In nursing school one of the concepts that was repeatedly driven home was that the family of the patient and the patient themselves are our best historians. They are the ones we go to to get a history and to find out a patients baseline. We listen to parents, family members, patients themselves when they tell us drug and food allergies, medications they’re on, medical history, what happened that brought them in to the hospital...we believe parents/mothers/fathers.
Somehow along the way many healthcare professionals have turned a deaf ear to one product in particular. We believe everything you have to say, except for that. Your child was fine before he had had xyz? Must be a coincidence. Correlation does not equal causation, right? Even when it happens over, and over, and over again.
I told you in my stories the other day that injury is happening far more often then we are being told. Once you’ve read the list of adverse reactions and heard story after story, it’s very hard to deny what your eyes are seeing because it isn’t normal for kids to be sick. It isn’t normal for them to develop auto-immune, cancer, seizure disorders, be constantly sick, etc. It is not normal.
A Harvard study showed that less than 1% of va((ine reactions are reported. Are reactions rare or are they just rarely recognized?
When I worked as a nurse I always prided myself on being an advocate for the PATIENT. Not the hospital, not the charge nurse or the physician or the pharmacist, the PATIENT. I believed family members when they told me something was wrong and it largely served me well. So, when you come to me and tell me your story, I just want you to know, you aren’t crazy. You deserve to be heard. I see your hurt and I BELIEVE YOU.