Assurances Are Given and a Deputy Goes Home, but Ebola Fears Persist [Major Barf]

DALLAS — So far, there is no evidence the Ebola virus has spread in this vast metropolitan area of 6.5 million people. But fear has.

Fearing infection, dozens of parents kept their children home. At Armstrong Elementary School in the affluent Highland Park neighborhood, 91 students — one sixth of the school’s total — were absent Thursday after rumors spread among parents.

From family, who lives down there.

Talking about “sports stars” is meaningless.

And I was talking about grammar schools; about which, I just had a conversation about, with people who live there.

Very true, I was a little girl before the polio vaccine which I got as a teenager. I remember being a little afraid when I saw a lady in an iron lung at the fair.

I only know about actual quarantines from my mother who had lots of stories to tell about them being placed on peoples' houses. In my girlish mind, I thought that would be hard on the people quarantined and also a stigma.

I had about everything, didn't know what we called the hard measles or German measles could kill. I remember those, was sick in bed for 2 weeks and the light hurts your eyes.

Had the rest except mumps I got much later, very sick, was exposed to a girl who was the daughter of a woman who was going to alter some coats for my mother. Evidently the girl had either scarlet fever or scarlet teena, but she died, my sister and I caught it because we had been by her bed talking to her, not touching her, but we got the milder version scarlet teena which didn't make us very sick, just a rash.

I remember going into a large crowded room with my mother when I was about 4 years old, and after a while waiting in that room, a doctor gave me a sugar cube to eat. I guess, because of the large vaccination campaigns like that one in the early 1960s, I have never seen someone with polio.

I had mumps and chickenpox, but none of the other diseases normally vaccinated against in childhood. I had to get the measles vaccine before I was allowed to attend college.

I wish there would have been a chickenpox vaccine. I think my bout of shingles a couple years ago has had permanent consequences. When I got shingles, the doctor told me I would be contagious to pregnant women, so I very carefully avoided the two pregnant women at work until the rash was healed.

I vaguely remember the sugar cube. I got a shot and things went black while I was crossing the street downtown. My gf who went to a different dr had the same thing happen. It was scary but it passed rather quickly. I have only seen two recovered victims of polio. The lady in the iron lung was probably being paid to demonstrate, doubtful if she was an active case. One had a lame shrivelled arm, and the other had one weaker leg which was skinnier than the other. It didn't stop them from having happy married lives as adults.

I did have chickenpox, never particularly worried about shingles. Well, my second cousin's wife has had a terrible time with them but I thought she was in remission. I don't think it was coincidence when my resistance was down from stress, I saw her for the first time in years, we talked, then she gave me a big hug.

I started getting an itch on my back which almost hurt, went to the dr right away, used a topical cortizone, was lucky that it was a mild case and they went away. Now there is a shingles vaccine I am not inclined to get but will regret if i get a bad recurrence of shingles.

My cousin's wife was so bad for so long, the doctors weren't helping, lived in a rual area far from the best. So my cousin started searching around and found what I would suppose might be a homeopathy remedy, but whatever it was, it did the trick.

You can only get shingles if you have already had chickenpox. The chickenpox virus lives in your nerves, and then reactivates to cause shingles.

The shingles vaccine is not recommended for anyone less than age 60. But I will ask for it anyway, since getting shingles does not protect you from getting it again.

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