MAPLETON — Much time has passed since this country has experienced huge numbers of children catching the afflictions known as childhood diseases.

These scourges have been absent because babies have been successfully immunized since the time they’re old enough to receive vaccinations.

We in our 80s and above recall the suffering experienced from having caught a disease that infected a school’s whole population, sometimes shutting down a schoolhouse because so many students were sick.

We remember the impact of childhood diseases. Most of us recovered with no repercussions, but many did not.

Some sufferers of measles lost vision, sometimes all their vision. When I had measles, I had to spend three weeks in a darkened room; not even a nightlight could be on, for fear that light would cause me to lose my sight.

My grandmother caught measles at the age of 33 and died of its complications, leaving my father and his sister motherless.

DISEASE VICTIMS REMEMBERED

When I was a middle school teacher, one of my students had her case of measles morph into encephalitis. She had been an A student, but after she recovered, her intellect was diminished to where she was lucky to receive C’s and D’s. She had to relearn how to talk and to walk.

Every summer, there was the fear of catching polio. During August, the hottest month of the year, Mother prohibited us from going to the swimming beach.

No one knew how polio was transmitted, but the fear was that the germ could be in the water.

One memory is of seeing, encased within a giant tube, patients whose lungs were paralyzed. The device, called an “iron lung,” forced the enclosed patient to breathe and therefore remain alive.

That was living? Flat on their backs for days, months and years on end, unable to do anything.

Two or three classmates died. Those who recovered had to wear braces on their legs for the rest of their lives.

One friend recovered and did not have to wear braces, but walked with a limp. In his late 60s, residual effects of the polio he’d had at the age of 14 set in.

He lost control of his legs and had to wear braces, walking with great difficulty, walking with two canes to give him stability. He lost control of his bowels. He began losing the ability to talk.

No longer an independent bachelor, he had to rely upon outside help. One day, his helper found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.

Young people could be singled out for catching childhood diseases. For two years in a row, I missed enough school days because of illness that my teachers threatened, in front of the class, to hold me back to make up for lost time.

Ultimately, I was passed to the next grade. (l believe that she passed me on because I was too big to fit the desks in her classroom!), but I recall and can feel the chagrin caused by the taunts of my classmates in response to those teachers’ threats.

Town public health officers posted quarantine signs on the homes in which people were suffering from a disease, stating the length of the quarantine, what the disease was and who had it. No one thought about privacy.

No one but the family residing there was to enter that house. The intent was to stem the spread of the disease, but those signs held us up to ridicule. Once we could go out again, quite a bit of time passed before friends and classmates would accept us back into the fold.

One November, chickenpox invaded the schoolhouse.

My sister caught a very bad case of it and passed it on to me. We didn’t dare drive the 65 miles north that day to finish our Christmas celebration at my grandparents’ home. I cried myself to sleep.

For years I had pock marks in several conspicuous places before they finally disappeared. And in my 70s, I had shingles.

FEW VACCINES AVAILABLE DECADES AGO

The only immunizations available in my childhood were against smallpox and diphtheria. When the polio vaccine first became available, I beat a path to the door of the physician who offered it.

Parents opting out of having their children receive immunizations would do well to talk with those who recall the tortures of childhood diseases – then ask themselves, “Can I justify the possibility of my child catching any or all of those diseases because of my philosophy?”

“Can I risk my child’s life?”

“Shouldn’t I listen to those scientists who have proven that the vaccines do not bring on other afflictions?”

“Do I want the possibility of my child catching a disease to threaten those around me who have compromised immune systems?”

“Is it fair to my child to refuse a course of action proven beneficial?”

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