{"id":30213,"date":"2025-06-22T09:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T09:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30213"},"modified":"2025-06-22T09:24:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T09:24:56","slug":"i-feel-like-ive-been-lied-to-when-a-measles-outbreak-hits-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30213","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Feel Like I\u2019ve Been Lied To\u2019: When a Measles Outbreak Hits Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
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He was a chiropractor by training, but in a remote part of West Texas with limited medical care, Kiley Timmons had become a first stop for whatever hurt. Ear infections. Labor pains. Oil workers who arrived with broken ribs and farmers with bulging discs. For more than a decade, Kiley, 48, had seen 20 patients each day at his small clinic located between a church and a gas station in Brownfield, population 8,500. He treated what he could, referred others to physicians and prayed over the rest.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until early this spring that he started to notice something unfamiliar coming through the door: aches that lingered, fevers that wouldn\u2019t break, discolored patches of skin that didn\u2019t make sense. At first, he blamed it on a bad flu season, but the symptoms stuck around and then multiplied. By late March, a third of his patients were telling him about relatives who couldn\u2019t breathe. And then Kiley started coughing, too.<\/p>\n

His wife, Carrollyn, had recently tested positive for Covid, but her symptoms eased as Kiley\u2019s intensified. He went to a doctor at the beginning of April for a viral panel, but every result came back negative. The doctor decided to test for the remote possibility of measles, since there was a large outbreak spreading through a Mennonite community 40 miles away, but Kiley was vaccinated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m dying,\u201d Kiley texted a friend. He couldn\u2019t hold down food or water. He had already lost 10 pounds. His chest went numb, and his arms began to tingle. His oxygen was dropping dangerously low when he finally got the results.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cPositive for measles,\u201d he wrote to his sister, in mid-April. \u201cJust miserable. I can\u2019t believe this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years after measles was officially declared eliminated from the United States, this spring marked a harrowing time of rediscovery. A cluster of cases that began at a Mennonite church in West Texas expanded into one of the largest outbreaks in a generation, spreading through communities with declining vaccination rates as three people died and dozens more were hospitalized from Mexico to North Dakota. Public health officials tracked about 1,200 confirmed cases and countless exposures across more than 30 states. People who were contagious with measles boarded domestic flights, shopped at Walmart, played tuba in a town parade and toured the Mall of America.<\/p>\n

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He was a chiropractor by training, but in a remote part of West Texas with limited medical care, Kiley Timmons had become a first stop for whatever hurt. Ear infections. Labor pains. Oil workers who arrived with broken ribs and farmers with bulging discs. For more than a decade, Kiley, 48, had seen 20 patients each day at his small clinic located between a church and a gas station in Brownfield, population 8,500. He treated what he could, referred others to physicians and prayed over the rest.It wasn\u2019t until early this spring that he started to notice something unfamiliar coming through the door: aches that lingered, fevers that wouldn\u2019t break, discolored patches of skin that didn\u2019t make sense. At first, he blamed it on a bad flu season, but the symptoms stuck around and then multiplied. By late March, a third of his patients were telling him about relatives who couldn\u2019t breathe. And then Kiley started coughing, too.His wife, Carrollyn, had recently tested positive for Covid, but her symptoms eased as Kiley\u2019s intensified. He went to a doctor at the beginning of April for a viral panel, but every result came back negative. The doctor decided to test for the remote possibility of measles, since there was a large outbreak spreading through a Mennonite community 40 miles away, but Kiley was vaccinated.\u201cI feel like I\u2019m dying,\u201d Kiley texted a friend. He couldn\u2019t hold down food or water. He had already lost 10 pounds. His chest went numb, and his arms began to tingle. His oxygen was dropping dangerously low when he finally got the results.\u201cPositive for measles,\u201d he wrote to his sister, in mid-April. \u201cJust miserable. I can\u2019t believe this.\u201dTwenty-five years after measles was officially declared eliminated from the United States, this spring marked a harrowing time of rediscovery. A cluster of cases that began at a Mennonite church in West Texas expanded into one of the largest outbreaks in a generation, spreading through communities with declining vaccination rates as three people died and dozens more were hospitalized from Mexico to North Dakota. Public health officials tracked about 1,200 confirmed cases and countless exposures across more than 30 states. People who were contagious with measles boarded domestic flights, shopped at Walmart, played tuba in a town parade and toured the Mall of America.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30215,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30213"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30216,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30213\/revisions\/30216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}