Yesterday I went to Walgreens and got a Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine (MMR).

Now I’m of an age where getting immunized as a child was normal. You weren’t allowed to attend school without a vaccination record. That also meant that while there was a bit more crying in pediatrician offices, none of us got sick and died.

Now that measles is back in the population, I wanted to see if my old shot still provided protection. I reached out to my care provider who said that it was advisable to get an updated vaccine, and I found this article on NPR that said the same:

If you were vaccinated between 1968 and 1989, you likely received just one dose of the measles vaccine, instead of the two doses that are standard today. One dose alone is highly effective and for most people, it provides more than enough protection, says Dr. Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in New York City and author of Booster Shots, a book on the history of measles.

But Ratner says there are several situations in which the CDC recommends an additional dose of measles vaccine for adults who are considered at high risk. That includes people who are in college settings, work in health care, live or are in close contact with immunocompromised people, or are traveling internationally.

I do travel a lot and I’m around hundreds if not thousands of people at conferences, so I thought it was wise to get another shot.

My family has an interesting story with respect to vaccines. We were originally from southwestern Pennsylvania, and my dad grew up in Daisytown, a mining community so small it wasn’t even on a map.

In the summer of 1950, when my Dad was 10 and spending his days playing with his cousins, one of them, Jim Sarkett, contracted polio. Sarkett was my grandmother’s maiden name.

My grandmother was extremely upset. Polio is highly contagious and it can be crippling and even fatal. Luckily my Dad did not contract the disease.

We don’t hear that much about polio anymore because there is an effective vaccine for it. The first one was developed at the University of Pittsburgh by Jonas Salk. To make the vaccine he needed samples of the live virus.

Since Daisytown is relatively close to Pittsburgh, Jim Sarkett ended up being one of the virus donors used to create it. Three vials used to make the vaccine are displayed in the Smithsonian Institute, but they misspelled his name as “Saukett”. Today it is still known as the Saukett strain.

Daisytown is now on the map.