STORY BYHeather Mitchell’s 50-member mega-family looked forward to its Cabo San Lucas reunion last December. They rented a cluster of nestled villas and hired a catering service to deal with meals so that they could deal with the beach. This year, the family became good buddies with one of the caterers—the guy with the “acne-like stuff on his face,” she recalls, with a dark laugh.
It wasn’t acne.
Two weeks after her return, Heather Mitchell got sick. “High, high fever,” recalls the 38-year-old Houstonian, “sick like never before.”
After a week of 104.5-degree fever, her doctor diagnosed it as flu and gave her antibiotics and TamiFlu.
Nothing happened.
Finally, after another week of relentless fever, vomiting and racking body aches, she went to the ER. “My husband and mother packed me in ice that melted the minute it touched me,” the mother of two remembers.
Meanwhile, four other family members—her adult cousin, Delia Johnson, and three children—were just recovering from a similar mystery malady. Delia and her toddler son, Vaughn, were the first of the five to get sick. Vaughn was hospitalized with high fever, rash and severe conjunctivitis (eye infection), white spots in his mouth and dehydration.
It is a highly contagious viral disease
Symptoms can include:
The measles virus resides in the mucus in
the nose and throat of infected people.
When they sneeze or cough, droplets
spray
into the air. Those infected droplets can
remain active and contagious for up to two
hours.
Complications:
They all had fever, generalized aches and nausea. And they all finally developed an odd rash that started at the head and descended the body like a red, crusty curtain.
Delia, 35, began to suspect measles, even though she had been told repeatedly by several specialists “that it was ridiculous and absolutely crazy.” Delia sent an email alerting the whole family of the symptoms. Heather took Delia’s email alert with her to the ER.
Heather didn’t have a rash, however. “My doctors were all confused but were sure that I could not have the measles, saying that it was impossible.”
Double pneumonia set in. Heather was put into isolation. Her fever barely budged with medication. She was on day 16 of 104 degree temperature. The ICU was to be her next stop.
Finally, she broke out in the rash that compelled her doctors to test for measles. They had tested for everything else, after all.
Heather tested positive. The doctors were incredulous. “Two hospitals, several specialists and four other sick family members, and still when I begged them to consider the measles, the doctors said, ‘absolutely not,’ ” Heather says. In fact, only one in her team of doctors had ever seen a case of the measles—his own as a child.
Delia and her son, Vaughn, 19 months, received the same reaction from physicians at a third Houston hospital.
When Delia’s son was hospitalized, they admitted him for an “unknown virus” she says. Vaughn was first diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and then Kawasaki Disease. Both of these conditions present with similar initial symptoms as the measles. “I then developed my own rash on day three of my son’s hospital stay. They sent us both home with Tylenol diagnosing it as a ‘rogue virus.’ They refused to test for measles.”
Delia then went to her health care provider who sent her to a dermatologist. “They told me if I was born in America, it was impossible for me to have measles.”
Once Heather’s measles diagnosis was confirmed, Delia, by now at home recovering with Vaughn, insisted on blood tests for her and her son. “No one would run them. So, I resorted to the Harris County Health Department and when the results came back positive, everyone was stunned.”
The family is convinced that their caterer buddy with the “acne stuff on his face” may have been at the tail end, yet still contagious, stage of the measles. Mexico, though, has one of the most aggressive and successful vaccination programs in the world. Current theory is that tourists from other countries brought the measles outbreak to Cabo. The caterer probably had served one of them.
Both Delia and Heather were born after 1957, when the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) immunization program went full throttle. The recent resurfacing of childhood illnesses is strong evidence that immunity through vaccine weakens over time. Heather’s children, ages 10 and 7, did not get sick, since they were old enough to have received both parts of the MMR. Her husband who is slightly younger than Heather had received a booster his college freshman year. He remained uninfected.
However, Delia’s son had not received his first booster because he had been ill with an ear infection and stomach virus at the time.
The remaining two children who fell sick had mild cases of rash and low-grade fever only. They had received at least half of their immunizations.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Immunization Program 2006 Annual Report, “all cases of measles in the Western Hemisphere are believed to have been imported from other countries, through travel or contact with those from other countries.”
The Pan American Health Organization cites a greater than 99 percent reduction in the number of measles cases in the Western Hemisphere, “... from approximately 250,000 in 1990 to 75 cases in 2005. And measles importations in the US from Latin America have also dropped from 230 in 1990 to no cases during 2000-2004.”
However, according to the report, “measles is rampant in other parts of the world and was responsible for an estimated 530,000 deaths in developing countries and the leading cause of vaccine preventable death for children under 5 years of age.”
Both Delia and Heather fall into the limbo age group at risk of infection with diseases such as measles, mumps and pertussis (whooping cough). They both are too young to have contracted measles as children; too old to be fully protected by long-ago inoculations.
Heather remained in the hospital for 10 days and went home with a breathing machine. The high fever and rash caused extensive skin peeling. Her hair has fallen out, she theorizes, from the medications and high fever. “And I lost 15 pounds. People pay big money for exfoliation and weight loss. I don’t recommend this method.”
Both women are born-again immunization believers. “This could have killed me,” Heather flatly admits. “We would have gotten booster shots had we known that it was necessary, useful, advised. We just didn’t know.”
Delia’s pediatrician now keeps photos of Delia and Vaughn, ablaze in rash, on the office bulletin board as a warning to parents who are still afraid of vaccines. “All of this was preventable with a booster,” Delia says. “I have had some bad bouts with the flu in my life; the measles made the flu seem like a walk in the park. I cannot imagine how terrible a full-blown case must be.”
The United States border is no immunity. “If you think it can’t happen here, just think of all the people in all these hospitals and doctors’ waiting rooms our family has exposed by simply trying to get a diagnosis.”
Both women have three words of advice, “Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.”
Next year’s family reunion will be in Costa Rica. Heather has some brand new concerns now. “Where will the mumps go next? Which shots do I need now? Just line them up. I want them all.”
» Measles & Mumps: Grown up facts on childhood disease
UPDATED: 5-04-2006
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Special Instructions for Children Being Vaccinated Against Flu for the First Time:
Children 6 months up to 9 years of age getting a flu vaccine for the first time will need two doses of vaccine the first year they are vaccinated. If possible, the first dose should be given in September or as soon as vaccine becomes available. The second dose should be given 28 or more days after the first dose. The first dose "primes" the immune system; the second dose provides immune protection. Children who only get one dose but who need two doses can have reduced or no protection from a single dose of flu vaccine. Two doses are necessary to protect these children. If your child needs two doses, begin the process early, so that children are protected before influenza starts circulating in your community. Be sure to follow up to get your child a second dose if they need one. It usually takes about two weeks after the second dose for protection to begin.
Because flu viruses change every year, the vaccine is updated annually. So even if you or your children got a flu vaccine last year, you both still need to get a flu vaccine this season to remain protected. If October and November slip by, and you haven’t gotten your children or yourself vaccinated, get vaccinated in December or later.
