Last weekend was one hundred days since my daughter started coughing. Whilst others in our community also had varying degrees of whooping cough this summer (vaccinated and unvaccinated), my little family definitely signed up for the full version, classic style!
My kids are better, they are finally off the high vitamin c (an amazing therapy but exhausting in its own right, keeping the levels high and cajoling the kids to take it for nigh on 100 days! Oof!), there is no more vomiting and although there is still the occasional spasm, when over exerted or at night, they are 99% better.
I have found the duration wearing. The 7 weeks of confinement at home were filled with a gracious swirl of gifts (see my previous blog ‘Cancel Everything‘) to balance out the intensity, but with my kids energy back up and champing at the bit to be out in the world again, trying to measure their energy levels, monitor their exertions and still be without proper evenings to myself, as between them the occasional spasms intrude, I have been hard pushed not to feel a little ‘over it’!
I remember a friend sharing that even years later, whenever she heard her kids cough she would shudder and feel drawn back into the emotional maelstrom of that time.
I am never going to deny that it’s hard but, despite the hopes of some thinking it would change my mind on vaccines, it has only confirmed and upheld my beliefs and research on our health choices.
I have understood childhood illnesses to be an indicator, precursor and factor in developmental shifts and growth spurts; I am aware natural endurance promotes lengthy immunity; and I trust a healthy body’s ability to process an illness and use it as a tool to detox physically and emotionally. All of these I see to be truths in my experience.
This experience has not made me question our decision not to vaccinate our children, it has totally affirmed it. And whilst I sit out these last days of tickles and spasms, I find this validation to be yet another of the many blessings on this journey.