From Unvaccinated Child to Epidemiologist

Through the Looking Glass I remember the day I found out I was unvaccinated. I was struggling through the digital forms that would allow me to live on campus my freshman year of college, and I had to provide documentation that I was vaccinated appropriately. I yelled downstairs to ask my mom if she had the documents. “No” she shouted back. “What? Where is it? What do you mean” I peppered her, finally leaving my room to come downstairs to the living room. “It doesn’t exist,” she said. I was stunned. She walked down the narrow basement stairs to rummage in the filing cabinet that held all my documents, and she returned from the depths of the storage room with a folded yellow card with my name and date of birth on it in her handwriting. Inside, the card was blank except for two lines – a polio vaccination and a tetanus shot at age two. Living in a state with quite strict rules about vaccine exemptions, I had no choice – I had to get vaccinate...