Recently I found out that after having the chicken pox twice as a child and a possible third time, that I am not immune to it and will require immunizations every few years for the rest of my life. Is there any reason as to WHY I might not be immune and why the standard amount of vaccinations (two I believe in childhood) do not suffice?
Some people’s immune systems just don’t respond as readily to disease as average. If you had chicken pox two (maybe three) times, your immune system probably didn’t really respond to the antigens invading your body.
For whatever reason that your body didn’t respond to chicken pox when you were a kid is probably the same reason that you didn’t respond as well to immunizations for the pathogen as is normal.
Not all immunizations activate the exact same parts of the immune system, but all of them activate the adaptive immune system, which stores the “adapted” or immured immune cells, against diseases which have already been seen.
If you have a non-specific immune disorder that makes you susceptible to chicken pox/shingles, you most likely have a disorder of B lymphocytes, possibly one that allows naive B cells to adapt to diseases, but not to pass along that adaptation to its progeny (or possibly a disorder that makes it unable to create progeny). However, if you don’t know the specific situation you’re in, why not ask your doctor? Doctors often simply don’t tell patients the exact condition they think they’re dealing with because most patients don’t care - they just want to know what they have to do to stay well.