Who here has that polio vaccine pock mark on their arm?

I do!!! :)

kind of.

when the light is right

and you are stoned.

:)

and the polio vaccine was an oral vaccine...

There was no oral vaccine back in those days.

was a shot. Is...still available.

The pock marking is from smallpox vaccine. Mine has faded until it can hardly be seen.

My kids had oral polio vaccine, but I'm not sure if it was oral when I was a kid.

old, so it was 60 or 61.

I did have a scar from the small pox vac, but it has long since faded...

syringe, just like tetanus shots. Smallpox was blue goo that was put on your arm (or in my case upper thigh) and then poked several times with a needle to allow it to seep into the skin. It made a scab and a scar if it took properly.

I have had two actually ..Once as a baby and again to travel to Europe when I was 10. BAck then you have to have a revacc everytime you left the US. I also had boosters on typhoid and tetanus and a new one for me: typhus which made me sick as hell.

Now they don't even give smallpox anymore. My baby sis had one though, I remember it.

polio is transmitted orally but the vaccine was traditionally a shot.

she had her vaccinations as a small child? MMR was a shot. Polio had to be the liquid... I know I didn't dream it.

a liquid. In fact, according to wikipedia, the liquid came out only a few years after the shot. But it wasn't only orally. It was just an orally transmitted disease.

. . . but I think the liquid in the sugar cube replaced the polio vaccine shot.

It was something like that. :)

:freak:

That "Chocolate Mescaline" pill I took in 1973 made my face melt while I shaved in front of the mirror.

:evilfrown:

Well that'll teach you to stop shaving then.

that's how I got my polio vaccine...in a sugar cube. :)

dg

Mine was probably a shot too. (I'm 45)

But I have a mark from SOME vaccination. Maybe it's the tracking chip they inserted into my arm in 1969. I think El Dorado, Kansas was WAAAAYYY ahead of the curve.

Well, that and the alien breeding program's implantation of a tracking device and removal of a DNA sample. :tinfoilhat:

I don't have one, they quit giving them before I was born. My Dad's looks like somebody got his arm with a car cig lighter.

I have mine. I think they stopped giving them around '72 ish.

It must have been that all of those knife fights and gun battles in my youth cut or blew them away.

But it's faded...really hard to see now.

I thought it was for smallpox, though. Isn't polio the one they gave you in the sugar cube?

yup

Polio, even the non-oral kind, left no mark.

understood why I didn't.

as the antibody reaction is part of what causes the immunization site to fester and look infected, which in fact is exactly the process. It is a little mini case of smallpox ..some of my friends had really ugly ones.

My mom's was on her thigh and actully was as large as an adult thumbprint, so she made the dr put all of ours on our thighs too. Mine is much smaller than hers but still there.

so that the scar would be less noticeable. Mine is about the size of a quarter -- I had an intense reaction according to my mother.

The nurse lectured me so strongly about not picking the scab, I thought I wiped out the mark because I HAD messed with it so much (c'mon, kid? scab? there's gonna be messing). LOL I thought I was SUPPOSED to have a mark and I had "done wrong" because I didn't. Natural immunity, you say? Cool.

I've got one, but it's on my shoulder under my bra strap. The doc put it there for cosmetic reasons, so it would be hidden.

I got the polio vaccine before it was approved for general distribution in shot form in 1952, I believe, because I was exposed when my aunt came down with the disease. We had been to visit her in Florida, she had flu symptoms when we left, and by the time we got home to Ohio, we learned that she was in the hospital not expected to live through the night. I remember my folks rushing us to the doctor in the middle of the night and getting the shot, which was still experimental. Guess it worked, because none of us got sick. My aunt made what the doctors called "a miraculous recovery" and was home within two weeks with no lasting effects. We all dodged a bullet on that one.

In the early 60s. But I have a puckered scar under my left arm which I always thought was from a TB vaccine. Reading everyone else's posts, I bet it's smallpox after all.

Weren't we told in the paranoid beginning of this decade that this very same vaccine is expired and if the axis of evil ever got hold of the virus again we'd all be toast???

Took polio vaccine by eating it on a sugar cube back in the early '60s, (at Nichols Hills Elementary School.) It was so good, got back in line twice :rofl:

and also received 3 injections of Salk vaccine for Polio. No scars, though. That was when I was in 1st grade, and they came to the school to innoculate everyone. Then in 9th grade I also got the oral polio vaccine (on a sugar cube).

Polio vaccine is oral.

girls on the back of their shoulder instead of on their arm. He was a wise doc for the times. I think maybe he had daughters. The location and the tautness of the skin there left the scar almost invisible. I do have one, though.

:hi:

of vaccines in one:shrug:

They used to do yearly checks of our arms to make sure we'd had the vaccination. Problem? Mom made sure we got the shots that you could get on your back so my brother & I don't have a scar on our arms. We always had to go to the nurse's office & take off our shirts so she could see the scars & document them.

dg

When I was going to college, they repeated the vacination, but it was for small pox, not Polio.

I remember mine!

to enter the US. Somewhere I have the little blue card proving I was vaccinated before a trip to Ireland back in the 70's. I remember one of Grandma's friend wanted her vaccine up high on her thigh. Her doctor asked what she planned to do at Customs if they asked to see her scar. She got her vaccine on the arm.

I think it was stopped sometime in the 70's but not sure exactly what year.

Actually, I haven't looked recently. But it's probaby still there.

I got my first polio shot the summer before entering first grade. They bussed all the kids in the community to a school for the event--probably just when the vaccine was released for general use. (Was my early fear of "shots" just kid stuff--or were the syringes of that day bigger & stronger so they could withstand autoclaving?)

I also took the oral vaccine later.

and I remember falling off my bike. The scab ripped and bled and my Mom took me back to the doctor to have it checked out. I remember all of that.

hard to see it. :)

bifurcated needle dipped in vaccine; lots of short stabbing strokes to that drew blood. That's why the funky scar. I got my UNDER my arm, cause my mom didn't want it to be visible on top. Thanks Mom!

I still remember that it REALLY hurt when I got it.

The smallpox vaccine leaves a scar because it's given as a live virus.

However, I seem to remember that back in the late '40s to early '50s, when the Salk vaccine was first in trials, the vaccine was given as a live virus. There were many problems with this. The first inoculations were given in 1955.

Read all about it here:
http://tinyurl.com/mbe7n

And it was in the early '60s that there was a drive to inoculate all Americans by holding polio vaccine clinics at local schools and churches, and adminsitering it via a drop on a sugar cube.

Funny how everyone's scar is different. Mine is a little puffy moon shape.

My hubby's is damn near in the middle of his back...same side

If our parents would have read the literature on HALF DOSE smallpox that is out today, they would have NEVER let us get the vaccine. NEVER.

I have one about the size of a dime. My parents had them too. Dad's was about the size of a quarter. My Mom's was a huge double one that covered a large area of her upper arm. Seems I remember her saying the first one "didn't take" and she had to be vaccinated again.

Does anyone know when they stopped giving them? I know my children never received it..and the oldest was born in 74.



This link talks about the reaction area.

snip:
Vaccination site reactions are classified into two categories, “major reactions” and “equivocal reactions”. A major reaction indicates a successful vaccination, and is characterized by a pustular lesion or an area of definite induration or congestion surrounding a central lesion, which might be a scab or an ulcer.

www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/vaccination/statusprocedure.asp

afterward? My younger brother and myself had a major reaction to the shot, our arms swelled up to twice their size, incredibly red and painful, for at least a week!

Smallpox.

too bad I'm left-handed

I'm confused.

My older sisters both have the upper arm scar, but mine was different for some reason. I've always been glad of that, because it's much less visible.