Rebecca Archer lovingly places a pair of small glasses on a shelf filled with memorabilia like trinkets and photos. They belonged to her 10-year-old daughter, Renae, who suddenly died after a measles infection.
“She was just really intelligent. Just a really happy child, always smiling,” she remembers.
Renae was just five months old when she got the measles – too young to be vaccinated, but unable to avoid being exposed during an outbreak in Manchester, England, in 2013.
The infant was hospitalized, but recovered. For the next 10 years, Renae had no other medical issues, her mom says.
But the measles virus was sitting dormant in her brain for years. When it woke up, Renae started having seizures. Then, she couldn’t …