See, hear and please share our new music video. “Angel Wings” Produced by Meningitis Angels. Real hearts, real lives, real stories, real love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELVflh0DTms
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Both DEADLY, but only one is vaccine preventable. So Vaccinate!!!
Two deadly diseases both in Africa and the US. One bacterial one viral. Both are spread the same way. Both have short incubation periods. Both cause hemorrhage and death. I know this too well because I watched my only child die with one of them. He developed fever and an ear ache, joint pain, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain and with in 14 hours he had blood coming from every orifice of his body and he died.
Each year in the US this disease attacks several thousand. Many like Ryan die horrible deaths. Many are left with severe scars, limb amputations, the loss of their faces, organ damage leading to transplant, severe digestive disorders, infertility, vision and hearing loss, serious brain damage causing mental disorders and learning disabilities. The suffering doesn’t stop once they leave the hospital most of the time it last a life time. It cost our government millions of dollars to care for one victim of this disease, not to mention the toll it takes on the family and community.
One is vaccine preventable and one is not. The most at risk for one are infants – age 22 and those with compromised immune systems. Teens are most often the victims.
Their symptoms are almost the same. They both can be misdiagnosed. By now you have guessed that one is Ebola. Did you know the other one is meningococcal meningitis/meningococcemia. That is right, the disease the CDC recommends you vaccinate those children age 11- young adults age 22.
Right now in the US only 4 of the 5 serogroups (A,C,Y and W135) of meningococcal disease are preventable with vaccines. There are 2 vaccines on the market. One vaccine (Menactra) is approved for ages down to 9 months. One vaccine (Menveo) is approved for ages down to 2 months. However FDA is currently reviewing 2 vaccines for the prevention of group B.
Remember group B is what cause the outbreaks at Princeton and the University of California earlier this year. Group B vaccine was brought in to the US to vaccinate students in the outbreak. Many parents at least the ones who can afford it, because it is approved in Canada are taking their kids there to get the B vaccine.
Right now it appears according to the latest statistics that about 60-70% of teens in the US are getting the vaccines. Most of those are in states that require the vaccine for middle school and college entry. Just yesterday a young man in Florida died with it. Be aware that meningitis does not stop at the dorm room door.
Ebola has reached our shores. It is not vaccine preventable. Fear will abound until this disease is contained. Meningococcal disease has been here for years. In fact did you know Helen Keller was left blind and death as a result of meningitis? We don’t have to fear it! IT IS PREVENTABLE!! So as a mom who lost her only child and the national director of an organization that works with hundreds of victims and families, I am asking you to talk to your health care providers, your health departments, your policy makers and make sure your state is vaccinating at middle school entry and high school exit.
Do you know the signs and symptoms of these deadly diseases? They are listed below.
The signs and symptoms of Ebola:
Symptoms may appear anywhere from 2 to 21 days after exposure to Ebola, but the average is 8 to 10 days. Death is common. |
Meningitis/meningococcemia symptoms In addition to a stiff neck, can include:
Symptoms may appear anywhere from 2 to 10 days after exposure and death or complete debilitation can occur within 24 hours or less |
If you think you are somone you love may have either of these diseases seek emergency care immediately. You may even express your concern when making that 911 call to prevent the spread.
For more information on Ebola or Meningococcal Meningitis or other vaccine preventable diseases; visit http://www.CDC.gov or for meningitis visit http://www.Meningitis-Angels.org
Please Dn’t W8 2 L8 2 Vaxn8
Frankie Milley
3 Moms, 3 Choices, You Decide! by Frankie Milley
Motherhood is an amazing thing. We will sacrifice our own life to save our children or keep them from harm, or do we all? Today I am looking at how we as mothers as parents care for our children.
I watched a documentary on Ebola last night. I was both heart broken and horrified as I watched hundreds of children literally die. One family in particular left a forever impression on my mind. It was a mother and her six children. They are particularly a burden on my heart. This mother was told no matter what, not to touch her children. This mother watched her child, who was infected by Ebola, suffer, vomit and covered in diarrhea cry in horrible pain and dragged away by quarantine workers. She was helpless. She had done everything in her power to protect her children from this deadly disease including sacrificing and letting one go from her care to protect the others.
It took me back to a day in an emergency room as I watched my only child laying on an emergency room table, tears of blood coming from his eyes and blood from every orifice of his body and being told I could not touch him as he was infected with a vaccine preventable form of meningitis.
By this point, uncontrollable tears poring down my cheeks as I watched this same mother and the rest of her children become infected and sick. They, like her small son were taken to a quarantine facility. She found when they reached the makeshift clinic there were no more beds, no medicine, no food and no hope for her children. They would once again be laying in mud and dirty water with little food, no care and waiting for a horrible death to claim them. She found out after arriving her little boy had died. She did not get to hold him in his last minutes. He died alone and afraid. Someone had taken a photo of him almost nude sitting on a bucket. He had become know as “The Little Boy on the Bucket.”
Through tears and a sad heart for this mom I thought about a reality show I had recently watched. The parents were against any kind of vaccinations for their infant/toddler.
Ok, I am not so hard that I can’t understand a parent’s fear of drugs including vaccine. Believe me as a mom, an activist, and a Christian who is supposed to care for the least of His, if I truly believed that vaccines were bad for infants and children, I would be on the front lines fighting to fix it. But I don’t believe it. Too much information, research and facts say different.
On this same reality show a family member, a nurse visited the mom and told her horror stories of children whom she had watched suffer and even die from vaccine preventable diseases. The mom seem to listen while still trying to make her point against vaccines. Ok, Again I get this! That fear of what is the right choice for your child in every circumstance. However what I did not get or understand is the fact that she and her husband decided to take their infant/toddler to a “Chicken Pox Party”. They made an almost what seem to be rebellious, conscience decision to expose their baby to a disease that can lead to serious and even deadly complications. Here a parent not only chose first not to protect them with vaccination but intentionally expose them to a potentially deadly disease, a risk to the whole community. A disease at the very least that will cause fever, blisters, severe itching and dehydration not to mention the scars it leaves. I am still covered with them 50 years later.
This made me recall a story a good friend and respected physician shared about a mother whom she begged to vaccinate. This mom instead chose a “Chicken Pox Party.” The little child died a few weeks later from complications of Chicken Pox.
We all have to make decisions for our children.
Had I known about and could have made the choice to use the vaccine that could have prevented Ryan’s death, he would have had it. He would be with me. Instead, I fight everyday to prevent other children and their parents from going through this nightmare. Ryan is remembered as one lost to a preventable disease and possibly his legacy left behind is that lives were saved because of it.
Had this mom in Africa had access to a vaccine that could have prevented her family and even her own life from being taken, I have no doubt that she would have chose the vaccine. Instead she had to make a choice to let one child go in order to try and save her other children. Now her little family is just gone with the exception of a heartbreaking photo of “The Little Boy on the Bucket” a lasting symbol of what can happen when deadly disease strikes and there is not a vaccine
Finally a mother who made a choice not to vaccinate but instead expose her child to a possibly deadly disease.
One simply has to walk around an old cemetery to realize the value of vaccine. For me it is a constant pain in my heart, a stroll down a hallway filled with pictures and memories of my sweet boy and a grave stone with his name.
For the thousands of parents in the Ebola outbreak it is trying to survive, not being able to comfort their children, while stepping over other dead children in the streets.
For the parent who chooses not to vaccinate but expose their children to deadly disease, I have only these words. I believe if infants and children had a choice of a vaccine over deadly and debilitating disease they would choose vaccine. They don’t have a voice or a choice. We have to be that voice, the voice truth, real science, prevention and life
How many must be debilitated or die and how many tears must we cry before they listen.
PBS NOVA Vaccines – Calling the Shots
IMPORTANT ALERT: PBS NOVA Vaccines – Calling the Shots premieres tonight!
Please SHARE!!!
Some really great friends and people are involved in this amazing film.
Now matter what side the feence you are on with vaccines! Please watch tonight!!
PBS NOVA Vaccines – Calling the Shots > Wednesday, September 10
Many PBS stations on East Standard Time and Central Time will be airing President Obama’s address live at 9 p.m (EST) and 8:00 p.m. (CST).
The PBS NOVA program, Vaccines—Calling the Shots, will air immediately following coverage of the President’s address at approximately 9:20 p.m. (EST) and 8:20 p.m. (CST). Please share this with everyone you know.
For More Information: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/vaccines-calling-shots.html
A Gift for Baby Shawn “Preventing Pertussis”
It had been almost 12 years since Ryan’s vaccine preventable meningitis had taken his life.
A loss that still hovered our family like a terrible nightmare which we would never wake from.
Then the announcement came brining extreme joy and excitement to our family. The first baby in 12 years was to be born into our family.
Mom was given the Tdap during pregnancy.
I thought about a sweet family in Texas, whose baby, in and emergency was delivered, by dad, at home. Grand pa had been ill for a few weeks with what was thought to be a cold then dad began to show the same symptoms with a bad cough.
This beautiful healthy baby girl was born and one month later she died from pertussis. If only the vaccine had been recommended or required as it is in some states now.
Those of us throwing the baby shower for baby Shawn, decided to ask everyone who was attending the shower, who plan to visit or hold the baby be vaccinated with Tdap and bring proof to the shower.
Thus a gift for Baby Shawn.
Vaccines are the gift of life and love for our infants, children and teens. Remeber adults and the elderly need vaccines too.
Pertussis is a deadly vaccine preventable disease. Thousands of infants have died in recent years form this deadly vaccine preventable disease.
We at Meningitis Angels challenge all of those who are celebrating the birth of a new baby be vaccinated.
Frankie Milley
