issues with child immunizations

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spark73
spark73 Member Posts: 2
edited December 2014 in Managing Side Effects of Breast Cancer and Its Treatment

Hello,

my wife was diagnosed with bc, had a mastectomy and is now undergoing chemotherapy. She is on two different chemo drugs whose names elude me at the moment (dioxy-something-or-other, the red one, and cyto-something-or-other, the clear one).

The concern is that our one year old son just had his immunizations, and it completely slipped my mind (and apparently, theirs as well) to see if there were any issues with immunizing a child when someone in the house was immunosupressed. He had his measles, mumps, chicken pox, and hep A vaccines on Monday.

Some internet research turned up that chicken pox is the only thing that has a "live virus" for the immunization. My wife's mom said that she's pretty sure she had the chicken pox immunization as a kid, but if she didn't, are there things we need to avoid? Basically, it's possible for the virus to "shed" to other people.

We're waiting on a reply from the oncologist at the moment, but I'm wondering if anyone else has any experience with this?


Thanks so much -


steve

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  • leggo
    leggo Member Posts: 3,293
    edited December 2014

    Hi Spark. My baby had his immunizations when I was going through treatment. The health nurse did tell me to keep a distance but that was totally impractical.  I had no problems, even when my blood counts were extremely low, like 1. I guess not to say it couldn't be a problem, but it wasn't for me. Best wishes to you and your wife and I hope her treatments are uneventful.

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  • Kicks
    Kicks Member Posts: 4,131
    edited December 2014

    I was not around any little kids while on chemo and don't remember what I was told during either Chemo Education classes (it was written in the book I was given). I was current on all my 'normal/usual' shots when DXd. The flu shot for that year was not ready when I was DXd but was told to get it as soon as it was available - which I did. I had not had a Shingles shot but was told not to get it during Chemo but to wait til after through with them and rads which I did.

    When I saw the title, my first thought went to a different scenario. The fact that as great as vaccines are and work fantastic for almost all - they don't for everyone. Our bodies are each unique and some will not developed immunity from a vaccine. Only a titre can show if there is immunity.

    Edit added: Your wife is probably on A/C - Adriamycin (doxorubicin) and Cytoxan (cyclophosphamine). This is a fairly common combination.

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  • Leah_S
    Leah_S Member Posts: 8,458
    edited December 2014

    The only one I know that is problematic is the oral polio vaccine.

    Leah

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