My mom lied to me!!! I got the chicken pox twice!

In the US, the vaccine was available in 1995.

Nice!!! Rock on !!

If no doctor told OP a chicken pox vaccine was available, they probably didn't know it was even an option. I'm 28 and had no idea until I had my son in the past year. Most people my age (in Canada) have never heard of it because it wasn't put on the schedule until 1995 and by then you aren't thinking vaccinations.

Certain vaccines are required by law while others are still technically optional. I say "technically" because while you still have, by law, the option, but a lot of schools, especially public schools, require your child to be vaccinated from everything. They have to have full medical records on that, and if you don't have it/won't give it to them, then they can refuse your child from attending.

Chicken pox vaccine is given to small children. He would've been a minor and under his parents' care then.

Older kids and adults can get the vaccine, too. They just need a booster if they're over (I believe) 13.

Sadly there are still many idiots out there, in the US and elsewhere in the world, who are ignorant about vaccines. I get the impression the FML community is pretty clever / well-informed relative to the general population.

Don't be under the impression that you have to lean away from religion to accept science, though. I'm an ELCA Lutheran Christian who wants to be a pulmonologist. I believe in evolution and all that stuff, and I am an LGBTQA advocate. I don't care what others believe, so I don't go around trying to convert people. While I agree that most Christians are idiots when it comes to common sense, the Bible can be interpreted in both wonderful and horrible ways. There are some cool Christians out there, but it's hard to tell since it's hard to tell we're religious unless you ask. I believe in God, but not every word of the Bible. The only difference between my view of science and others' view of science is that while others believe in the Big Bang, I believe that God made the Big Bang. ;)

Science and religion can not co-exist. Because God has absolutely no scientific evidence backing it up. If you were a person of science, that would literally go against what you believe. Hell the theory of evolution is one of the most well backed theory's in science, we don't even have a theory on gravity and people still believe in God.

Oh? I suppose that means all scientists are atheists...oh wait

"Science and religion cannot exist" is an inherently dogmatic point of view. Dogma is what we should be fighting in the first place.

Science is a method of thought that accepts what can be proven. This does not mean it rejects what cannot be proven or disproven. Therefore, religion and science can coexist. (Without theory this says science can't prove that God exists or that He doesn't, to use the most basic of religious principles of a monotheistic religion to simplify the use of pronouns). They do not, however, have to coexist.

Intelligent life form detected!

I, think I love you... Just kidding- but seriously, I come from a hipster paradise and now all of my friends are having babies and I can't talk to them about this. And they are so self righteous and smug about... Until they are home on quarantine because their precious little prince was exposed to the measles.

well, I mean, this isn't knocking random hipsters or anything but so many people are all into 'well it's natural so it's good and the pharmaceuticals and medicine is all bad' and it's just so ******* stupid. Humans are 1 of millions of species of organisms on the earth. the earth doesn't give a **** about us. You can keep your kid outside with no vaccines if you want and watch it get tetanus and measles and every other goddamn thing. and then a lot of states won't do mandatory vaccinations because they are scared of offending parents. **** that. we need to be listening to our doctors rather than the ******* TVs and people who can't even science

This might be the single most intelligent comment on the whole internet. Thank you. That was beautiful. *weep*

Normally I would agree, but OP is 26 and the chickenpox vaccine wasn't available when they were very young, so it's sort of understandable. I'm almost 25 and I didn't get the varicella vaccine, but it wasn't available before I caught the pox anyway. Now, OP could have gotten themself vaccinated as an adult, so it's hard to place blame.

yes, but he would have been 5 when it came out. Do you expect a 5 year old to be able to get vaccines by himself? His parents should have done it to him as soon as it was available, at least to not let him get chicken pox as a kid. But instead, they did nothing, and he got adult shingles

They may not have been informed about the vaccine when it was introduced. Most kids finish their vaccinations before five (at least until 10 or so), so they may have been a little out of the loop. Not sure how they registered him for school later, though... I had to have stuff signed saying I'd already had pox when my school saw I'd never had the vaccine.