‘No, you see, Rosie already had chicken pox a couple of years ago. And before you say it, no, she isn’t one of those kids who gets it twice either. Please, Madeleine, quick, just tell me what Clara’s chest looks like – is there a rash?’
Madeleine felt confused, but did as she was told. With the phone pressed to her ear, she looked at her sleeping child – thankfully Clara had found some peace in slumber – and pulled down the bedclothes a little.
Then she whispered quietly into the phone. ‘I don’t know. Like I said there isn’t much of a pox outbreak yet, but now that you say it, just under her neck there is a kind of rash, I suppose, little bumps clustered together. Pretty much what you would expect with—’
‘Madeleine, you have to get Clara to a doctor, fast. And get Jake out of school too. I’m serious.’ Lucy sounded almost frantic on the phone and her normally mild-mannered friend’s panic made Madeleine’s mind race. But her heart almost dropped into her stomach with her friend’s next words. ‘I don’t think that Clara has chicken pox, sweetheart, but she could have measles. Rosie definitely has – Kate recognised the difference right away. You know she’s a nurse. But, anyway, it’s not common knowledge yet, at least I don’t think it is, the way that people know… well… the way people know about Jake and Clara. But it seems Rosie isn’t vaccinated either. She has some allergy that prevents it and—’
Feeling like her head was spinning, Madeleine looked down at her daughter and tried her hardest to recall what Jake had been like when he’d had measles, but it was a good six years ago and she really didn’t remember. It had been a mild dose, so hadn’t really stuck in her mind, other than the fact that the doctor had berated her for not vaccinating her eighteen-month-old against it in the first place…
And now it seemed Clara had picked it up. But where?
Suddenly, Madeleine’s mind drifted back to their holiday in Clearwater over the Easter break. There’d been something in the news at the time – she’d hardly paid attention to it amidst all the activities – about some kind of outbreak in one of the Orlando theme parks?
And little over a week ago the Coopers had shared an eight-hour flight home from that very location, with countless other Irish families who’d spent Easter in the theme parks…
‘Oh my goodness,’ Madeleine gasped, as the full realisation of what might be happening hit her.
The countless hours and days she and Tom had spent researching measles when Jake was a baby, trying to decide whether or not they could realistically avoid the MMR vaccination.
First and foremost, they’d been hugely uncomfortable about the vaccine’s link to autism, and while the original research paper suggesting the connection had long been discredited, it was very difficult to ignore the multitude of real-life anecdotal experiences that were so prevalent. The very idea of their happy, thriving, babbling Jake regressing to a withdrawn, unresponsive state within days – perhaps hours – of receiving the vaccination was enough to break Madeleine’s heart, and it certainly gave her pause.
While Tom had been raised a free-thinker and found it easy to rail against the establishment, she hailed from a more traditional Catholic background, used to trusting and going along with generally accepted advice and thinking.
Initially, Madeleine couldn’t credit that the government and health boards would realistically offer something that could harm, rather than protect, children. That was before she started to read through the reams of research on the vaccine and its potentially harmful ingredients, as well as the troubling suggestion of collusion and lobbying from the pharmaceutical companies.
But it was the worrying realisation that worldwide governments’ and health officials’ ultimate priority was not the health of an individual child but ‘herd immunity’ that truly concerned her. She’d spent hours upon hours reading up on both sides of what was a very heated and controversial argument, but, ultimately, the whole decision came down to her baby son’s safety.
‘Suppose we don’t give him the vaccination,’ she’d said to Tom, when Jake’s first MMR shot was imminent and they were by then seriously wavering about going along with protocol, ‘and he catches something terrible? I don’t think I could ever forgive myself—’
‘Could you forgive yourself if we do vaccinate and it triggers something potentially worse?’ he’d argued, and Madeleine’s heart constricted. ‘It’s a huge leap of faith, Maddie,’ he went on, but by then she no longer needed persuading. The health board’s concerns might be for the safety of the population at large; but, as parents, theirs had to be for their son.
And once you understood something like that, once you’d come to a realisation that rocked the very foundations of your beliefs, you couldn’t go back. Their family knew that all too well.
‘Look, it’s not as if measles is the end of the world either,’ her husband concluded. ‘I had it when I was a kid and, yes, it was nasty, but I recovered fine.’
Madeleine’s brother Paul had also seen off mumps as a child, and she herself had gone through a mild bout of measles when she was ten.
So they figured, even if the worst came to the worst…
But then poor Jake went and picked the disease up only a few months later anyway, while they were still hand-wringing over the whole thing.
Admittedly, it was at first terrifying to discover that their helpless little one-year-old had contracted something serious, but she and Tom had managed it and, thank goodness, all had been OK.
So when the time came to vaccinate Clara, they truly didn’t even think twice. What were the chances of her contracting measles too? And, if she did, wouldn’t they just deal with it again?
Despite repeated protests from their GP, urging them to reconsider, Madeleine and Tom eventually concluded – based on both their research and experience – that avoiding the vaccine was the lesser of two evils. It was a risk, but a calculated one.
Or so they’d thought.
Rosie isn’t vaccinated either…
But now, like a blow to the solar plexus, the big difference in this situation hit Madeleine full force. Jake had been young enough to contain and to prevent infecting others, but Clara was in school. With lots of other children. And, given that their daughter had contracted the disease by nature of the fact that she was unvaccinated, it was obvious she’d now passed it on, and even worse, to someone who, according to Lucy, didn’t have the vaccination option.
This was a scenario that Madeleine and Tom hadn’t run the odds on.
Realising that she had left Lucy in silence on the line, she whispered, ‘And Ellie Madden too?’ Christ, had she passed it on to the entire Junior Infants class, the whole school even? Oh God…
‘No, apparently Ellie actually does have chicken pox – that’s already confirmed. But, Maddie, get Clara to a doctor straight away. And you have to get Jake out of school too, once it’s in your house, he’s likely still infectious, even though…’ To her credit, Madeleine was grateful to Lucy for not making a big deal of their refusal to vaccinate. Goodness knows she and Tom had faced considerable ire from various quarters before about it.
‘I talked to the principal at Applewood,’ her friend went on. ‘Kate made them aware right away, and they’re hoping to keep this quiet for the moment. It’s a good thing it’s nearly the weekend as they don’t want a full-blown panic, but they need to identify who is the highest risk – anyone with autoimmune issues or anything like that. There are very few others there who aren’t already immunised, thank goodness, but…’
Lucy’s voice trailed off and right then Madeleine felt deeply ashamed that her family – her choice – had visited this on the school.
‘You know, kids that aren’t protected can still be helped, Madeleine.