released mercury corresponded to a 61 percent increase in the rate of autism, the study showed. While the CDC, the FDA, and the American Academy of Pediatrics concede that babies and children vaccinated in the late 1980s and throughout the '90s were exposed to cumulative mercury levels far beyond what is considered safe, they still maintain that a connection between concentrations of mercury in vaccines and the epidemic rates of autism among America's youngest generation cannot be proved. In other words, according to this logic, there's no proof excessive mercury exposure can cause the symptoms of mercury poisoning.
The authors live in Albemarle County. They have a three-year-old child diagnosed with autism who has made dramatic improvements following chelation and biomedical treatments. Bell is an assistant professor of anthropology at Washington and Lee University. Barefoot's books include The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson on Leadership.
SIDEBAR- Autism Awareness Month noted locally
April 14-15, Thursday and Friday, Cavalier Inn
"Behavioral Approaches to the Education of Children with Autism," conference sponsored by the Virginia Institute of Autism. 923-8252 viaschool.org
April 19, Tuesday, New Dominion Bookshop, 5:30pm
New York Times Science/Health contributor David Kirby discusses his new book, Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. evidenceofharm.com
April 30, Saturday, Omni Hotel, 8:30am-4:45pm
"Recent Advances in the Biology of Autism," conference sponsored by the Virginia chapter of the National Autism Association. Speakers include Drs. Andrew Wakefield, Jeffrey Bradstreet, Sandra Jill James, and Elizabeth Mumper. 977-4198 naa-va.org
SIDEBAR- Evidence or coincidence?
Some of the over 100 symptoms and characteristics shared by both mercury poisoning and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Social withdrawal
Lack of eye contact
Delayed language use
Loss of speech
Hand flapping
Rocking
Toe walking
Anxiety and Irrational fears
Hypersalivation
Hypersensitivity to light, noise, touch
Uncoordination, poor motor skills
Head banging
Staring spells
Sleep difficulties
Visual impairment
Gastrointestinal disorders
Eczema, rashes
ADD and ADHD traits
Source: "Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning," Journal of Medical Hypotheses, April 2001
SIDEBAR- Mercurial data
Thimerosal is 49.6 percent ethylmercury. Ethylmercury is many times more toxic than the organic mercury that permeates our environment. Thimerosal was added to vaccines as a preservative beginning in the early 1930s and has been in use ever since.
Autism was first diagnosed in America around 1940.
In the 1990s, the number of vaccines mandated for American children under the age of two went from 8 to 20. The amount of ethylmercury received by children jumped 246 percent. Since that time, the incidence rate of autism has shot up approximately 1000 percent nationwide. A child is diagnosed with autism every 20 minutes. Rates have also skyrocketed for ADD, ADHD, speech delays, childhood diabetes, eczema, asthma, and allergies. According to the CDC, 1 in 6 children now has some type of developmental or behavioral disorder.
Lanier Rossignol with her sons, 4-year-old Isaiah and almost-2 year old Joshua (both diagnosed with autism)
The 1972 Life magazine publication of this photograph of a mother bathing her severely mercury-disabled teenage daughter woke up the world to what happened in Minamata, Japan.
W. EUGENE SMITH (1918-1978)
Julian Baumer
Nell Goddin with family: Nellie Baumer (age 4), Julian Baumer (age 6), and Chris Baumer
David Kirby, longtime health/science contributor to the New York Times, speaks in Charlottesville April 19.
Kathy Young, a resident of Albemarle County and president of the Virginia chapter of the National Autism Association, has a seven-year-old daughter diagnosed with autism. "When Anna was about 18-months old we began worrying about her speech delay. She was sick a lot too with ear infections. She had no eye contact. The doctors kept telling us the same thing: wait and see, wait and see. Two years later Anna was diagnosed with autism."
100 2nd st nw . charlottesville va 22902 . 434.295.8700 . fax 434.295.8097 >> buy HooK schwag
Contents © Copyright in the year of its publication.
We became pregnant in September 2003, after being told by a fertility specialist that it would be against all odds and only with the use of fertility drugs. I became pregnant on one tube with NO fertility drugs with our beautiful twins. We were excited to say the least and extremely surprised. During the pregnancy we opted out of all of the new testing...CVS, Amnio, genetic testing, etc. as we do not believe in abortion. We felt that the worse thing that could happen was Down Syndrome and we would graciously handle this if it were to happen...[God wanted our boys here and I knew this more than anyone]
But it didn't. You see, we had 2 perfectly healthy baby boys. Identical twins at that. [I had to have Terbutaline via IV during the latter part of my pregnancy due to contractions, had gestational diabetes which I controlled through diet, Shingles which I was told was due to the stress of a multiple pregnancy and edema and borderline pre-eclampsia at the end.]
On May 13, 2004, our twins, Steven Jr. and Samuel were born. Everything was normal. [They were born via an emergency c-section due to my quick labor. My water broke at home and I was 4 centimeters when we arrived and didn't feel any contractions.] I received an MMR shot 5 days post partum as they told me that I didn't have a titer to one of them. Being a new mom of twins, I asked if this would affect them via breast milk and was told "No." My breast milk disappeared 3 days later. [Within 24 hours of receiving the MMR shot I had bumps on the back of my throat, my lips swelled, I had difficulty breathing and felt horrible, the doctor told me to take Benadryl as it was some sort of allergic reaction that he blamed on Organic bananas. I am not allergic to ANY bananas.]
We were told that they had an allergy to milk based formula so we started the formula roller coaster. Going from one to the next. They began vomiting on Soy based formula and reflux. Prevacid caused both infants severe diarrhea and neither were fond of infant Zantac so we decided "no meds." We were told to add cereal. At one point, Sam was extremely bloated due to the cereal and Stevie has problems with constipation. At this time, we had to see a pediatric GI.
Stevie and Sammy received all of their vaccinations on schedule. [with the exception of the Hep B which they did not receive until March and April 2005] Our boys were developing somewhat slowly and we were told that it was normal for twins. They had continuous breathing issues and ongoing upper respiratory infections and slept upright in their infant carseats for the first 8 months. They also had continuous ear infections and were on a continuous round of antibiotics. We asked about tubes and were told that the ear infections weren't bad enough.
Last year, 2004, the flu scare was horrible and the previous pediatrician made sure that Stevie and Sammy received their flu vaccines, 27 days apart to be exact. On top of it, as I looked back through their records, they received between 5-6 vaccines at one time and a couple of times they were on antibiotics for ear infections. In fact, Sam was on 4 different antibiotics for the same ear infection and when we questioned the pediatrician, he stated that it was normal/common for some children. At some point in late November, the pediatrician referred us to Infants and Toddlers to have them evaluated for developmental delays.
On December 25, 2004, Sam began what I called "flailing" and Stevie started some odd behaviors as well...studying objects closely, loosing eye contact and what language he had started he had lost. Stevie also stopped eating baby food. Sam seemed more agitated. Both were exhibiting behaviors that I was not familiar with nor could I put my finger on it. Neither enjoyed being held. Nothing seemed to comfort them. They were beginning to go into their own little worlds. It was gradual and we didn't even begin putting the pieces together until...
April 28, 2005, my good friend Marion called me from PA. [Marion and Bill have no children. Marion is a retired English Professor but originally was interested in becoming a teacher for autistic children.] Marion had asked me about tuna fish during the pregnancy, Imus In the Morning and David Kirby's "Evidence of Harm?" I thought she was little bizarre at first. We then talked about Thimerosal, vaccines and autism. She had listened to our conversations about the twins and their development. She had suggested autism. I got on the internet immediately and began to do some research. I was sick to my stomach and could not believe all of the information that I found. [By the way, with many thanks to our friend Marion, the boys did NOT received their MMR vaccines.]
After our conversation on April 28, I called the pediatrician and asked him about Thimerosal containing vaccines and he assured me that they had been off the market since 1999. He also had a very defensive tone and was unhappy with my line of questioning to say the least. He went on to say that NONE of their vaccines contained Thimerosal. On May 10, my girlfriend accompanied the twins and I to their doctor's appointment. Sam was flailing (AKA:self-stimming) and when she had questioned him, he replied "That's just self-stimulation and is normal in some kids." She was irate to say the least and when she asked why, he replied, "They have Severe Global Developmental Delay." He NEVER once told my husband or I that before now. My husband and I went back May 13, 2004 for a developmental check/physical (for an upcoming MRI) and to discuss why we were not vaccinating. We questioned the pediatrician again regarding Thimerosal containing vaccines, I brought up mercury in the flu vaccines and he agreed that the 2 shots that they had received 27 days apart did indeed contain Thimerosal.
On August 10, 2005, we took the boys to see a neuropsychiatrist and she gave them the dx of autism spectrum disorder.
Our boys and my other 2 children will NEVER receive another vaccine until the vaccines are proven SAFE. We believe beyond a "shadow of a doubt" that the flu vaccines triggered our boys autism/mercury poisoning. Everyday, I can not believe all of the info regarding how unsafe vaccines truly are. It makes me sick that our government is using our children as guinea pigs and there is nothing we can do. It is disheartening to say the least. I look at my boys and feel so guilty as I had NO idea that vaccines would have ever caused them harm.
Now, we are hopping from pediatrician to DAN doc to pediatric gastroenterologist, pediatric neurologist, neuropthamologist, neuropsychiatrist, nutritionist, massage therapist, etc. etc. No matter how discouraging there seems to be a glimmer of hope. They receive services from Infants and Toddlers such as Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Special Education but it just not enough. I now make my own baby food and they are GFCF and we are doing biomedical but it is just not enough. Sam has started banging his head on the floor, though it is mild, I am sure it is a prelude to what's to come. Stevie tries to be a drill and rolls in a drill position on the floor. I think, "Will one bang his head and the other spin in circles at some point?"
Everyday, I feel so consumed by information flying across the internet and feel so bad for all of the parents who haven't got a clue. You see, I was one of those parents at one time not long ago. I hate the government for using our children for greed and power. I hate that they have such a grip on the media that the truth is yet to be told. I hate that this has happened to my children and the many others and yet many more to come. Just what kind of government do we have? When will this nightmare end? What will it take? Who decides? Why?
My daughter Ashley [born 7-20-91 and received loads of mercury tainted vaccines] has the following dx of PDD-NOS, ADHD, Severe Reading Disorder, Writing Disorder and Mathematics Disorder, a Mixed Expressive and Receptive Speech and Language Disorder, a Moderate to Severe Sensor-neural hearing loss in her left ear and is Borderline to Low Average Cognitive Functioning.
Ashley was always extremely small for her age and wore her clothes for 3 years in a row. Ashley had severe GI issues, at one time not to long ago. She was in the ER at 2 different times at age 5 for GI issues, within one year of each other. As she got older, it was so bad and so intense that she didn't want to leave the house. She has been seen by two different Pediatric GI doctors and at one time was prescribed Zantac and Hyoscyamine, which did nothing. By the way, Ashley was on Concerta for ADHD and Zoloft for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (she was picking or self mutilating herself-forehead, arms and legs to the point where it looked like cigarette burns). In a study using mice, after long term use, the mice began self mutilation due to the Concerta.
On May 9 2005, she had a physical and due to my concerns and request, the pediatrician closely observed Ashley and ordered blood work. Ashley's weight this day was 78 pounds (she had only gained 2 pounds since her last physical in July 2004.) After the physical, the ped ordered blood work. Ashley's C-Reactive Protein was >5.2 [the pediatrician was extremely concerned and called for an emergency visit to the pediatric GI.] Right away, I started Ashley on the GFCF diet plus a combination of vitamins and supplements. [Ithink that Ashley would have taken hundreds of vitamins and supplements at one time just to feel better.]
On May 25, 2005, Ashley was seen for an emergency appointment by the pediatric GI. He asked Ashley many questions regarding what her symptoms were and how bad? Ashley told the doctor that the 2 previous medications did not work for her (re: Zantac and Hyoscyamine.) We then told the doctor about the GFCF diet plus the additional supplements and vitamins. Ashley explained to him that she was feeling ALOT better since the diet and supplements. The doctor said to continue what we were doing as it was obviously working. I requested testing for Celiacs Disease but he said due to the GFCF diet the test results would NOT be accurate. On July 11, 2005, the blood work was redrawn. Her C-Reactive Protein is now <1 and that is some progress. YEAH!!!! Ashley is able to go places without running to the bathroom or rolling on the floor in extreme pain. As of October 13, 2005, Ashley weighs 93 pounds. Back in May 2005, Ashley was in a size 10/12 slim girls. Ashley turned 14 years old in July 2005. As of today, Ashley is in a size 16 juniors shirts and sizes 16 slim and 0-1 in juniors jeans.
Ashley was always extremely small for her age and wore her clothes for 3 years in a row. Ashley had severe GI issues, at one time not to long ago. She was in the ER at 2 different times at age 5 for GI issues, within one year of each other. As she got older, it was so bad and so intense that she didn't want to leave the house. She has been seen by two different Pediatric GI doctors and at one time was prescribed Zantac and Hyoscyamine, which did nothing. By the way, Ashley was on Concerta for ADHD and Zoloft for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (she was picking or self mutilating herself-forehead, arms and legs to the point where it looked like cigarette burns). In a study using mice, after long term use, the mice began self mutilation due to the Concerta.
On May 9 2005, she had a physical and due to my concerns and request, the pediatrician closely observed Ashley and ordered blood work. Ashley's weight this day was 78 pounds (she had only gained 2 pounds since her last physical in July 2004.) After the physical, the ped ordered blood work. Ashley's C-Reactive Protein was >5.2 [the pediatrician was extremely concerned and called for an emergency visit to the pediatric GI.] Right away, I started Ashley on the GFCF diet plus a combination of vitamins and supplements. [Ithink that Ashley would have taken hundreds of vitamins and supplements at one time just to feel better.]
On May 25, 2005, Ashley was seen for an emergency appointment by the pediatric GI. He asked Ashley many questions regarding what her symptoms were and how bad? Ashley told the doctor that the 2 previous medications did not work for her (re: Zantac and Hyoscyamine.) We then told the doctor about the GFCF diet plus the additional supplements and vitamins. Ashley explained to him that she was feeling ALOT better since the diet and supplements. The doctor said to continue what we were doing as it was obviously working. I requested testing for Celiacs Disease but he said due to the GFCF diet the test results would NOT be accurate. On July 11, 2005, the blood work was redrawn. Her C-Reactive Protein is now <1 and that is some progress. YEAH!!!! Ashley is able to go places without running to the bathroom or rolling on the floor in extreme pain. As of October 13, 2005, Ashley weighs 93 pounds. Back in May 2005, Ashley was in a size 10/12 slim girls. Ashley turned 14 years old in July 2005. As of today, Ashley is in a size 16 juniors shirts and sizes 16 slim and 0-1 in juniors jeans.
Ashley does not look sickly anymore and she no longer has dark circles under her eyes. She still has problems sleeping but her overall health now is great! Ashley continues to be medication-FREE and is doing wonderful in school this year. Ashley is a social butterfly this year, has great eye-contact and has begun to use sarcasm. She watches her diet and knows what makes her sick. Once in a great while, I let Ashley cheat. Ashley is now ready for chelation and that is a whole other story.
Michelle from Maryland
www.babyhomepages.net/thegillespiefamily/
Moderator and co-owner to ASD_Kids@yahoogroups.com
Michelle from Maryland
www.babyhomepages.net/thegillespiefamily/
Moderator and co-owner to ASD_Kids@yahoogroups.com
My 4-month old baby girl died back on March 9, 2006. On March 7, she received 4 vaccinations (DTP, Polio, HIB & Pneumococcal) an hour after the inoculations she had diarrhea up to the back of her neck and ran a low grade fever. The autopsy results of course said SIDS, I am riddled with the guilt of not educating myself prior to standing over her and allowing my pediatrician to administer what I now call "the vaccination cocktail of death".
I continue to pour over the information you've provided and am saddened at the government's willingness to push these vaccinations knowing the risks- I am baffled that pediatricians continue to push these vaccinations 4 at a time! Recently the hospital that I gave birth at has started educating women on the risks of SIDS, I want to SCREAM at them- If you're going to educate them on SIDS, why not educate them on the risks of vaccinating?
Patty Williams-Difiglia
I've attached a picture of our baby angel, A CRIME WAS COMMITTED HERE...MY DAUGHTER PAID WITH HER LIFE!
http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/viewarticle.asp?id=294055
DARING SIMON MAKES NO BONES ABOUT X-RAY FACTOR
Published on Friday, October 21st 2005
By SOPHIE DOUGHTY
A BOY from Heddon is living with a rare condition that stops him from feeling any pain. In his short life, Simon Grant, (13), has suffered numerous broken bones, but felt nothing but mild discomfort. His condition has made him a fearless thrill-seeker, competing in all kinds of dangerous sports. Yet, doctors fear the biggest risk to his health could be radiation, as Simon has had over 100 X-rays.
Simon was a normal healthy baby until he received his inoculations when he was eight weeks old. He now suffers from a catalogue of conditions, including mild autism, a poor immune system, low muscle tone and a severe sensory dysfunction which means he feels no pain. Simon was one of the very first babies to be vaccinated after the Hib injection was brought forward, and given at two months. His appointment was at 9am on the first Monday that the vaccine was given alongside other routine jabs. While no link has ever been proven between his illnesses and the injections, his mother Jan noticed her baby change that very night. "As a mother you just know," she said. "But I'm not bitter; those injections are given for the right reasons."
Jan's time and energy is now devoted to making Simon's life as happy and normal as possible, but this is no easy task. While most young boys come home with the odd scratch or bruise, Simon has been known to break bones while out playing. But unless somebody has seen him fall, his parents have no idea that he is injured. "We never quite know where he is," said Jan. "He is always climbing trees, and jumping out of them. "He comes in with massive scratches and bruises but does not remember how he did them."
And here lies Simon's problem. Because he does not associate injury with pain, he continues to take bigger and bigger risks. Jan recalls one time when her son came in with a broken jaw. She had no idea that he had such a serious injury until he said: "Can I have soup for my tea because my teeth don't fit?" An astounded doctor later told Jan he had seen rugby players with similar injuries crying like babies. Jan recalls one occasion when her son climbed to the top of a 40ft tree and she shouted at him to come down. And come down he did, leaping from the tree and landing in front of a group of very bemused ramblers.
Then there was the time at nursery when Simon was recovering from one of his many broken arms – Jan received a panic-stricken phone call from staff saying he had removed his cast while their backs were turned. While Simon's antics can often raise a laugh, his condition is really no joke. Although he has been allowed to attend the mainstream high school in Ponteland he has two carers watching him every minute of the day, to ensure he does not hurt himself or anybody else.
His poor immune system means he also suffers from pneumonia regularly. However, Simon is anything but a sickly child. He loves all countryside sports, including horse riding, motor bike trials, Cumberland wrestling, rugby and shooting. And the Grants' farmhouse is filled with the rosettes and trophies he and his older brother, Christopher, have won. Anyone who has seen him riding one of his ponies around a cross-country course, or astride a motor cycle, careering up a bank, would have no clue to the ailments he suffers. Instead of stifling his spirit, his illnesses have only made him stronger. And the youngster has grown into a happy, outgoing child, with boundless energy and a real love of the outdoors.
Although Simon never gets scared, his mum does. Jan often finds herself hiding her eyes and crossing her fingers during some of his daredevil antics. For her Simon's lifestyle can be both terrifying and exhausting, but she has no intention of wrapping him up in cotton wool. "People think I must be crackers," she said. "I do worry about him, but I can either let him live his life and do what makes him happy, or let him become a couch potato. "The things he does are what makes him so strong."
Seven years ago, my son was diagnosed with autism.
Can I tell you how it feels, can I relive those earlier years when hell ran through my blood?
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.
Today I choose not to talk about it so much. Not sure why. Maybe it is too painful. Maybe it is because I am healing.
My very first reaction to the diagnosis was great sadness. I wasn’t in denial or even shocked. I highly suspected it, but I wanted to be wrong. I wanted someone to say, he’s fine but even when those words come from a close friend I didn’t believe them.
When the words “autistic” finally came from a board of “professionals”, it hit me really hard.
However, I immediately got busy. I began reading everything I could get my hands on about autism. I had just gotten my first computer and I was .com crazy.
Believe it or not there wasn’t a whole lot of information on autism 7 years ago.
Today the internet is inundated with information, resources and strategies.
In fact it can be quite confusing.
One of the very first things I found on the internet that intrigued me was an article about Lyn Redwood.
Lyn was a nurse practitioner whose son was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder in 1999.
Ms Redwood recognized her son was expressing characteristics similar to mercury poisoning. While trying to figure out where he may have been exposed to mercury she came across an unknown ingredient used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines, thimerosal. She was shocked to learn thimerosal is actually a mercury derivative. After calculating the level of mercury her son received from multiple vaccines, Lyn discovered his exposure levels were 125 times more than the EPA Federal Safety guidelines.
(Lyn Redwood has since founded SAFE Minds and has played a very instrumental role in exposing some truths)
Unlike many parents, who first resist this notion, I knew right away with all my heart and soul, it was vaccines that threw my normal baby into autism. He wasn’t BORN with autism.
I do not believe vaccines are the only reason our children are so sick. I can name many things that chip away at our youth’s immune system, starting in the womb. However, vaccines are the big bang. They are a direct hit, the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
The symptoms of mercury poisoning and the symptoms my son was expressing were all too similar.
My son was a typical toddler, walking and talking on time, meeting all his milestones.
He was a social, fun and very interactive little boy.
Autism did not show it’’s ugly head till after a visit to the pediatrician’s office. I took him in because we were concerned about his congestion and fever. While we were at the doctors I learned he was behind on his recommended vaccine schedule. They injected my already sick child with 6 vaccines and it was then our world began to change. On that day, my son received 38% more mercury than the EPA allows for an average size man. My baby was only 30 lbs.
Thimerosal was causing alarms to go off to a small group of professionals but not too many people were really listening. The thought was, how could our government allow this to happen? Isn’t the FDA in charge of regulating medicines and vaccines? And how about the CDC, the Center for Disease Control? They certainly must have the expertise and integrity to protect the American people.
(Yeah right, do the words DES, Vioxx or Agent Orange ring a bell? )
After continuous digging I began to hear about the MMR vaccine and it’s possible link to autism as well.
It seems people in England were claiming their children became autistic after their MMR shot. (The MMR is a multi dose vaccine that contains the live measles, mumps and rubella viruses. It does not contain thimerosal ) .
Doctor Andrew Wakefield, a gastro-intestinalogist from The Royal Free Hospital in London was one of the few listening. He believed the parents and began doing scopes on a small group of children. What he found was vaccine strain measles in the guts of these kids.
Wakefield never said the MMR vaccine causes autism. What he wanted was a further investigation into the possible link.
The hospital refused and Dr Wakefield was eventually dismissed from his position.
Wow, I thought, this is just too much. There has got to be more to this.
Why is a once highly respected doctor now being ignored by his colleagues?
At the time, I joined efforts with The Autism Autoimmunity Project. They were the first non profit autism group to bring vaccines to the limelight. They hosted an event with Dr Wakefield and Dr. Jeff Bradstreet of Florida.
There were over 600 parents in attendance and sitting amongst the crowd…..ONE pediatrician.
The medical field simply was not interested.
It was at that point on, I decided to do what ever I could to learn more about autism and do something about it. My doctor certainly wasn’t trying to figure it out.
I dug deeper. It was then when I discovered things like HOT LOTS, vaccines that are taken off the market due to high rates of negative reactions and/or death. I investigated further into vaccine ingredients to learn vaccines can contain aluminum, MSG and formaldehyde. I researched the process and cultivation of vaccines to find they use products such as green monkey kidney cells and chick embryos. Some vaccines include fetal bovine serum and human fetal tissue. How come this was never revealed to me at the pediatrician’s office? I certainly would have thought twice about injecting these byproducts into my baby.
I researched even further into the BUSINESS of vaccine making and how the pharmaceutical companies were lying in bed with many of our government officials responsible for mandating vaccines. This surely was a conflict of interest, I thought.
I was so eager and full of fire to tell everyone what I had discovered.
Wait till people hear this, I thought. There will be an uprising. There will be a revolution.
The people will scream in the streets, the parents will demand retribution. The doctors will cry “Mutiny”
There was no coup d’ etat, however. There was no reformation but there were many crucifixions.
We were met with much resistance. Most parents thought it was an insane theory and pediatricians simply refused to listen.
The handful of medical professionals and researchers exploring the vaccine link were fired, denied grants, threatened, ridiculed or put under criminal investigation.
It became risky business to stick up for the families proclaiming their children were perfectly normal until a routine vaccination was administered.
The small, group of convinced parents were also facing turmoil. Besides losing a child to autism, we were facing an angry mob of nay-sayers.
I had been thrown out of doctors offices, hung up on and even kicked out of an autism support group!
Imagine that! So much for support, huh?
Doing my homework and bringing it to the attention of others caused a lot of animosity towards me. After all the doctors were telling the parents they had no idea what caused autism and their was nothing they could do about it., Then a tall, wiry, fired up, redhead comes along telling them it is the vaccines and YES there are treatments that can help.
“Get this lunatic out of here”, they whispered among themselves.
“Ok, Ok”, I thought,” These moms don’t know me” I said to myself. “Of course they are going to trust their doctors over me. I scare them, I question them, I rattle their faith. But my family and friends; they love me, they know I am intelligent, they will understand and embrace my discoveries”.
Well, so I thought.
My friends stopped calling, my siblings made fun of me, avoiding my phone calls, emails and invitations.
My parents shook their heads and dismissed my convictions. My only allies were strangers I met on line in yahoo groups.
While the rest of the world slept, we mothers, fathers, and grandparents were up all night, seeking answers and offering hope.
And then…….. the homeopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths and yes even some medical doctors began to pay attention.
There are just too many of us now. Our children who were once 1 in 10,000 became 1 in 166.
Healing takes time and ours has begun.
People are waking up. Autism is receiving more and more media coverage. As Congressman and Senators experience autism within their own families, they are now taking a more serious and perhaps unbiased approach to seeking truth and justice. The medical profession is experiencing a growth in alternative and/ or holistic treatments. Parents are questioning vaccination, once considered a sacred cow.
As far as me and my family?
Well my son, has made miraculous strides. He was once non verbal, had no eye contact, or social interaction. He walked on his toes, flapped his hands, and often ran back and forth screeching.
He had night sweats, night terrors and panic attacks. He covered his ears and screamed at the sight and sound of a fly. He had unusual fears yet was unconcerned about climbing high places or just wandering off. I can’t tell you how many times we lost him. Those heart pounding, breath taking moments where you freeze in time, not knowing where to look first; the bottom of the pool or the 4 lane highway?
Those days are gone.
My other children and I spend more time together. No more therapy visits 5 times a week. Mommy is no longer lost in autism books, articles and websites. I am no longer missing at meetings, lectures or conventions. Instead I am tucking them in and reading them stories.
Relationships are beginning to repair. New friends are being made.
My marriage is healing. (80% of marriages with special needs children ends in a divorce) We are finding more time to enjoy each other, respect each other’s roles and have reason to rejoice. The financial problems of having a sick child still linger above our heads, but we are now treading water instead of completely drowning.
So why am I now spending the majority of my evening at the computer typing, while my husband and kids whimper around me wanting to know what I am doing?
Because, this week marks a monumental time for us.
On Monday, June 11th, The US Court of Federal Claims started proceedings into the first vaccine/autism case. Michele Cedillo, a 12 year old girl will go down in history as the first autistic child whose parents stood up against the Secretary of Health and Human Services claiming vaccines are the cause of her injuries.
Since 1999, more than 4,800 families have filed claims with the government alleging their child’s autism was caused by a vaccine. Thimerosal, the mercury preservative and the MMR vaccine will be viewed intensely
The autism world, the anti vaccine groups, vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and the US government will all be watching closely.
I have received numerous phone calls and emails on this issue. I have even been asked if I knew about it. Of course I knew about it but it is something I have a hard time discussing. I have remained quiet till now.
I had to do it in a personal way. I could not simply send out an email about this trial, when it meant so much to me.
If you are interested, here is a link in which you can get daily access and transcripts of the hearing.
ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/index.html
Have I been listening? Well, NO!!!
Quite frankly there is nothing that can be said that I have not already heard.
I lost days, nights and years researching the facts. I paid the gut wrenching price of swallowing the truth. I have already vomited from the lies and tactics the vaccine pushers use.
I have already been engulfed in rage because of the unjust behavior of some government officials.
I have already cried a river of tears on account of the unfair, inhumane ways our kids and their families have been treated.
I have already heard the wretched pleas for deliverance and I have already seen the faces of ignorance and complacency.
I have had to take everything I once had faith in and twist it inside out and upside down.
I have had to look dead straight into a mirror of human shame.
Perhaps the truth will finally be revealed or perhaps we will be told to go back to the sand pits and bury our heads, for the government has spoken.
I won’t be listening however, I am too busy healing and praying for the families.
Dotty Scalco
dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-ed_sunltrs_11110nov11,0,891228.story
dailypress.com
Vaccine exemption
November 11, 2007
Reference "Advancing the Issue: Vaccines," Oct. 18: Our daughter Anna Cogliandro, now age 20, is in a wheelchair due to her MMR vaccine at age 15 months. I applaud mothers who use their own common sense in protecting their children from vaccine-related damage, no matter what exemption is necessary.
In Virginia the issue of religious exemption was taken to the state Supreme Court by a Virginia Beach resident, Waleen James. She chose natural health care for her grandson and fought it in court. The court ruled that if it was a strong personal belief that vaccinations could do harm to the child then it could be considered a religious belief and a parent did not have to belong to an organized church that does not practice medical intervention to submit the "religious exemption."
Don't fall for the medical rhetoric. A loving, caring, well-informed parent makes the wisest choices for their children. Find out what's in the vaccines and how they work, independent of those who are selling them. Ask for the insert information that lists warnings and possible reactions before you make that decision. I wish I had.
Take it from someone who's been through a parent's worst nightmare. If a child suffers injury, the parent and family will be the ones responsible for the care of that child, not the medical professionals or drug manufacturers.
Sanny and Colette Cogliandro
Chesapeake
Copyright © 2007, Newport News, Va., Daily Press
Here are the Gardasil girls...don't be one less...http://www.sanevax.org/victims/memorial.shtml
I continue to pour over the information you've provided and am saddened at the government's willingness to push these vaccinations knowing the risks- I am baffled that pediatricians continue to push these vaccinations 4 at a time! Recently the hospital that I gave birth at has started educating women on the risks of SIDS, I want to SCREAM at them- If you're going to educate them on SIDS, why not educate them on the risks of vaccinating?
Patty Williams-Difiglia
I've attached a picture of our baby angel, A CRIME WAS COMMITTED HERE...MY DAUGHTER PAID WITH HER LIFE!
http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/viewarticle.asp?id=294055
DARING SIMON MAKES NO BONES ABOUT X-RAY FACTOR
Published on Friday, October 21st 2005
By SOPHIE DOUGHTY
A BOY from Heddon is living with a rare condition that stops him from feeling any pain. In his short life, Simon Grant, (13), has suffered numerous broken bones, but felt nothing but mild discomfort. His condition has made him a fearless thrill-seeker, competing in all kinds of dangerous sports. Yet, doctors fear the biggest risk to his health could be radiation, as Simon has had over 100 X-rays.
Simon was a normal healthy baby until he received his inoculations when he was eight weeks old. He now suffers from a catalogue of conditions, including mild autism, a poor immune system, low muscle tone and a severe sensory dysfunction which means he feels no pain. Simon was one of the very first babies to be vaccinated after the Hib injection was brought forward, and given at two months. His appointment was at 9am on the first Monday that the vaccine was given alongside other routine jabs. While no link has ever been proven between his illnesses and the injections, his mother Jan noticed her baby change that very night. "As a mother you just know," she said. "But I'm not bitter; those injections are given for the right reasons."
Jan's time and energy is now devoted to making Simon's life as happy and normal as possible, but this is no easy task. While most young boys come home with the odd scratch or bruise, Simon has been known to break bones while out playing. But unless somebody has seen him fall, his parents have no idea that he is injured. "We never quite know where he is," said Jan. "He is always climbing trees, and jumping out of them. "He comes in with massive scratches and bruises but does not remember how he did them."
And here lies Simon's problem. Because he does not associate injury with pain, he continues to take bigger and bigger risks. Jan recalls one time when her son came in with a broken jaw. She had no idea that he had such a serious injury until he said: "Can I have soup for my tea because my teeth don't fit?" An astounded doctor later told Jan he had seen rugby players with similar injuries crying like babies. Jan recalls one occasion when her son climbed to the top of a 40ft tree and she shouted at him to come down. And come down he did, leaping from the tree and landing in front of a group of very bemused ramblers.
Then there was the time at nursery when Simon was recovering from one of his many broken arms – Jan received a panic-stricken phone call from staff saying he had removed his cast while their backs were turned. While Simon's antics can often raise a laugh, his condition is really no joke. Although he has been allowed to attend the mainstream high school in Ponteland he has two carers watching him every minute of the day, to ensure he does not hurt himself or anybody else.
His poor immune system means he also suffers from pneumonia regularly. However, Simon is anything but a sickly child. He loves all countryside sports, including horse riding, motor bike trials, Cumberland wrestling, rugby and shooting. And the Grants' farmhouse is filled with the rosettes and trophies he and his older brother, Christopher, have won. Anyone who has seen him riding one of his ponies around a cross-country course, or astride a motor cycle, careering up a bank, would have no clue to the ailments he suffers. Instead of stifling his spirit, his illnesses have only made him stronger. And the youngster has grown into a happy, outgoing child, with boundless energy and a real love of the outdoors.
Although Simon never gets scared, his mum does. Jan often finds herself hiding her eyes and crossing her fingers during some of his daredevil antics. For her Simon's lifestyle can be both terrifying and exhausting, but she has no intention of wrapping him up in cotton wool. "People think I must be crackers," she said. "I do worry about him, but I can either let him live his life and do what makes him happy, or let him become a couch potato. "The things he does are what makes him so strong."
Seven years ago, my son was diagnosed with autism.
Can I tell you how it feels, can I relive those earlier years when hell ran through my blood?
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.
Today I choose not to talk about it so much. Not sure why. Maybe it is too painful. Maybe it is because I am healing.
My very first reaction to the diagnosis was great sadness. I wasn’t in denial or even shocked. I highly suspected it, but I wanted to be wrong. I wanted someone to say, he’s fine but even when those words come from a close friend I didn’t believe them.
When the words “autistic” finally came from a board of “professionals”, it hit me really hard.
However, I immediately got busy. I began reading everything I could get my hands on about autism. I had just gotten my first computer and I was .com crazy.
Believe it or not there wasn’t a whole lot of information on autism 7 years ago.
Today the internet is inundated with information, resources and strategies.
In fact it can be quite confusing.
One of the very first things I found on the internet that intrigued me was an article about Lyn Redwood.
Lyn was a nurse practitioner whose son was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder in 1999.
Ms Redwood recognized her son was expressing characteristics similar to mercury poisoning. While trying to figure out where he may have been exposed to mercury she came across an unknown ingredient used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines, thimerosal. She was shocked to learn thimerosal is actually a mercury derivative. After calculating the level of mercury her son received from multiple vaccines, Lyn discovered his exposure levels were 125 times more than the EPA Federal Safety guidelines.
(Lyn Redwood has since founded SAFE Minds and has played a very instrumental role in exposing some truths)
Unlike many parents, who first resist this notion, I knew right away with all my heart and soul, it was vaccines that threw my normal baby into autism. He wasn’t BORN with autism.
I do not believe vaccines are the only reason our children are so sick. I can name many things that chip away at our youth’s immune system, starting in the womb. However, vaccines are the big bang. They are a direct hit, the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
The symptoms of mercury poisoning and the symptoms my son was expressing were all too similar.
My son was a typical toddler, walking and talking on time, meeting all his milestones.
He was a social, fun and very interactive little boy.
Autism did not show it’’s ugly head till after a visit to the pediatrician’s office. I took him in because we were concerned about his congestion and fever. While we were at the doctors I learned he was behind on his recommended vaccine schedule. They injected my already sick child with 6 vaccines and it was then our world began to change. On that day, my son received 38% more mercury than the EPA allows for an average size man. My baby was only 30 lbs.
Thimerosal was causing alarms to go off to a small group of professionals but not too many people were really listening. The thought was, how could our government allow this to happen? Isn’t the FDA in charge of regulating medicines and vaccines? And how about the CDC, the Center for Disease Control? They certainly must have the expertise and integrity to protect the American people.
(Yeah right, do the words DES, Vioxx or Agent Orange ring a bell? )
After continuous digging I began to hear about the MMR vaccine and it’s possible link to autism as well.
It seems people in England were claiming their children became autistic after their MMR shot. (The MMR is a multi dose vaccine that contains the live measles, mumps and rubella viruses. It does not contain thimerosal ) .
Doctor Andrew Wakefield, a gastro-intestinalogist from The Royal Free Hospital in London was one of the few listening. He believed the parents and began doing scopes on a small group of children. What he found was vaccine strain measles in the guts of these kids.
Wakefield never said the MMR vaccine causes autism. What he wanted was a further investigation into the possible link.
The hospital refused and Dr Wakefield was eventually dismissed from his position.
Wow, I thought, this is just too much. There has got to be more to this.
Why is a once highly respected doctor now being ignored by his colleagues?
At the time, I joined efforts with The Autism Autoimmunity Project. They were the first non profit autism group to bring vaccines to the limelight. They hosted an event with Dr Wakefield and Dr. Jeff Bradstreet of Florida.
There were over 600 parents in attendance and sitting amongst the crowd…..ONE pediatrician.
The medical field simply was not interested.
It was at that point on, I decided to do what ever I could to learn more about autism and do something about it. My doctor certainly wasn’t trying to figure it out.
I dug deeper. It was then when I discovered things like HOT LOTS, vaccines that are taken off the market due to high rates of negative reactions and/or death. I investigated further into vaccine ingredients to learn vaccines can contain aluminum, MSG and formaldehyde. I researched the process and cultivation of vaccines to find they use products such as green monkey kidney cells and chick embryos. Some vaccines include fetal bovine serum and human fetal tissue. How come this was never revealed to me at the pediatrician’s office? I certainly would have thought twice about injecting these byproducts into my baby.
I researched even further into the BUSINESS of vaccine making and how the pharmaceutical companies were lying in bed with many of our government officials responsible for mandating vaccines. This surely was a conflict of interest, I thought.
I was so eager and full of fire to tell everyone what I had discovered.
Wait till people hear this, I thought. There will be an uprising. There will be a revolution.
The people will scream in the streets, the parents will demand retribution. The doctors will cry “Mutiny”
There was no coup d’ etat, however. There was no reformation but there were many crucifixions.
We were met with much resistance. Most parents thought it was an insane theory and pediatricians simply refused to listen.
The handful of medical professionals and researchers exploring the vaccine link were fired, denied grants, threatened, ridiculed or put under criminal investigation.
It became risky business to stick up for the families proclaiming their children were perfectly normal until a routine vaccination was administered.
The small, group of convinced parents were also facing turmoil. Besides losing a child to autism, we were facing an angry mob of nay-sayers.
I had been thrown out of doctors offices, hung up on and even kicked out of an autism support group!
Imagine that! So much for support, huh?
Doing my homework and bringing it to the attention of others caused a lot of animosity towards me. After all the doctors were telling the parents they had no idea what caused autism and their was nothing they could do about it., Then a tall, wiry, fired up, redhead comes along telling them it is the vaccines and YES there are treatments that can help.
“Get this lunatic out of here”, they whispered among themselves.
“Ok, Ok”, I thought,” These moms don’t know me” I said to myself. “Of course they are going to trust their doctors over me. I scare them, I question them, I rattle their faith. But my family and friends; they love me, they know I am intelligent, they will understand and embrace my discoveries”.
Well, so I thought.
My friends stopped calling, my siblings made fun of me, avoiding my phone calls, emails and invitations.
My parents shook their heads and dismissed my convictions. My only allies were strangers I met on line in yahoo groups.
While the rest of the world slept, we mothers, fathers, and grandparents were up all night, seeking answers and offering hope.
And then…….. the homeopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths and yes even some medical doctors began to pay attention.
There are just too many of us now. Our children who were once 1 in 10,000 became 1 in 166.
Healing takes time and ours has begun.
People are waking up. Autism is receiving more and more media coverage. As Congressman and Senators experience autism within their own families, they are now taking a more serious and perhaps unbiased approach to seeking truth and justice. The medical profession is experiencing a growth in alternative and/ or holistic treatments. Parents are questioning vaccination, once considered a sacred cow.
As far as me and my family?
Well my son, has made miraculous strides. He was once non verbal, had no eye contact, or social interaction. He walked on his toes, flapped his hands, and often ran back and forth screeching.
He had night sweats, night terrors and panic attacks. He covered his ears and screamed at the sight and sound of a fly. He had unusual fears yet was unconcerned about climbing high places or just wandering off. I can’t tell you how many times we lost him. Those heart pounding, breath taking moments where you freeze in time, not knowing where to look first; the bottom of the pool or the 4 lane highway?
Those days are gone.
My other children and I spend more time together. No more therapy visits 5 times a week. Mommy is no longer lost in autism books, articles and websites. I am no longer missing at meetings, lectures or conventions. Instead I am tucking them in and reading them stories.
Relationships are beginning to repair. New friends are being made.
My marriage is healing. (80% of marriages with special needs children ends in a divorce) We are finding more time to enjoy each other, respect each other’s roles and have reason to rejoice. The financial problems of having a sick child still linger above our heads, but we are now treading water instead of completely drowning.
So why am I now spending the majority of my evening at the computer typing, while my husband and kids whimper around me wanting to know what I am doing?
Because, this week marks a monumental time for us.
On Monday, June 11th, The US Court of Federal Claims started proceedings into the first vaccine/autism case. Michele Cedillo, a 12 year old girl will go down in history as the first autistic child whose parents stood up against the Secretary of Health and Human Services claiming vaccines are the cause of her injuries.
Since 1999, more than 4,800 families have filed claims with the government alleging their child’s autism was caused by a vaccine. Thimerosal, the mercury preservative and the MMR vaccine will be viewed intensely
The autism world, the anti vaccine groups, vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and the US government will all be watching closely.
I have received numerous phone calls and emails on this issue. I have even been asked if I knew about it. Of course I knew about it but it is something I have a hard time discussing. I have remained quiet till now.
I had to do it in a personal way. I could not simply send out an email about this trial, when it meant so much to me.
If you are interested, here is a link in which you can get daily access and transcripts of the hearing.
ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/index.html
Have I been listening? Well, NO!!!
Quite frankly there is nothing that can be said that I have not already heard.
I lost days, nights and years researching the facts. I paid the gut wrenching price of swallowing the truth. I have already vomited from the lies and tactics the vaccine pushers use.
I have already been engulfed in rage because of the unjust behavior of some government officials.
I have already cried a river of tears on account of the unfair, inhumane ways our kids and their families have been treated.
I have already heard the wretched pleas for deliverance and I have already seen the faces of ignorance and complacency.
I have had to take everything I once had faith in and twist it inside out and upside down.
I have had to look dead straight into a mirror of human shame.
Perhaps the truth will finally be revealed or perhaps we will be told to go back to the sand pits and bury our heads, for the government has spoken.
I won’t be listening however, I am too busy healing and praying for the families.
Dotty Scalco
dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-ed_sunltrs_11110nov11,0,891228.story
dailypress.com
Vaccine exemption
November 11, 2007
Reference "Advancing the Issue: Vaccines," Oct. 18: Our daughter Anna Cogliandro, now age 20, is in a wheelchair due to her MMR vaccine at age 15 months. I applaud mothers who use their own common sense in protecting their children from vaccine-related damage, no matter what exemption is necessary.
In Virginia the issue of religious exemption was taken to the state Supreme Court by a Virginia Beach resident, Waleen James. She chose natural health care for her grandson and fought it in court. The court ruled that if it was a strong personal belief that vaccinations could do harm to the child then it could be considered a religious belief and a parent did not have to belong to an organized church that does not practice medical intervention to submit the "religious exemption."
Don't fall for the medical rhetoric. A loving, caring, well-informed parent makes the wisest choices for their children. Find out what's in the vaccines and how they work, independent of those who are selling them. Ask for the insert information that lists warnings and possible reactions before you make that decision. I wish I had.
Take it from someone who's been through a parent's worst nightmare. If a child suffers injury, the parent and family will be the ones responsible for the care of that child, not the medical professionals or drug manufacturers.
Sanny and Colette Cogliandro
Chesapeake
Copyright © 2007, Newport News, Va., Daily Press
Here are the Gardasil girls...don't be one less...http://www.sanevax.org/victims/memorial.shtml
