Not just red spots

Measles is going around again, in Texas and New Mexico. When I was a child, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it was considered “just another childhood illness” that we were supposed to endure and get past — because there was no alternative. The vaccine for it didn’t exist yet.

What nobody told us were some of the side effects, like pneumonia, severe diarrhea, vision problems. Or encephalitis, swelling of the brain, leading to coma and death. Maybe they didn’t want to scare parents.

I know a bit about measles because I had them when I was 6, and 8, and 10, and 16. Like COVID, the virus mutated a bit and kept coming back, and because it apparently rewrote some of my immune system each time, it got worse and worse.

Did you ever brush up against poison ivy by accident? Imagine that itch on your whole body. That didn’t change, each time. I remember Mom using up a bottle of calamine lotion, painting all my spots so I wouldn’t scratch them when I was in the first two or three times.

The room had to be kept dark because bright or even normal light hurt my eyes. And I felt hot, and didn’t want to eat, except ice cream.

But what I remember most is from the last time — a near-death experience.

I remember feeling weak, too weak to raise my arm from where it lay on the pillow. I remember trying, and deciding to leave it there even though I could feel a cramp in my shoulder. And then my consciousness was a fluffy light hovering up in the far corner of the bedroom, trying to figure out what it was doing there. It looked around and found my body lying in bed unmoving, with that arm in a position that looked uncomfortable.

I watched as my parents came in, carefully picked my body up from the bed and carried me into the bathroom. Then they put me in the bathtub that was full of ice.

It felt comfortably cool, honestly, compared with how hot I’d been for days on end. Like diving into a swimming pool on an August day.

Then the fever broke, and it was cold and I felt my consciousness rush back into my body, and I thrashed around weakly, hitting ice cubes with my hands. There must have been several full bags of ice in that tub along with the cold water.

I learned later that I’d had a 105.6 fever for a week, and the doctor had told my parents to put me in ice to stop progress toward encephalitis.

It took much of the rest of the summer to recover from that.

Nobody should have to go through severe illness because RFKjr is mouthing off about things he knows nothing about.

If you need the vaccine for measles, get it. If you can avoid an outbreak, avoid it. If someone you know gets it and their fever won’t go down, use the ice before it goes too long.

It’s not a harmless disease of blotchy skin, not at all.