This article is not the one I was going to submit for October. That article, already written, is being pushed back a month because of something I heard on the news yesterday, something that is very personal to me. When I tell you the story, I’ll ask you to make your own decision, hoping I’ve convinced you to join the fight to protect your family and everyone else.
The piece you are reading was published shortly after the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. While reading a lengthy online piece by a rabbi whose writing I am very fond of, my brain made a connection. The article said that most Jews misinterpret what Yom Kippur is all about; they say it is repenting for one’s sins. The rabbi says it is not. It is teshuvah, return, return to being a better person. And how is that done? In part, by doing good things. Got it? With me so far? I’m going with the religious reference because so much of the teachings in the Abrahamic religions are common to us all.
The announcement that several more children had died of measles facilitated the connection. Now comes the story. When it came to childhood diseases, I got the prize. I had them all: Mumps, German Measles, Whooping Cough, some awful virus that brought with it a 106-degree fever and periods of delirium, and Measles. The mumps were a trip. At the back of each jawbone, and under it, there were swollen glands that looked like I was a kangaroo carrying a joey in a pouch. Swallowing was near impossible.
In terms of impact on the body, the whooping cough was the worst. When I think about it, I can conjure up a breathlessness from the cough that made me feel like I was being turned inside out by someone who had reached down my throat, grabbed my insides, and was pulling them up through my mouth. The cough comes from deep in the chest and feels like it will never stop. The power of the cough wracks the body. It bathes you in sweat. After a few rounds of coughing, the patient is left exhausted—and it goes on for days. It is flat-out frightening for the child, and equally so for the parent who is helpless to help. I remember being given a cough medicine called Elixir of Terpenhydrate with Codeine. It was like drinking fire water. It did not help.
But Measles was the clear winner. I missed an entire month of school. I was in quarantine for 32 days. It would be easier to tell you where I did not have measles than where I did. They were everywhere, inside and out. I had measles in my scalp and in my eyes. I had measles in my ears. My back was coated; it was the itch I couldn’t reach to scratch. My intestinal lining was coated with Measles. That was a misery. While my body was a canvas painted with the Measles rash, the canvas could be coated with Calamine Lotion. The smell is permanently embedded in my memory cells, as is the feeling of it drying and cracking all over my body. But you can’t drink Calamine Lotion, or shouldn’t. And while the Calamine gave a short, cooling respite as my mother applied it, the itching became a torture. It doesn’t stop. I said I couldn’t reach to scratch, but I was constantly being told not to because the scratching that broke the skin would likely leave permanent scars, so I cheated. I picked off the cracked pieces of that pink lotion in the hopes that it would give me a little relief from what was under it. It did not. But that’s only the outside. The measles that weren’t visible, that were inside, weren’t treatable. I lived on soup. Nothing else would stay down. I had this sensation that drove me crazy. I felt like I had to scratch my insides from the throat down to my stomach. Yes, I could scratch the location of the spot from the outside. That gave absolutely no relief from what was going on inside.
Before I began writing this, I had been watching the news coverage of the children’s deaths from Measles in Texas and Pennsylvania. They had not been vaccinated. A cloud overtook my face; my mood darkened. Why on earth was I not vaccinated? My entire family was populated with medical personnel—my father, his two brothers, his brother-in-law, and some of my cousins who were either entering med school or aiming to. How could they have let this happen? But a mistake seemed unlikely, so, hoping AI wouldn’t get me, I went online to find out when the Measles vaccine became available. The answer was 1963. This is a 1957 story. There was no vaccine for Measles yet, or for the other illnesses that had assailed me.
So, as the narrator in Winnie the Pooh says, we come to the end of it. I am not going to go on a statistic-spewing rant about effectiveness, herd immunity, and autism debunking research. I am only going to ask you to read what I have written again. If you are old enough and had Measles, or you knew others who had it, if your children or grandchildren have not been vaccinated, ask yourself this: as a parent or grandparent, even aunt, uncle, or cousin, don’t you have a familial responsibility to do whatever you can to protect your family from the misery I have described, a misery that can lead to death? You won’t get the answer from me, mostly because my opinion would violate the regs attached to writing for Viewpoint. The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the winds, along with the virus. Find it.
Columnist and author Bill Gralnick was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He recently finished a humorous memoir trilogy. The first book is “The War of the Itchy Balls and Other Tales from Brooklyn.” The second is “George Washington Didn’t Sleep Here.” The recently published third is “That’s Why They Call It Work.” He is currently working on a novel. His books are available on Amazon and his other writings at https://www.williamgralnickauthor.com.
