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Kirk’s Story - 20+ years ago  

– December 13, 1999

 

It was a routine visit to the farm in Wynyard that the story begins. The day was painfully uneventful until 2 mid afternoon, when Kirklan was observed lying on the floor staring and drooling and struggling to respond to our calls of concern.

Immediately assuming the worst, that he had swallowed something, we quickly examined his mouth and throat and packed him up to head to Wynyard hospital. We arrived there and presented Kirklan to a doctor that didn’t know what to do. He examined Kirk and with the encouragement of a Pediatric EMT the decision was made to send him to the Royal University hospital in Saskatoon.

 

Midway through the trip, Kirk’s condition improved. His oxygen levels began to rise and he was beginning to respond normally. When we arrived at the hospital Kirk was fine. Doctor’s examined him and found all his vitals to be normal and sent us home. All seemed fine yet puzzling. The next day Kirk began what would be the beginning of the rest of his painful life.

 

Again that evening on the 13th of December, he had begun drooling and staring uncontrollably and yet trying to make eye contact. We packed him up and went back to emergency where we spent the first two hours watching him have undiagnosed staring spells. They put him on machines to monitor his breathing and oxygen levels in his blood. As it became clear they were slowly worsening they admitted him to hospital. As the situation became grave the nurse ushered us into another room where we were told to call family.

 

After a half hour to 45 minutes since we’d seen our son and no one had told us anything. The doctor finally introduced himself and explained tht Kirk was having many seizures, and that they had managed to stop them with anti-seizure meds. 

 

On the 17th prior to discharge from hospital, Kirk again lapsed into intractable multiple seizures. They administered a heavy dose of IV Ativan until the seizures seemed to stop. Hours later we came to realize he hadn’t yet stopped seizing and we called for the doctor on call to return.

 

When he arrived he tried to interrupt his seizures with Ativan and Dilantin, which didn’t seem to work until just before they were advising admitting him to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and putting him on a ventilator. He began to respond and return, but they decided all would sleep better having him monitored closer and ventilated.

 

The following days and weeks were a blur. Numerous blood tests and EEG’s, and Kirk more or less vegetative on the intense anticonvulsive drugs that were prescribed to keep it from seizing out of control.

 

Now began the questions. To the best of our knowledge nothing out of the ordinary precipitated the onset of the event. Racking our brains, we remembered feeling that something wasn’t quite right a week previously when Kirk had stared vacantly prior to our leaving for our Christmas party and since then she noticed similar stares which she had simply dismissed. The first of these staring episodes appeared within 72 hours of his shot.

 

In mentioning this to all the attending staff it was quickly dismissed in favor of investigation. They began searching for anything but that may have triggered these seizures. At this time, Kirk was reacting to the drugs with rashes around his mouth and lips, groin, bum. He had received the parting gift of a cold when leaving the PICU and was barely coherent. He was placed in a room for quarantine pending tests for meningitis and other neurological diseases. During the next weeks and months, he went through several EEG’s, a CAT scan, complete blood and body fluid workup, muscle and skin biopsies, a spinal tap, genetic history screening and an MRI. None proved fruitful and yet still no consideration of a vaccine trigger. I had gone back to work and mom notified her employers that she would have to take a leave of absence.

 

Our son Kirk was never the same. Confirmed at the MAYO clinic and his pediatrician, he was by all measures a normal healthy 6 month old that was reaching all his milestones. He was sitting, rolling over, saying da, ma, up, focused on objects and people, in short everything a healthy 6 month old baby should be doing.

 

More than a year later and he didn’t say anything, could barely roll over or sit unaided, focus on any objects or people, rocked back and forth, has distant vacant eyes and displayed autistic tendencies. 

 

Kirk’s injury happened virtually overnight on December 13, 1999, exactly 12 days after his second diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, haemophilus influenza B, and inactivated polio vaccination at age 6 months. Even though the CDC records thousands of reactions post-immunization with redness and swelling at the site of injection up to 14 days after, they are inexplicably able to discount Kirk's immune reaction days after without justification.

 

In the following months and years we became as educated as we could, seeking out experts, undertaking trips to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, the Johns Hopkin Centre in Baltimore, their ketogenic team in Edmonton, the Gordon Pomares Centre and homeopathic clinics in Calgary, Saskatoon and Winnipeg, investigating various on-line resources as well as consulting with Kirk’s numerous specialist, doctors and at least 10 pediatric neurologists.

 

At the same time I researched the vaccine and it's origins as well as trial data from Sweden, US and Canada ( it was on trial at the time Kirk received his in 1999 though no one was told). Corresponded with the maker, the Centre for Disease Control, a legal expert, met with two Chief Medical Officers in Sask, wrote the minister of heath, american senators, the head of the National Vaccine Information Centre and our equivalent VRAN in Canada. Through the included letter to Sask Health, we even managed to get a bill passed with Kirk's name attached through parliament requiring suspect injury reporting be mandatory in Saskatchewan. Some things have changed for the better, including the way they treat post-vaccine seizures. 

 

As the events of the last 17 years unfolded, what is left in retrospect, is the measure of untold pain of watching Kirklan struggle through daily seizures. New methodology may be too late for Kirk and even with several anti-convulsive therapies we still see seizure clusters, the beginning of which were mere hours post vaccination.

 

Kirk was diagnosed with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome of idiopathic origin in 2003.

 

 

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