I am a textbook “Type-B” mom. I do not know what tomorrow’s spirit week theme is, I cannot keep track of my kids’ sports’ calendars, and I will never remember what time my three kids were born. If you need someone to start a dance party when we are already late, I’m your girl. 

The one schedule I have always been on top of, however, is vaccinations. My son Milo was born during a whooping cough outbreak in 2013 — that I do remember with chilling clarity. I have taken my kids for every recommended shot, and I am an evangelist about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. 

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As vaccine skepticism and voluntary opting-out have increased over my kids’ lifetimes, so has the spread and severity of many formerly eradicated or previously not-that-harmful-in-the-healthy-population diseases. When this happens, even the vaccinated population is at increased risk of serious viral complications. 

Our whole family got the flu in February, despite being vaccinated. I had heard the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) refer to 2025 - 2026 as a "surprisingly fierce season” but didn’t realize just how fierce until it was sitting on my living room couch. A variety of things go into a bad year, including mutations that make the vaccine less effective and, importantly, declining vaccination rates. The childhood influenza vaccination rate has continued to decline. 

The Unthinkable

Everyone in our house recovered within days, except for Milo, age 12. What started as a standard flu turned into weeks of constant dizziness and throwing up from a very rare central nervous system reaction to a viral infection. When he was able to keep some food down and feel human again, we let him play in his basketball game. Like lightning striking twice, he suffered a concussion when he was already in a compromised state. 

That double hit sent Milo into a tailspin. For months, he experienced crippling migraines and sensory overload. He lost the ability to walk or keep any food down. Suddenly, my energetic 12-year-old who lived for sports and got straight As was lying in a sterile hospital room, hooked up to a feeding tube after losing more than 20 pounds. He missed the entire second half of 6th grade. For months, three hospital systems struggled to properly diagnose and treat his complex array of illness, injury, and symptoms. 

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Eventually, he was able to regain weight, strength, and much of his function with intense rehabilitative care. He just started back to school for the first time since February. We are still not totally out of the woods, and some symptoms linger. 

An Everyday Act of Collective Care

As a proud Type-B mom, I strongly advise against living life planning for the worst case scenario (that’s what my Type-A coparent is for), and I’m not sharing what happened to Milo to elicit that reaction. Rather, I hope it serves as a reminder that slowing the spread and severity of illness through vaccination keeps the unimaginable at bay. Several compounding factors led to Milo’s illness, but it started with a very bad flu year, which is quite preventable in our modern scientific age. 

We talk so much about community and “the village” it takes to raise our kids — getting vaccinated is simply the medical version of that safety net. It’s a quiet, everyday act of collective care and a way of saying, “I’ll help look out for your kids, and you help look out for mine.”

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