Chicken pox

Father, Metro Vancouver health officials urge vaccines

Posted on Tue, May 20, 2014 - 12:00am

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Photograph by: Handout, Vancouver Coastal Health

A North Vancouver father is sharing the terrifying story of how his son almost died from a preventable disease because a child at his kid's school wasn't vaccinated.

Jason Lawson said his son, 10-year-old Beckett, was undergoing chemotherapy four years ago for leukemia when he came down with the chickenpox and had to spend 10 days in the ICU.

Beckett was six years old, and responding well to the chemotherapy, enough that doctors had begun giving him a lower dose. But the chemo compromised his immune system, rendering the booster shots he had as a baby ineffective.