Measles is Coming Back. My Sister Isn’t.
With measles cases rising in the US and globally, I think of the life-changing damage she suffered from the now preventable disease
At the end of February 1960, my healthy, precocious sister Marcie was halfway through the fourth grade when she contracted measles from a classmate who lived down the street. Their cases were among the nearly 500,000 that year, before the measles vaccination program began in the U.S. in 1963. For every 1,000 people who get measles, one develops measles encephalitis, which can cause permanent brain damage. Marcie was one.
Although I think about Marcie every day, the recent rise in measles cases in the U.S. and around the world has me thinking about her even more.
I was only six years old at the time, but the gravity of my sister’s illness wasn’t lost on me (and today the very mention of the word measles resonates to my core). Marcie had been sick in bed with a high fever for a couple of days. House calls were common then, but something was different this time when the doctor arrived. Our house was quiet. Library quiet. As the pediatrician told my parents that my sister needed to be hospitalized, my fearless, happy-go-lucky mother fainted in front of us.
