When I was 7, my siblings and I had the mumps. My mother, a nurse, hadn't had them as a child, and wore a mask at home to take care of us. I heard a crash in the middle of the night and found her passed out on the kitchen floor. There was no 911 in 1968. I couldn't wake her. I found my grandmother's phone number and she came over straight away. She also had difficulty waking her. With 3 crying kids: me, my sister (6) and brother (4), she called for an ambulance. My mother spent the next 2 weeks in the hospital with the mumps; the first week in the ICU with the worst complications including pancreatitis and encephalitis. My grandmother called my father to come to take care of his kids, as she wanted to be at her daughter's side because initially my mom wasn't excepted to survive. (My parent's were divorced and he lived over 7 hours away.) She survived, but not before she lost some of her hearing and went through a horrible trauma for herself and children. (We weren't allowed to visit her for nearly 2 weeks, until my father snuck us up to see her after she was out of ICU and doing better). This was before the mumps vaccine. Both my mother and sister (both RN's) and brother-in-law (a MD) say that complications from the measles can be even worse. As long as my son wasn't ill, I didn't hesitate to have him receive the MMR at age 15 months (he was born in 1985). I told him what happened to his grandmother, and he didn't hesitate to have his healthy daughters (born 2011 and 2013) vaccinated with the MMR either.