Temporarily Burned Out
By Cathy Jameson
So, the house is a mess. The kids are hungry again (didn’t I just make them a meal?!). I missed fifteen phone calls and haven’t bothered to return several messages. I’m not focusing on whatever task I need to do during the day. Instead of trying to catch up on those and some much-needed rest I stayed up too late watching chick flick reruns late into the night. Where does that leave me? Well, hubby’s been away all week so I’ve got a mad scramble to clean up, catch up on whatever he and I need to go over (those dang bills, sync our calendars, make some decisions about upcoming events) and then enjoy the little reunion our family will have this weekend.
In avoiding everything I should have done this past week I’ve become scatterbrained. I wish I had paid more attention more to my list of To Dos because it went to pot very quickly. I’m temporarily burned out today and sort of don’t care. No worries. I’m the type of person that can’t stay down too long. I’ll try, try again come next week with the promise to get done what has to be done.
In lieu of my usual upbeat or reflective post I’d like to exit stage left for a few. While I take a much-needed break to reorganize my life, here’s an intro to Alison MacNeil’s post from The Thinking Moms’ Revolution blog . She says pretty much what I’ve been thinking about and brainstorming for weeks now as a possible future piece here on AofA. I was trying to think about something epic for Autism “Awareness” month. It would have to be really, really good, well-thought out, perfect, and of course epic. Yep, Alison’s got it all right there.
And, now I will remove myself from the computer for a few days so I can step away from my distractions, to recoup mentally, to slowly breathe in and out without panic so I can be ready to jump right back into life next week.
xoxo, Cat
While Rome Burns
(Ring, ring)
“Hello, this is Emergency, how may I help you?”
(Mom, breathless, anxious) “My child has stopped speaking. He could talk two weeks ago but now he can’t. He doesn’t notice if I walk in the room anymore. He’s screaming constantly and I can’t seem to console him. He has constant diarrhea. He keeps arching his head back. I can’t figure out what’s going on. Something happened to my child.”
“When did this start?”
“About two weeks ago right after his 15 month shots.”
“What does your pediatrician say?”
“He says not to worry about it.”
This is a vaccine injury and it is not treated like an emergency. Why do pediatricians respond to a child’s regression into Autism with such complacency? Why aren’t pediatricians panicked by the number of times this happens in their practice? Why aren’t they asking themselves how come every year they are seeing more and more children falling apart physically and developmentally between their 1st and 2nd birthdays?
One case of Measles on an airplane was a crisis. We later discovered the person was fine. Lettuce tainted with Salmonella is such an emergency that they can trace down the source of the outbreak within three days. But a child diagnosed with Autism every 20 seconds is not considered a crisis. Hell, I’ve seen more of a sense of urgency when they hit “three bells” for the check-out lines at Trader Joe’s Supermarket!
My daughter was born in 2000. She is typically developing and in the 5th grade. Her teacher told me this fall that her grade contains the largest number of learning issues they have ever seen in one year at her school. Her school nurse recently told me that about 12 years ago she used to have one or two student’s Epi-Pens in her office each year. Now she has over 40 per school year. I don’t think the average parent of a child with a life-threatening peanut allergy, or a Ritalin prescription connects the dots to environmental injury. One out of every 6 children has a learning issue in America today and 1 out of every 5 children takes a medication for chronic illness. But this is not considered a crisis?
This is surreal for me. As surreal as adults walking by a burning house with children inside. No one is stopping to help. And the adults are Firemen. We are in the middle of a crisis in children’s health, but no one is worried. The house has always been on fire. Everyday a certain number of children die in house fires. We don’t know why, it’s a mystery. There is no research that proves that dying in a house fire would be painful.
It is beyond comprehension that anyone could look at this situation and not be terribly worried about children’s health. But as a nation we are not. Michelle Obama is worried about obesity even though her husband continually appoints former Monsanto (makers of High Fructose Corn Syrup) folks to positions of power within the food safety ranks. Her husband is worried about everything except Autism and how to get re-elected. Rick Santorum is worried about gay marriage and Dan Savage, and Mitt Romney is worried about how to make that sadistic dog on top of the car thing go away. It seems like the only people truly worried about children’s health are the ones with the least to lose at this point, those of us whose kids are already environmentally sick with Autism.
As a mother of a vaccine-injured child when I talk to parents about taking great care with vaccination urging them to read and research and really consider the choices they make, I take for granted that they may not listen to me. Like a gift, you have to let go of advice the minute you give it. You have no control over how the gift is received or whether the advice is appreciated. Sometimes, parents will come back to me and tell me they wish they had listened.
I would never say, “I told you so” to a parent; however, I feel differently about my conversations with medical providers. I’ve talked with many of Nick’s doctors about my concerns involving vaccine and antibiotic safety. I’ve also talked with lots of friends who are doctors and scientists. With the exception of a rare few, their usual reaction is polite disdain.
Medical providers of small children have tremendous power and responsibility in the Autism/vaccine debate. They do have the time to critically analyze the studies on this subject for flawed design, author bias, and affiliation of practice, pharmaceutical ties and relationship to the vaccine industry. Autism mothers find time to do this and we are the busiest people on earth. Pediatricians must demand better leadership from their professional organizations in the area of vaccination safety practices and get help standing up to pharmaceutical interests that infiltrate the way they practice medicine.
When the Autism/Vaccine shit hits the fan, which is inevitable, I will shout, “I told you so” to every one of these arrogant S.O.B’s. because it has been on their watch that more children have been harmed. Whether through their denial, passivity or stubborn adherence to medical orthodoxy, they have ignored innumerable attempts to raise their awareness of the risks of the current vaccine schedule. They will have more blood on their hands if they do not acknowledge this crisis in children’s health now and make adjustments to the way they practice. How will they justify their actions ten years from now? “We just didn’t know” might have been acceptable in the early ‘90’s. In 2012 we know. How will they live with the shame? Will they be able to forgive themselves for the damage they are inflicting today?
If they haven’t heard us, it’s because they are choosing not to listen. Our voices and our stories are everywhere. Read the full post at Thinking Moms Revolution HERE.
Recently read "To Err is Human..building a safer health system" .. Institute of Medicine .. which was very critical of today's health care in the United States. (First printing 2/2001)
Page 42: "Although the risk of dying as a result of a medical error far surpasses the risk of dying in an airline accident, a good deal more public attention has been focused on improving safety in the airline industry than the health care industry. The likelihood of dying per domestic flight is estimated to be 1 in 8 million. Statistically, an average passenger would have to fly around the clock for more than 438 years before being involved in a fatal crash. Obviously,some believe that public concern about airline safety, in response to the impact of news stories, has played an important role in the dramatic improvement in airline safety."
"When polled, most people learn about medical mistakes through anecdotes. More than 4 or 5 responded has heard about a situation in which a medical mistake was made. When asked how they heard about the most recent mistake, 42% cited a friend or relative, 39% cited television, newspaper or radio. 12% cited personal experience"
In other words .. because the public is immediately made aware of disastrous plane crashes .. in order to maintain public confidence in flying .. "safety" within the airline industry became their highest priority.
Unfortunately, when "mistakes" are made in the health care system .. they are related "anecdotally" .. and .. because of "liability" concerns .. to often even those "mistakes" are not reported. Which means .. the potential for those same "mistakes" to be repeated over and over again is a great possibility.
As it stands today .. unless drastic changes are made to the "passive" Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System .. we can rest assured that anyone claiming vaccines are unsafe will have nothing but "anecdotes" to support those claims.
One study regarding improved reporting was mentioned in the "footnotes" of this book .. "A new method for active surveillance of adverse events from diptheria/tetanus/pertussis and measles/mumps/rubella vaccines" which can be accessed at:
http://tinyurl.com/6u2ayfz
End of abstract:
"There was a causal association between MMR vaccination and ITP resulting in admission 15-35 days subsequently; there was no evidence of a mumps strain-specific effect. The estimated absolute risk of 1 in 24,000 doses was 5 times that calculated from cases passively reported by clinicians. This finding emphasises the need for active surveillance of adverse events. The record linkage method that we used is an effective way to identify vaccine-attributable adverse events.
This study was done in 1995 .. and .. was wondering if anyone knows if this type of "active surveillance" of vaccines is ongoing today?
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | March 19, 2012 at 07:52 AM
Thanks, Cat and great job, Alison on getting the word out. Not much has changed in getting medical help for vaccine injuries over the years since Megan regressed ( a nice word for assault by chemicals) 18 years ago. I think for your next blog it would be very helpful to describe what parents can do after hanging up that phone, when they have been dismissed and their child's symptoms minimized.
How about a hotline for vaccine injuries?
Posted by: Teresa Conrick | March 18, 2012 at 04:50 PM
Thank you for redirecting me to Alison's article. I was able to finish it with a second attempt. Burn-out seems all too "normal" for me, and I have to cut out a lot of things I used to do or want to do, and make the most of when I can look forward.
Alison says she will say "I told you so" to all the "health" professionals who have not listened when our reality becomes generally acknowledged. I will be tempted to ask these people if they could have collectively come up with a more effective way to torture an individual than placing a mouth-load of high copper Hg amalgam into a young girl, suspected to have been sensitized to/by her environment from an early age--that started the cycle where "burnout" equals the good days--then add in the guilt of knowing I allowed an even greater exposure to my baby after years of wondering what was going on and the burden of trying undo the harm of so many ignorant choices. I would gladly continue to carry the burn-out and days of downright swimming in the dregs of Hg and other poisoning, if I could just save my children from this, though the former makes the latter all the more difficult. The truth is supposed to set you free, and I'm grateful to have a better idea of where freedom is, but the collective obstruction by these people of those trying to find and blaze such a trail leaves me fighting frequent moments of intense distrust, disdain, disgust for many of of the extra-family "institutions" of society and those who assign too much authority and trust in such. Thank you Cathy and AoA for providing weekly reminders that generally people are good, some even courageous.
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | March 18, 2012 at 03:10 PM
I read Thinking Moms Revolution and I am happy to say that I had one person who listened to me. She is a relative and close so maybe that had something to do with it, but when she asked me why so many kids were getting sick I showed her the vaccine movie on youtube. She now has a very healthy, unvaccinated 18 month old who has barely had a sniffle. He does everything early, even speaks baby talk in two languages.... and I don't think he has ever had a "well baby visit."
Posted by: Kapoore | March 18, 2012 at 11:27 AM
This blogpost of Alison MacNeil's should be required reading for every legislator. I plan to send it to mine.
Posted by: pass the popcorn | March 18, 2012 at 10:02 AM