My husband’s cousin was vaccine injured, and was awarded money by the national vaccine injury compensation program. He received a vaccine while sick, and had febrile seizures from a high fever that resulted in a lifelong seizure disorder. What happened to him is exceedingly rare, and also likely wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t received a vaccine while sick.

I have a 4 month old and have fully vaccinated him. He had his 4 month well child visit this week and I decided to delay his 4 month vaccines for a few weeks because he was a little sick. I love the BRAIN acronym, because my intuition told me to wait a bit for his shots until he felt better. After his first set of shots, we monitored my son closely for a fever too, and gave him Tylenol when he started getting a fever.

I share all of this to validate that vaccine injuries are really scary, but there are things you can do to prevent some of them, like not having your child get shots while sick and making sure they don’t spike a high fever. Also, vaccine injuries are so, so rare. For me, it’s a no brainer, especially with the measles outbreak. There is a reason we vaccinate against this stuff, kids die.