By Jim Heffernan
I’ve been thinking about whooping cough (pertussis), vaccines and family history a lot lately.
I was reminded of whooping cough by a newspaper story about how whooping cough cases have increased by a factor of 6 in the last year.
Probably the shocking increase is caused by a combination Covid-19 disruptions and a growing distrust in vaccines.
Normally, whooping cough is prevented by the childhood DPT (Diphtheria-Pertussis-Tetanus) vaccines that were widespread and are now declining in popularity. Somehow, some of us place our trust in celebrities rather than in doctors.
I’m not sure many of us are sufficiently thankful for what vaccines have saved us from. I am old enough to remember a before and after for polio vaccines. I am old enough that I was hospitalized with measles.
Diphtheria and tetanus are serious disease that are very rare these days. The last case of diphtheria in the US was in 2003, but it still happens in the dark places in the world without vaccines.
Diphtheria reminded me of distant and harrowing family history. My wife’s paternal grandmothe, Katie, was born in 1893, two years after her mother and father came here from a German colony in Russia. They settled in the Globeville neighborhood of Denver which was where a lot of Germans from Russia found their new communities.
Katie married at 19, to a man who had come from Russia as a 15 year old. He was 22 when they married. Six years later, they’re living in a tiny house with three children, ages 5, 3, and 1.
In November of 1918, diphtheria struck them. It’s a terrible disease characterized by swollen glands, difficulty breathing, and a grey membrane on the throat and tonsils. The only treatment they knew was swabbing their throats with a kerosene soaked scrap of cloth. Albert, the 3-year-old, died in the third week of their ordeal. The other four survived and three of them lived into their 70’s. David, her husband, died 6 years later of a heart attack at the age of 31. The diphtheria damaged his heart.
Their struggle with diptheria happened at the same time Denver was going through the 1918 influenza pandemic. I suspect they escaped the influenza pandemic because they were house bound.
I didn’t meet Katie until she was in her seventies, but I loved her. There was a lot of her in the granddaughter I married 58 years ago. I only learned about the tragedies in her life when I got involved with genealogy and started asking questions.
As for me and vaccines, it’s science over celebrity every time. I am very grateful to have lived in a time when so many vaccines are available. In the military, I was on what was called “world-wide immunizations” and I’ve had shots for all manner of diseases. I’ve never turned one down and I’ve never had a regret.
As always, discussion always welcome at codger817@gmail.com