Abigail Adams had it a lot harder than I did

The doctor drove the wagon to the front of their house. Lying in the back was a man dying of small pox with sores all over his body. She had her five children waiting. For each of them, the doctor cut their skin with a knife that didn't seem any cleaner than a kitchen knife. Inside this cut he placed a small bit of skin that was taken from the sores of the man lying in the wagon.

It may be a fictional account but this was what I was horrified by watching the miniseries John Adams. Abigail Adams was a brave woman to expose herself and her children to a small specimen of this live illness in the hopes that it would help to protect them. The risk was that they would die because their bodies could not fight it. How far science has come that we only have to stand in line for awhile to have a dead virus, one that can not actually cause the illness itself, injected quickly and safely into our children to protect them.

The whole process was harder on me because I was afraid that she would cry. I gave her a does of Tylenol before we left and I can honestly say that except for two short wimpers, Sweet One has been acting like her normal self. Actually, she's been easier to deal with than she was for a good part of today.