My 6 year old with severe allergies is having his MMR today...

[DingleBerries]

... and everything is going to be ok, isn’t it?

It was after his third lot of baby immunisations (which were delayed a few months) that he went into anaphylactic shock with food he was previously ok with and our world turned upside down.

I’ve been shit scared to give him them MMR but today we’re doing it

It’ll be ok won’t it?

He won’t become allergic to the few foods he has left will he?

I will have his epipen on standby for immediate reaction but it’s being done in a GP surgery because his allergy consultant deemed it safe to do so (and we trust him).

... we trust him but people can be wrong.
Which is where my worry is.

Can I just gently ask why you’re doing it? We had very similar with DS1 but at his first jabs and it was suggested he have no more as the risk was too great.

Follow your instinct whilst all of the diseases in the MMR can cause complications they are usually tolerable diseases if managed and diagnosed correctly and I say that as the DD of a man whose sight was damaged by measles so I’m not saying that flippantly.

Good luck whatever you decide and with the GP and epipen you have a degree of comfort.

Mine gives them as separate injections, given his history will they do that?

@orchidflakes what was your exact experience of DS1 and who was it who suggested he had no more vaccines?

@Djbaggysmalls we tried going down that route but there was only one person in the whole of our county who had the ability to do it. Mumps vaccine no longer comes individually and the doctor refused to vaccinate my son because of his egg (amongst other things!) allergy.

And according to his most up to date information which I’ve just looked at, theres no single rubella vaccine either.

Which I guess isn’t too much of a problem to DS but Mumps certainly is.

I believe the OP means after the jabs he started to react to foods rather than the actual jab causing anaphylaxis. Is this correct? My son reacted to the first MMR jab but already had lots of allergies before that. In all honesty it was probably just a timing voincodence that meant he developed food allergies rather than the actual vaccinations. My son had his booster vaccine at 5 and was absolutely fine. Good luck xxx

It was our Dr. that said it was encephalitis reactions that we had rather than food but the risk of that again is just too great.

Have you looked into mumps, most cases of mumps are at university as the vaccine wears off after about 10 years and there is currently not a booster scheme for it meaning boys are most vulnerable to it during puberty. That alone helped our decision on mumps ass protecting him in childhood and leaving him exposed in adolescence seemed a little bit batty.

Unfortunately with anything health related there is always a risk and it’s weighing up which risk you can tolerate easier. For us it was managing any diseases he got rather than knowingly exposing him to harm (not implying here for a second that that is what you are doing) Good luck it is such an agonizing decision

Just another thought - have you seen the insert that comes with the vaccine (like the leaflet that comes with antibiotics)? That is from the manufacturer and way more informative than most drs as legally they have to disclose reactions etc and state who can and cannot be offered it.

Are you aware of the yellow card scheme so you can flag to NICE the reactions your DC has had so far? You can complete it yourself and it forms part of their body of research.

Excerpt here and link below:
Government advisers on vaccination have been monitoring the mumps part of the vaccine for some time. In January last year they noted that "a significant proportion" of infections were occurring in young people who had had jabs and that "it may be reasonable to assume that protection from infection falls to around 60% after 10-15-years." A subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation looked at a number of options. But moving the second MMR dose from three-year-olds to an older age would leave young children unprotected against measles and rubella, they concluded, while a third dose of MMR during adolescence might not be cost-effective since the effectiveness of another jab for those already with immunity was uncertain.

www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/04/rise-mumps-waning-immunity-mmr-vaccine

89765

What was the reaction to the vaccine?

@orchidFlakes what are you child’s allergies?

Orchidflakes I’ve just googled encephalitis and DS doesn’t have that.

He has anaphylaxis to foods

How did your DC get diagnosed with encephalitis?

On the NHS website for encephalitis it actually reccommends sufferers getting the MMR vaccine....

It was a reaction to one of the primary vaccines but where they are given as a cocktail there is no way of knowing what it was specifically. It was diagnosed and of course treated by the dr, he was screaming in pain for 10 days due to the epic headache.

NHS will always recommend vaccines for many reasons from financial to greater good of the general public however there are always exceptions to every rule and it was felt the risk was too great of another case of encephalitis to vaccinate again. This was on the advice of his specialist (consultant peadiatrician) rather than our GP.

Nasty.

What were his symptoms? Apart from the screaming?

It sounds as though our children reacted very differently.

And at the end of the day I suppose my sons reactions could be coincidental whether I believe it to be so or not (I don’t).

And of course this worries me.

He was only 9 weeks old but he went in chilled and happy and after the initial protests at the vaccine had passed he started to cry. A real high pitched cry that I hadn’t heard before and scarcely stopped for days. After a week I went to the GP, he wasn’t feeding as before, not sleeping well and this near constant cry.

Wow I’m reallt surprised they managed to diagnose anything from that.

I only say because DS has multitude of things wrong with him and it’s very symptomatic and it’s still taken years of blood tests, skin prick tests and exploratory surgery to diagnose it all.

The NHS website says to diagnose encephalitis you need a CT scan, MRI or lumbar puncture.

Yep we ended up transferred to hospital for diagnosis which was by lumbar puncture as meningitis had to be ruled out

Urgh poor baby.

Understand that hellish feeling of having your baby stabbed, poked, prodded and held down for a diagnoses.
I’m just thankful that DS was too little to remember it.

I’m glad though that our issues aren’t relatable because your first post panicked me! But our situations are definitely different.

I’m leaving in 10 minutes, his appointment is at 16.45. I’ve got anxiety to ge max.

My DS had anaphylaxis before he had his MMR. You can develop anaphylaxis at any time - it's highly unlikely to be anything to do with vaccinations and I say that as someone who doesn't entirely trust vaccines myself because there are always people every year who are badly affected by vaccines, sadly.

Anyway, DS is allergic to milk and eggs. The MMR, as it is grown on chick embryos (are they chickens or eggs? an interesting twist on the perennial debate) was given to him in a hospital ward with syringes of adrenaline at the ready (waste of money as I had the epipens with me). He had no reaction whatsoever to my recollection. He even took his first steps the next day! However I recently found a letter from his allergy doctor which says I reported him being badly behaved for 2 weeks afterwards. I have no memory of that at all !

FWIW DS has had a special flu jab once at the hospital, as he has asthma and it is recommended he has the flu jab every year. Since that one the GPs have been pretty useless. They say he needs to have one, when I asked if it's egg free one year, they said they would find out and get back to me, and never did, following year the same thing and they did say it contained egg, so can he have an egg-free one? Never got back to me. Last year they DID get back to me . Hurrah! Oh but only to say no there are no egg-free ones . . .

Hope all goes well!

Thanks BallooSlayer that’s exactly what I needed to hear. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

FWIW although DS is ana before his MMR but wasn’t before his last lot of baby vaccines.

I’m open to the fact that they may not be connected, but it sticks out to me that it might be.

Handhold here, I know how worrying it is. My DS had his MMR in hospital under medical supervision aged 5 because of a bad reaction to eggs as a baby. He was absolutely fine, and hopefully your DS will be too

Thanks DramaAlpaca

In the surgery, my anxiety is through the freaking roof.

Hope it went OK Dingle.

My DS is 17 now and still as allergic as ever. He is currently applying to Universities and although I will be scraping myself off the ceiling when he goes away, I know he will cope. When he was the age of your DS and having his MMR I never thought I'd ever be able to let him out of my sight . . .

Another one whose allergic DS had the MMR on the advice of his consultant. He had it in the GP surgery and we had to wait in the waiting room for 30 mins after and get agreement from the nurse to leave. He was fine. He had allergies before and there was no change in them.