I’ve been hearing a lot about measles in the news lately so I call my son’s pediatrician’s office and leave a voice message asking if he is up to date on his shots/vaccinations. The nurse calls back and can’t say anything at all because my live isn’t “secure” and we have far too many privacy laws in this country that are nonsensical. But, anyway, we get ahold of each other and she informs me he has had his measles vaccinations but needs some other shot. She also says his account has been “deactivated.”
We haven’t had an appointment in 5 years so they deactivated us. I get that straightened out and bring him in for the shot and a physical from a real doctor. He is 17. His older brother is 20. He is all mad because he is missing a day of school. He also doesn’t want a physical because he does that at school as part of his school’s fund raising activities. He tells me to cancel the physical and just get him the shot he needs but he is mad about that too because they will be doing testing this week in the sport he plays and he can’t lift if his arm is hurting. So he is all mad about everything.
The doctor walks in.
She’s an older lady, I am guessing she is Italian.
She proceeds to give him a physical and she starts it out by giving him a lecture about talking to his parents. She says no one in his life will care for him more than his parents. She hasn’t even touched him yet and she starts right in on him. Ninety five precent of what she said sounded like I had written it for her. She tells him his friends didn’t know anything more than he does about life and that kids make mistakes because they think they’re invincible. She informs us that 70% of kids 18 to 24 have HPV and recommends a vaccination for that later once the new vaccination is ready.
Anyway, it was perfect timing. He is like a new kid again. He has been a great kid to raise but lately he was at that stubborn knows everything only listens to his friends age and I was losing him. This doctor did me an shim a huge favor. A big part of her message to him was to talk to his parents and not keep secrets. So, sure enough, during the exam he reveals that his ankle has been bothering him since last season when he twisted it and then hurt it again over the winter break and I had no clue. But way more than his ankle we talked in the car the whole way home and he is listening to me again.
The point is if you haven’t had an old fashioned doctor’s visit in a while, if you were doing what we were doing, just letting the school do sports physicals, you might want to do what I did and take him or her in for a real visit. Maybe you will get as lucky as I did.
Almost every experience I’ve heard from either our physicians or those of the kids of friends say those kinds of conversations are held at well-child visits. They also will ask the parent to leave the room so that if there is anything the child wants to talk about that they’re not comfortable mentioning in front of the parent, they have a chance to. I know lots of parents don’t like this, but it is crucial for kids to establish a trusting relationship with someone who has their best physical health in their best interest. Yes, these visits turn into more than just a physical as they get older. Lots of things to talk about other than updated vaccines.
What updated HPV vaccine is she talking about? There is already a HPV vaccine that is recommended for girls, but I know a lot of boys who are getting it and have been for at least five years.
I’m not sure what updated HPV vaccine she was talking about. She said there was a new vaccination on the way so we might as well wait for it. She said he could stay at his pediatrician until he is out of high school even if he turns 18 first which is also good news.
He was all miffed and worried about his arm/shoulder being sore but emeraldkity you are right, you must have a medical background, the vaccination went into his muscle not his veins and he was advised to move it around to avoid stiffness and soreness and it worked. He thought the weight lifting testing was either this week or next week but he knew it would happen before Spring Break. Spg Break down here is next week for most schools.
Anyway, he comes home all happy because he made the 700 lb club so the testing was earlier than he expected and it happened to be on the day of the shot but he made it anyway. He worked for it, and he go it, I was thrilled for him. It was a darn good visit except for one thing. His height was 5"6 and a quarter. He was sure he was my height but he is still an inch and a half shorter than me. This is a big issue in our household because I am short for a guy and my wife is major league short (under 5) so genetically he gets a double dose and he was born premature so he started out small.
I told him, hell, I never thought he get as close to me as he already is but that didn’t cheer him up much. She looked at the growth charts and told him she thought he was done growing. That was rough. Here he is walking around thinking he is already my height and it turns out he isn’t and he is probably done. I’m not sure. I gained an inch in height and 20 solid pounds of weight after high school, good weight, and his brother gained a solid inch, probably an inch and a half after high school, and added good weight also.
So there is hope. We are, hopefully, late bloomers.
My older son doesn’t really have issues like this. He also does pretty well in school and on standardized tests and what not. He isn’t a national merit scholar or anything but he does have a Bright Futures scholarship (we are in FL). But my youngest son isn’t as fortunate. He has to work harder at things his brother, and even me, found easy so I openly favor him some much to my wife’s chagrin.
I don’t know about a new HPV shot being in the works, but your sons should get one anyway. They’re not just for protecting women from cervical cancer. From the CDC:
Congratulations on your old fashioned doctor’s visit!
The doctor told us that 70% of persons ages 18-24 have contracted HPV. I’m pretty sure I heard her correctly. That seems awfully high to me. I asked her if it was sexually transmitted. She said yes. I then said, so that means 70% of people ages 18-24 have had sex? She said yes again. At least 70% because I don’t think everyone having sex gets HPV.
Doesn’t 70% seem awfully high for that age range or am I hopelessly naive?
She gave us a paper about HPV and the stats cited in that paper suggest far lower infection rates. The paper also says “HPV is usually spread through sexual contact.” Okay. Usually. But not always?
Anyway, I have serious respect for the men and women who work in health care and I don’t expect stats to be perfectly right I raise this just as food for thought since this is a parent cafe. As far as the height issue, it seems like all boys my sons age are 6 feet tall so we will just have to deal with that. I can’t tell you how much treasure I’d be willing to sacrifice to get him to at least 5"8. But if he doesn’t make it, I’ll find some way to make it up to him, since it is my shortness that is probably holding him back (and like I said his mom isn’t tall either).
Those rates for sexual activity sound about right to me. Just from a quick google search, I found this factoid from the Kinsey Institute (and this is a 2005 survey):
89% of males surveyed had had sexual intercourse by age 24
92% of females surveyed had had sexual intercourse before age 24
Your son was 17 and hadn’t been to the doctor since age 12? What about his annual physical? Our kids went for those whenever our insurance allowed it…never missed one. Builds good habits in terms of well care visits!
The new HPV is Gardasil 9. It protects against 9 strains instead of 2, blocking 90% instead of 70% of HPV causing viruses.
They should’ve been released in February but I’m not sure if it was. You should ask your pediatrician when they plan on receiving it.
And yes, the vast, VAST majority of Americans have sex before the age of 24.
As for being passed non-sexually, yes it is possible. There are other ways for bodily fluids to pass form one individual to another. However, you can assume that if you have HPV or your child has HPV then you got it through sexual contact. Other instances are almost non-existent.
Thanks again. Good solid information. I appreciate that. And, I do think my 17 YO has been there within the least 5 years but, as I mentioned, he has had annual physicals at school which is one of the schools fund raisers. That, however, is a perfunctory exam and, lets put it this way, they don’t really want to disqualify anyone, so I’m not sure how medically sound it is. I kind of liked this exam because it went well beyond just medical which makes sense since to really treat humans you have to understand how human behavior can lead to medical conditions. Doctors, therefore, have to think holistically. I really do greatly admire that profession.
I suppose if we are talking 18-24, yeah, most people are sexually active. Of course, I’m sitting there looking at my 17 year old son so when that topic came up … it was a little hard to fantom for me. He is still just a kid :-).
According to the CDC, non-sexual transmission of HPV is exceedingly rare - and even in those cases, it is mostly transmission from a mother to her newborn.
Scout, I recently chatted with an MD involved in HPV diagnostics. The doc said some new data coming out suggests non-sexual transmission of this highly contagious virus could be more common than we used to think.
Interesting about sports physicals. Our schools never offered them - instead, they required the parents to provide the form filled by the child’s physician during annual check-up or specially scheduled appointment.
It was mentioned to me during a brief chat at a large gathering. Next time I’m there, I will have to ask if there are any publications out yet. So far, my cursory pubmed search was not successful. I would imagine such studies on population level would be hard to control for obvious reasons!
You can see, from simple visits like this, why Apple and other companies, have such high hopes for “wearable technology” that will. amongst other things, tell you what’s going on in your body much like a car’s technology can tell you when you need an oil change.
Saw something on new HPV during medical segment of Today show recently.
We were lucky that our insurance paid for well child visits every year, so I kept taking the girls. As they got older I worked on them communicating with doctor. D1 actually communicated with him during college and he always called her back. I hated to age out of pediatrician! He is a wonderful man. We did use walk-in clinics for sports physicals when they were needed at odd times of year but most of the time the pediatrician would fill out info without seeing them again if they’d been in within a year.
This kind of thing is why we (pediatricians) so strongly recommend well child/teen care and ‘real’ checkups and don’t like the assembly line convenience of sports physicals given at schools, doc in a box offices, etc. It’s not because we mourn lost money. Well child care is actually not very lucrative because of the time commitment for a good one. It’s what we call a ‘medical home’-- where every patient has a doctor and office who knows her/him and their medical history. In peds even more important bc we get to know the parents and whole family so well. I know it’s not always done well, but for the most part, that’s how pediatricians (and good family docs and good internists) operate.
