Re: Women getting rubella despite vaccinations

This same thing happened to me and my son. I had been vaccinated for rubella approximately 4 years prior. My son was vaccinated 1 year before we both got the wild strain. My son was 2 when he was vaccinated and had an adverse reaction, high fever and slept for 48 hours and had health problems following, mainly he got sick frequently and more severely than other children - which had not been the case before. So, in our family at the time we got the wild strain of rubella (German measles), there were four of us including my husband and another baby daughter, who was 1 y.o. but she had not had any vaccines. Yet, the unvaccinated in the home were well and did not catch it, only my son and I got it. My son, who is a sweetheart, had uncharacteristicly poor behavior the day before he broke out in the rash all over his body. A few days later, I developed some weird symptoms but most notably a severe and bizarre arthritis, mainly in my knees and some fingers that lasted for one month. I was seven weeks pregnant at the time and when I realized what I probably had, I was just terrified for my unborn child. I was never able to relax until they did a high level ultrasound at five months which showed all the baby's organs were normal. I found a journal article citing this exact same phenomenon of catching a wild strain after immunization, and it seemed that about 50% of the women had a child born with rubella damage. I took the article to my obstetrician at the time, he told me he basically could not be bothered to read it "he might read it if he had nothing better to do". Under duress, he arranged for me to have the blood tests done to confirm it but I was informed a few weeks later that they had not taken enough blood to do the two tests required and now we were out of the time window where antibodies would be elevated. The local hospital pathologist phoned me and he agreed that the symptoms my son and I had were symptoms of rubella. My son's pediatrician, said "don't come into the office, stay home" that's it. I felt so alone. I believe this disease should have been reported but it wasn't. I thank God my child was born healthy and is very bright but it did amaze me that the only two people in the house that got this were the only two that had been supposedly immunized. Tweet