I got flu shot
Ok, you medical personnel out there, let’s get some feedback here. I’ve had two flu shots in the previous 10 years. Both times, I got sicker with the flu than I’d ever been before. I cannot understand this. When I tell informed people this, I always get the same information I found on the internet tonight:
“There is a misconception that people can get influenza from getting the vaccine. This is not true. Most people have little or no reaction to the influenza vaccine. The vaccine is made from a killed virus and cannot cause influenza.
People who develop influenza-like illnesses after getting the vaccine may have been in contact with the influenza virus prior to immunization or may have come down with another circulating virus. After an influenza immunization, it takes 10 to14 days for your body to develop immunity. Therefore, it would be possible for someone to develop influenza before immunity develops if they are exposed around the time of vaccination.”
The first time, I decided that it must have been a fluke. But after that second shot, I was so sick I had to hang onto the wall every time I had to empty my guts into the commode. Whether the shot caused it or not, I decided I was not about to try it again. I have not had the flu since then. I’ve had more than my fair share of pharyngitis, laryngitis, and bronchitis several times a year—especially since moving into the allergy capital of the U.S. Not once did I get the flu.
Ok, so we were told by our professors that there is a new infection control JCAHO standard that requires hospitals, critical access hospitals, and long term care facilities to have their staff with close patient contact vaccinated for influenza beginning January 2007. This includes students and faculty in clinical. So, unless we get the vaccine, we cannot do clinicals. If we don’t do clinicals, we don’t pass. What to do?
I drug my feet about it until the flu shot was once again offered for free by my employer. So yesterday I rolled up my sleeve and took it, telling myself that being more medically informed now would surely help stave off the flu.
Guess what! Today, the arm where I got my shot has an area a little bigger than a quarter that is red, hard and definitely inflamed. I’ve had a roaring headache all day. I feel feverish and have the worst stomach cramps ever. As the day progressed, if I wasn’t on the commode emptying my guts out, I was walking around with my cheeks puckered with a will of iron. And this is only the first day after!
Have I been around sick people recently? Absolutely! I’ve been around them quite a bit in the last year. I’ve even been in the room of an MRSA patient who was so sick, his bones had disintegrated. Did I get sick? Not until now. So you tell me…does the flu shot give you the flu?
“There is a misconception that people can get influenza from getting the vaccine. This is not true. Most people have little or no reaction to the influenza vaccine. The vaccine is made from a killed virus and cannot cause influenza.
People who develop influenza-like illnesses after getting the vaccine may have been in contact with the influenza virus prior to immunization or may have come down with another circulating virus. After an influenza immunization, it takes 10 to14 days for your body to develop immunity. Therefore, it would be possible for someone to develop influenza before immunity develops if they are exposed around the time of vaccination.”
The first time, I decided that it must have been a fluke. But after that second shot, I was so sick I had to hang onto the wall every time I had to empty my guts into the commode. Whether the shot caused it or not, I decided I was not about to try it again. I have not had the flu since then. I’ve had more than my fair share of pharyngitis, laryngitis, and bronchitis several times a year—especially since moving into the allergy capital of the U.S. Not once did I get the flu.
Ok, so we were told by our professors that there is a new infection control JCAHO standard that requires hospitals, critical access hospitals, and long term care facilities to have their staff with close patient contact vaccinated for influenza beginning January 2007. This includes students and faculty in clinical. So, unless we get the vaccine, we cannot do clinicals. If we don’t do clinicals, we don’t pass. What to do?
I drug my feet about it until the flu shot was once again offered for free by my employer. So yesterday I rolled up my sleeve and took it, telling myself that being more medically informed now would surely help stave off the flu.
Guess what! Today, the arm where I got my shot has an area a little bigger than a quarter that is red, hard and definitely inflamed. I’ve had a roaring headache all day. I feel feverish and have the worst stomach cramps ever. As the day progressed, if I wasn’t on the commode emptying my guts out, I was walking around with my cheeks puckered with a will of iron. And this is only the first day after!
Have I been around sick people recently? Absolutely! I’ve been around them quite a bit in the last year. I’ve even been in the room of an MRSA patient who was so sick, his bones had disintegrated. Did I get sick? Not until now. So you tell me…does the flu shot give you the flu?
posted by Sara | 12:43 AM
2 Comments:
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You specifically requested a response, so I'll try...
I can not back up my information with research or evidence, only by information that has been handed down to me from others, so even I am not sure of its credibility. I have been told that there are 700 strains of the virus for the common cold alone. Each time you get a cold you become immune to that strain, but not to the others. So you can get the cold several times a year every year of you life and still not be immune to them all. As far as the flu virus is concerned, there are new strains of the virus emerging every year. If I am correctly understanding the info I was given, pathologists are constantly trying to stay ahead of the game by mass-producing vaccinations for these new strains. So the flu shot that you got several years ago probably does not have the same capabilities that the one you got this year does. You have been exposed to a new strain by being vaccinated. The vaccination that you were given was supposed to have been attenuated enough to keep it from actually causing the disease. Your immune system is supposed to recognize the attenuated form and build up a resistance to it before it gets carried away. I am guessing that either the vaccination was not attenuated enough (unlikely) or that you were blessed with an immune system that for some reason does not build up the resistance quick enough (more likely) or you are under an awful lot of stress of some sort that is weakening your immune system (possible but unlikely because you are around diseased patients all the time without contracting their diseases), or some combination of the above. But I'm not a pathologist or a doctor or a biotechnologist or any other professional of that level. I'm just a sophomore, and that's what I'm guessing based on what I learned in microbiology class last year.
11:03 PM
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