I have the mark on my shoulder.
My Guatemalan mother has one as well. IIRC the particular TB vaccine she had more or less lifetime-bans her from giving blood, as she’s come up TB positive ever since, or something (I’m positive I’m misremembering part of that).
Mine is on my left calf. Born in Hong Kong.
I’m old enough that I’m positive I had smallpox inoculations. And I vaguely recall getting it. But I don’t have the scar. I don’t think it’s 100% guaranteed to happen.
Yup, me, too. A still very pronounced mark on my left deltoid.
Being old I have one as well. I don’t remember it being as bad as someone upthread mentioned though. Any idea how old most kids were when they got vaccinated back in the day?
I have a TB vaccination scar, we all got them in school, at 14 or so i guess.
My wife and I - being just shy of 50 - both have the smallpox vaccine scar. My wife’s in on her thigh while mine is on my shoulder.
I thought my kids had the scar on their thighs too, but I guess probably not. Does my not having a detailed knowledge of my daughters’ thighs make me a bad father or a good one?
And like Armondo’s Mom, I also occasionally test inconclusively positive for TB due to an odd reaction to the vaccine.
I also have chickenpox scars. Back in the day there was no standard vaccine for chickenpox of mumps, and if a kid in the neighborhood got either or those diseases, all the young parents would rush over to their house so that their young children would get it too. The logic being that chickenpox, measles and mumps were minor, one-and-done diseases if you got them as kids, but could have potentially debilitating consequences if you catch them as adults.
The past sucked a lot of the time. Stranger Things and That 70s Show kind of gloss over a lot of shit.
My wife studied in Japan, and stayed with a host family at the time. As a good host-daughter, she accompanied them on some family activities on weekends. One of these activities was visiting their grandfather in the hospital. As they went, the conversation went something like:
“Why is he in the hospital?”
“He has <translation unknown>.”
So they get the to hospital and he’s in a room off to the side somewhere with some other old men, the ward again having signs that my wife couldn’t read. They hang out for a couple of hours, and go home.
Years later, she goes to the doctor to get a blood test, and they tell her that she tested positive for TB and she’ll need a chest x-ray. As you may have guessed, the host grandfather had TB, and the room was the TB ward. The chest x-rays always come out clear, so she doesn’t have TB, but she’s been exposed to TB, and always tests positive for it, and hasn’t been able to give blood for years.
That’s terrifying!
But a fascinating story.
But terrifying!
Left shoulder for me.
That would make sense, if they quit doing it in 1972 I’d have been 12 at the time.
Left shoulder too. Under my dragon tattoo.
Yea, that was pretty common. I think me, my sister and my youngest brother all had chicken pox at the same time. We did that with my kids and somehow my wife became one of the lucky few who got it a second time.
And as adults, we can all now become familiar with shingles.
I assumed by now I would take the shot for it, but I remember hearing somewhere that it didn’t work that well. In fact there may be a new one out now. My grandfather had shingles and I now they gave him lots of trouble. My father-in-law has had them as well.
I know right? I just had my roof done.
Yes, there’s a new shingles vaccine, approved about a year ago. It’s supposed to be very effective.
I had shingles a few years ago, and it sucks.
This really blows. I know people think this is an old person thin, but I know some who had this show up in their thirties. It sounds… awful.
Yeah, I had a friend get it at 37. He said it was awful.