The couple’s third child, 6-month-old Michaela, had just suffered a serious seizure and was at a nearby hospital. As Cossolotto raced to be with the baby, she immediately remembered that Michaela had been running a fever after receiving a vaccine against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT) three days earlier.
“I thought the shot must have something to do with it,” Cossolotto recalled. “I had three kids, and nothing like this had ever happened, so what else could it have been?”
At the hospital, doctors reassured her that Michaela had suffered a febrile seizure, a frightening and usually harmless event they said was unlikely to recur. As a precaution, the baby was admitted for observation. Hours later, after doctors had trouble controlling a second, more severe seizure, the infant was whisked by helicopter to a larger hospital in Des Moines, 100 miles north.
That night in July 1997 marked the beginning of a 10 1/2-year ordeal, as more than a dozen specialists in four states tried without success to find an underlying cause for Michaela’s frequent, intractable seizures — and a treatment that would control them before they caused irreparable brain damage or death.
For years Cossolotto held the DPT shot responsible for Michaela’s problems, joining legions of parents who have blamed various ingredients in pediatric vaccines for triggering serious medical and developmental ills, most notably autism.
Source: Bangor Daily News
GO. READ THE REST OF THIS STORY AT THE LINK ABOVE.
These parents were convinced their child had autism that was triggered by the vaccination. But that was NOT the truth. She was diagnosed with allergies and did not have additional vaccinations. Finally, a specialist had the girl tested for a rare and serious seizure disorder called Dravet syndrome. It is triggered by a fever, not the vaccine. This story had a conclusion. It was NOT the mistaken conclusions that so many parents of autistic children still stick to.
I hope this story gets more attention.
Without a diagnosis, Cossolotto said, she would probably still believe — erroneously — that the DPT shot caused Michaela’s illness. “I understand this is a genetic condition,” she said. “Having an answer does make a difference.”