Time seems to spin faster and faster once you have children.  I was so enthralled with each new development—the first smile, the first time he rolled over, and then couldn’t roll back. The first sounds, crawling, trying to stand on those sturdy little legs.  I was so busy watching him, but also worrying.

As a parent, you hope and pray that nothing catastrophic will happen to your child.  Minor things like tubes in the ear—those you get through.  But being nervous by nature, I would worry about childhood cancers, accidents, or other tragedies. I was so lucky to have wonderful kids—two great boys, who were good students, kind and funny, and just the loves of our lives.

Our best memories were of the years spent watching them play soccer, baseball, and basketball—sometimes all three at the same time.  I wouldn’t change those years for anything.

Of course, my sons had their yearly physicals, and all of the vaccines that were recommended. From the day he was born, until the day he graduated from high school, I feel like all I did was turn around. How did 17 years go by so fast?

Time was speeding up, faster than I wanted. It was part of the natural cycle for my sons to go off to college, and I was happy for them. However, not happy for me. I definitely suffered from empty nest syndrome.

And then my son was a college junior—honor student, pre-med, and a pitcher on his college baseball team, and with a phone call, our world fell apart.

My son called me at work, complaining of a horribly intense migraine, nausea, and sensitivity to light. Several hours later, when he wasn’t feeling better, I asked him to have his roommate take him to the hospital. We were told by the ER physicians that Evan had a little virus, and they didn’t want to send him back to his dorm, so they would keep him overnight. We asked the doctors if we needed to drive down, and they said no. I was uneasy, but said okay.

The next morning, we received a phone call that Evan had bacterial meningitis and had a 5 percent chance of survival. Evan fought for 26 days before he passed away.

After he died, we found out that a vaccine, used by the military for years, could have saved his life. I was even more devastated, if that is possible, because I was overcome by tremendous guilt. Evan had every vaccine that was recommended before he went to college, but no one told us about meningitis.

Shortly after we had moved from California to Georgia, there was an outbreak of meningitis in the Atlanta metro area. My husband and I remember Evan coming in to our den and asking, “Mom, how do I know if I’ve got meningitis?”

I told him, “Oh, Evan, you don’t need to worry about that.” I can’t tell you how those words haunt me and always will. I should have looked into it more, instead of dismissing the idea. Maybe if I had investigated, I would have found out that the military routinely vaccinated recruits.

Would I have found a doctor to give him the vaccine, since it wasn’t recommended by the CDC at that time? I don’t know, and I’ll never know. But back to the racing of time that I mentioned earlier. Part of me will always be in 1998, with the vision of my son at 20 years old, when he passed away. He will always be 20. I don’t comprehend how 13 years have gone by. Again, I turned around, and this huge chunk of time has passed.

My message—make sure your children are vaccinated against all diseases for which there are vaccines. Be proactive and do your research. If the doctors don’t mention vaccinations to you, then speak up. It just takes a second for your life to change forever.

By Lynn Bozof, President of the National Meningitis Association

Images courtesy of the Bozof family

But what about health information? Most parents have to walk the line between gatekeeping and educating their teens about their own health and wellness. Nowhere is this juggle more apparent than in the realm of teens and vaccines.

According to CDC, teens 18 and under need Tdap, meningococcal, seasonal flu, and HPV vaccines, as well as to stay current with other childhood vaccines.

In 2008, CDC launched a pre-teen vaccine campaign, impressing on caregivers the importance of vaccinations for this age group as well. The host of recommended vaccines protect against diseases such as whooping cough, HPV, meningitis, pneumonia, and others.

Reaching Our Teens

Communicating the importance of vaccinations to teens isn’t just a matter of laying out the facts. Programs like GetVaxed, PKIDs teen and young adult site, attempt to reach adolescents using colorful, short, pithy health messages with extra punch and color.  

Translating health messages, pithy or not, into action is a science that interests many, especially given the evolution of information-sharing with the onset of online and mobile technologies.  In a subsection of the Internet and American Life Report, Pew Research Center tracks the way teens use technology to communicate and get information.

As teens increasingly turn to texting as their preferred method of communication, parents and health providers would be wise to consider ways to text out health and prevention messages.

According to Pew, using texts to educate teens about STD prevention can be effective, though no data exists currently that addresses text immunization messages.

Given the importance of teen and pre-teen vaccination, it’s clear that parents and immunization educators would benefit from more outreach efforts targeting the favored language of teens (texts, Facebook, and the mobile Web).

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s report, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8 to 18 Year Olds concludes that in the past few years TV as a messaging medium has largely been replaced by the Internet and mobile technology.

Parents and providers are still the trusted purveyors of immunization information for teens, but we need to adapt how we share that information with them to ensure receipt.

When a meningitis outbreak shows up in the news, it’s a good bet that it showed up at a school. Any shared spaces like schools, dorms, or barracks where crowds of young adults converge are favorite territories for bacteria and viruses to spread.

Meningitis, a serious but rare infection, is an inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. It affects about 1,500 Americans each year.

Meningitis is commonly mistaken for the flu in its early stages, and therefore left untreated. When this happens, it can do a lot of damage within hours, sometimes causing confusion, seizures, and brain damage. Survivors are often left with amputated limbs—permanent reminders of their experience.

So what does meningitis act like and why are colleges a prime environment for it?

Most meningitis patients complain of excruciating headaches, unyielding fevers, nausea, and vomiting. Sound like just a bad case of the flu? More telling are other symptoms, which include stiffness and pain in the neck (due to the swelling around the spinal cord and brain), sensitivity to light, numbness or loss of sensation in limbs, rashes, mental confusion, and convulsions and seizures.

Most at risk are college students. Busy, exhausted, and stressed students often have lowered immune systems. A wide variety of lifestyles and health choices create a melting pot of germs, especially when bathrooms and eating areas are shared. Meningitis is spread through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluid: a shared cigarette or drink, a kiss, a cough. It’s possible to carry a germ that causes meningitis and never be sick, while unknowingly passing it on to someone else. There are lots of ways to spread it.

Many such infections could be prevented with vaccination. Some schools are now requiring proof of vaccination; others only provide information about meningitis. Before heading off to college, make sure you’re protected and know what the warning signs are. Parents, if you’re reading this, make sure your son or daughter is protected before they leave you.  It could be the most important going-away gift you give your child.

Pre-teens Need Vaccination Too!

With school in full swing and winter just around the corner, now is a great time for parents of 11 and 12 year olds to get their kids vaccinated against serious diseases such as whooping cough, meningitis, influenza, and, for girls, cervical cancer.

CDC recommends that pre-teens should receive the following:
• Tdap vaccine – combined protection against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis
• Meningococcal  vaccine  – protection against meningitis and its complications
• Seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines – protection against seasonal and H1N1 influenza viruses
• For girls, HPV vaccines to protect against the two types of human papillomavirus that cause up to 70% of cervical cancers. Each year, almost 4,000 women in the U.S. die of cervical cancer.

These recommendations are supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

One of two available HPV vaccines also protects against warts in the genital area, and boys and men up through age 26 can get this vaccine.

CDC’s Pre-teen Vaccine Campaign has educational materials tailored for various audiences, including Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American parents, available in English, Spanish, Korean, and Vietnamese.

Visit the Pre-teen Vaccine Campaign gallery to download or order materials at NO COST.

Town crier announcing the vaccination campaign Niger 2009 © Olivier Asselin

Grief is no stranger to families in the “meningitis belt” of Africa.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 1,900 people in the belt have died and tens of thousands have been affected. 

The sub-Saharan countries of Niger, Nigeria and Chad have been hit particularly hard these past few months.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported “…dozens of MSF teams, together with health authorities, are performing vaccination campaigns throughout these countries to reduce the impact of the epidemic. Meanwhile, other MSF teams are travelling to urban and remote health centers to collect data, review and treat patients, and donate medicines.”

Vaccination has to happen to stop this disease, but we can’t overlook the huge efforts they’re making to treat the infected.  They’re succeeding and they’re saving lives.  Without treatment, up to 50 percent of people infected with bacterial meningitis will die.

MSF workers deserve PKIDs’ Stamp of Excellence for their work in this outbreak.

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