If you have children who are not yet old enough to receive a COVID vaccine, you might not want to read any further.
This is my experience. My memories. My life.
I want to open your eyes--I want you to see. I am going to tell you what it's like to be a kid in a hospital with a respiratory disease for which there is no cure. I will tell you what I remember, and I want you to know: these could be the long-term effects for more than 2% of our children in the United States before this pandemic is over.
I don't want pity.
I pray I will change your heart, and change your mind.
My earliest memories are of being in a hospital in the early 1960s. I was hospitalized with pneumonia, and my doctors were trying to find a combination of drugs that would work on a 3 year-old child. Keep in mind I was just a kid, so I can't tell you exactly what was used, and how it might have helped. I'm telling you what I remember. I remember being in an oxygen tent just like the one in the photograph above. For 30 minutes a day, I was allowed to sit up, outside of the tent. It was the best, because my mom could read to me, and I could hear her (instead of struggling to hear her through the heavy plastic of the tent). Then I remember going right back to sleep, because it was hard to be outside of the tent. I had pneumonia numerous times before I turned 8--lots of oxygen tents, lots of tests, and lots of missed childhood experiences. I missed my first day of school in Kindergarten, and in first grade. I missed Halloweens (boy, that was tough) and birthdays. We did have tutors in the hospital, but most of the time, you didn't feel much like learning. I remember lots of coughing, lots of vomiting, and feeling scared--scared because I was sick, and sometimes because I might be getting sick (a kid shouldn't have to be worrying about that!). I remember being pounded on the back to loosen phlegm. I remember shots and more needle sticks. That was the childhood I remember.
Having so many bouts of pneumonia as a child permanently scarred my lungs. They will never, ever be healthy. As a kid, I wasn't allowed to run long distances, as the scarring caused me to develop asthma. Before inhalers were widely available, I just had to be really careful (what a burden to place on a child). Anything that could possibly trigger an asthma attack was forbidden. I got used to not being able to do things my friends could do; I missed a lot of fun stuff. And, I was sick a lot. Frequent lung infections, pneumonia. More missed social interactions. HUNDREDS of x-rays (yeah, that's not a great thing to be exposed to either).
I cannot begin to imagine the financial impact my illnesses had on my parents. We were never "well-off", and how much of that was due to hospital bills? I will never know. I DO know the financial impact I deal with today, and have always dealt with; frequent respiratory illnesses, antibiotics, steroids, preventatives, tests, doctor visits, co-pays, missed work days (and the guilt I have over leaving my co-workers with extra work), missed job opportunities...my conservative guess is at least $3,000,000. At least. And that doesn't include the emotional and mental toll: on me, and on my family members. The people I love worry about me a lot. I would do anything to keep them from that. Every single time I feel myself getting sick, I think, "How can I tell them without them worrying again?" And there is no answer. Never.
A positive? I know my body. I can advocate for myself. But again, that's a burden to place on a kid--I had to always know what I could and could not do. And I am grateful. So grateful to still be alive, and for medicines and healthcare providers who did, and are doing, such a good job taking care of me. I don't take things for granted. I now I am very lucky--things could be so very different.
I could go on, but I have a feeling you wouldn't care to keep reading--this could quickly turn into a "woe is me", and that's NOT the point I am trying to make.
Pediatric COVID cases are on the rise, to the highest levels so far recorded.
It makes me feel physically ill to read that kids are now (as of 8/18/2021) TWO PERCENT of all people hospitalized with COVID in the United States. It makes me physically ill, and angry, because this was completely preventable. If adults had done the right thing and been vaccinated, the outbreak of the Delta variant would be much less potent, widespread, and deadly. If adults had done the right thing, the easy thing, and worn a mask, kids would not be getting sick and being hospitalized. I could go on and on and on about our adult responsibilities to the children of this planet, but much has been said, more eloquently than I am capable of articulating.
Why on earth would YOU choose to subject a child to a life like mine? If you CHOOSE to be unvaccinated, you most certainly are choosing to expose a child to a very serious illness, with serious, life-long consequences. If you are not vaccinated, you are most certainly going to spread COVID to a parent, a care-giver, a teacher--perhaps without even knowing it--and you most certainly are going to change the lives of many people forever.
You could change your own child's life forever. It's your decision, your choice. Choose health.
Please.
