I call my mom once or twice a week to check in. When I called her yesterday, she took a second or two longer to speak than usual. Then, when she did speak, she sounded pretty awful.
Two news stories caught my eye over the past two weeks, and both filled me with sadness and dread.
The first was the heart wrenching story that detailed the pain of a family whose seemingly otherwise healthy teen daughter died from the Influenza Virus. She died from “the flu.
I grew up before the oral polio vaccine; my mother wouldn’t let me go to swim parties for fear of my contracting the awful disease. Her brother had polio as a child, and for many years was partially paralyzed.
So, it shocks me to think that some parents would choose not to vaccinate their kids.