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By Elizabeth Chuck
Deb Horning, a survivor of a rare form of acute leukemia, never leaves her home without a hand sanitizer, wipes and face mask.
She recently went to her son's high school to ask what percentage of students had been vaccinated against measles. Next month, the mother of four in Billings, Montana, is expected to travel to Chicago, her hometown – a trip she plans to cancel, for fear of exposing her to measles, a disease that has been declared eliminated in the United States and is now exploding. in epidemics across the country.
Horning was diagnosed with blood cancer in October 2014 and was told that his type had a 25% chance of surviving. After intensive chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, her leukemia is now in remission. But the treatment wiped out her immune system, leaving her "like a newborn baby," she said.
As a result, Horning, 47, does not have any natural protection against contagious diseases and is likely to contract more seriously what she catches. Measles, a systemic infection, could kill her.
"All the things I've had to deal with – I've survived all that – just to get run over by measles – I did not experience all that for that."
"I think washing your hands is huge, but it's not going to save me from measles, and yes, I'm panicked by that," Horning said. "All the things I've had to deal with – I've survived all that – just to get run over by measles – I did not experience all that for that."
There have been more than 760 cases of measles in America this year – the highest number in 25 years. The disease, a common childhood disease decades ago that could now be prevented with vaccines, was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, but has increased in 2019, with cases in 23 states up to 19 years old. ;now.
Movie theaters, cruise ships and planes are very often spotted by measles. Thus, people with weakened immune systems and their families are changing their daily routines to avoid contracting this highly contagious disease. They move away from public spaces, make panicked calls to their doctors, and turn to social media to implore those who can get vaccinated.
And unlike vaccine-reluctant parents who choose not to give their children measles, mumps and rubella, or the MMR vaccine, vaccine based on arguments refuted by science or those who oppose for religious reasons, many with weakened immunity desperately want to be vaccinated themselves – but can not.
Horning received all of his vaccinations well before his cancer. But his treatment for leukemia removed them from the memory of his immune system.
She is eligible to be vaccinated against certain diseases, such as the flu. But as she developed a transplant-versus-host disease after receiving a stem cell transplant from her sister in February 2015, where transplanted stem cells attack her body, she must take immunosuppressive medications.
These drugs mean that she can not receive live vaccines like MMR because unlike a healthy person whose immune system will respond to a small dose of a disease by creating antibodies, this one would not do it. Her doctors tell her that she has to wait two years after she has stopped taking immunosuppressants before she can be vaccinated, and they are not yet ready to remove him.
No measles outbreak has been reported in Montana, where Horning lives, but she has frequently accessed the disease control and prevention centers' website to locate cases.
A future trip to Chicago that she has been planning for five years, even before having leukemia, makes her nervous. She is supposed to meet a long-time friend who does not vaccinate her children. Horning is considering canceling the meeting, or even the entire trip.
Horning is not alone. At the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York – the state that has experienced the highest number of measles cases this year – Dr. Miguel Perales, medical oncologist and deputy chief of the bone marrow transplant department, said at just about all of his patients how to protect themselves from measles.
"They are afraid to rub shoulders with children, to go to the movies, to the shop, wherever there are children," he said. "Patients are very worried about their risk of exposure, not just immediate exposure, but indirect exposure through other family members, from Other children. "
Perales advises patients to wear a mask and a pair of gloves in their pocket and put them in public with large groups of people.
"These are patients who have life – threatening illnesses and we have given them a treatment that can cure them, and there are risks, but having this extra risk, which in my mind was preventable, is just the only thing I can do. aggravate."
"There is a limit to what we can say," he said. "It's very frustrating, of course, these are patients who have life-threatening illnesses and we've given them a cure that can cure them, and there are risks, but having that extra risk, which in my mind was preventable, makes it worse. "
Dr. Bill Moss, epidemiologist, pediatrician and acting executive director of the International Access Center for Vaccines at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that much of the research carried out on the effects of measles on immunocompromised individuals were those with HIV.
"Immunocompromised people are more likely to get measles, to die from measles, and to have unusual manifestations," he said, adding that he may not develop the recognizable rash that is usually associated with measles. measles. undiagnosed virus longer.
The virus is transmitted by respiratory droplets when infected people talk, sneeze or cough. It can also stay suspended in the air for a few hours once an infected person leaves the premises, said Moss.
"Obviously, the best protection is vaccination, but if that's not possible, you have to be very careful in case of a measles outbreak in an area." Try to avoid such places. " -he declares.
That's what Horning, Montana's mother, intends to do.
"Wherever I go now, I think about it," she says. "When I was shopping, it came back to my mind:" I could easily get sick. "But now it's in my head."
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