Literally speaking, it's impossible to get influenza from the influenza vaccine, unless you mistakenly got the live attenuated vaccine despite having an incredibly weak immune system (this generally means AIDS patients, transplant recipients, or people over 90).
In terms of the side effects, they are the effect of the vaccine causing an immune response. The stronger the immune response, the sicker you will feel after taking the vaccine, but the more protected against the actual disease you will be later on.
The live attenuated virus causes a stronger immune response than the killed virus. It could even lead to what is basically a cold. If you feel perfectly fine after the vaccine, that probably means it didn't work, it didn't activate your immune system.
So to the extent that what people perceive as "the flu" may partially result from the immune system's respose to the flu antigens rather than from the flu virus itself, it might be non-crazy for someone to say, based only on personal experience, that they got the flu from the vaccine?
You can get the clap from a flu shot if you have sex while getting inoculated.
So, I think that due to error on the part of the geniuses who run my stupid school, I have been uninsured since July.
At least that's what the insurance company website says. Although they seem to have covered prescriptions as recently as September.
I am doing a really good job of not hyperventilating, so far, but I'm not sure how long I'm gonna be able to keep that up.
4: Ack. Is there someone in HR you can call? Or the equivalent of HR?
Not until Monday. I sent an email today but no one will answer it on the weekend.
Don't have unprotected inoculations until you know if you are covered.
2: When you think about viral infections, the symptoms that aren't the direct result of killing important cells are usually the result of the immune response. That's why so much treatment for viral disease consists of anti-inflammatory agents.
Most vaccines are just injections so you are likely to see soreness around the site of infection, and maybe get tired. The FluMist vaccine is inhaled so the side effects are different. And it's a live virus so there's a small amount of virus replication going on, which is quickly eliminated by the immune system, but there can be fever, congestion, cough for a day or two. So if your definition of "the flu" is not that different from your definition of "a cold", it's possible.
I shouldn't say "important cells". What's an important cell? The skin is pretty important, but you recover from the chickenpox lesions.
Anyway, the vaccine cannot give you the disease, unless you have an extremely weak immune system. It's not like the vaccine is just a small dose of the virus. All vaccines are either dead, or weakened versions of the virus. Exception: the smallpox vaccine, which is a quite different virus (vaccinia) and can give you major rashes if you don't keep the area of inoculation covered.
What's an important cell?
An important cell to avoid is the one housing Joe Son.
Fun fact: Joe Son's professional MMA record was 0-4, including one loss before the fight started, recorded as a loss by Submission (terror).
Stanley, pretty much everything fatal starts off like a mild case of the flu, so your symptoms and the flu shot might be just coincidence. See how you're doing in a few weeks.
Don't tell Stanley about how much more worrying chest pain is when you get to 40.
I get such a strong reaction to the flu shot that I might well be said to have "gotten the flu" in ordinary parlance even though I would have gotten much sicker had I gotten actual influenza. this is because my immune system attacks everything--only, mostly myself--with mighty ferocity.
12: Oh, I feel fine, but thanks. My arm was sore for a day, but that's about it.
Stylings of dapper academe: Professor or Hobo
(via Somebody at U of T).
http://individual.utoronto.ca/somody/quiz.html
I hate this. These wankers have never had flu, because they've always been inoculated. They'd know all about it if they did, assuming they lived to tell the tale, which you can't assume. 3 basically sums it up otherwise.
Another thing that gets to me is "man flu". Sunshine, you've got a heavy cold. Suck it up. Or better, blow your nose.
I never got flu shots until I had an actual flu. I woke, dragged myself to the shower, and realized I wouldn't be moving for the rest of the day. Worse than mono, except more brief.
19: Right. When it's the flu for real, you can't do anything but sulk on the couch and watch Law and Order reruns.
I didn't hand cable and Law and Order wasn't in syndication then.
How would you know that you got the flu? I mean, that thing I got in the summer was pretty awful--pain and vomiting and laryngitis with an inflamed ear (probably due to impacted wax and fluid congestion)--and I needed an IV and zofran plus goopy liquid pain meds, but I didn't have a fever (warmer than normal but not over 100 degrees). I'm sure that it was a virus, but, without getting a culture, I wouldn't know what, right?
The acute phase of that was about 3-4 days, but the prodrome and recovery were more like 2-3 weeks.
If you didn't feel exhausted just by walking across the room, it probably wasn't the flu. If you were exhausted and didn't have puffed-up cheeks and it lasted a week or more before you felt right, it was probably the flu. When I got it, there was no prodrome. The first sign was massive illness.
25: I felt horrible walking across the room (partly from nausea) and head pain lifting my head up. No, I don't think that it was influenza, but it was more than a "cold."
Last time I had the flu (and yes I hadn't gotten a shot) I knew it was the flu when my temperature passed 103 F.
Yeah, I didn't have the fever. It just seems to me that you could have all those symptoms, and they could be caused by another virus.
Yes, they could. Usually nausea isn't caused by the flu, nor is nose-dripping and other snot-driven maladies. Of course, people can and do get two diseases at once.
Yeah, right. I didn't have the flu.
You might have. Just that odds seem against it. You are right that nobody really knows for sure without some test that no doctor ever does because they're going to treat the symptoms anyway.
24: with an inflamed ear (probably due to impacted wax and fluid congestion)
BG, what did they do about this? I've had an ear infection for nearly two weeks and have completed a 10-day course of antibiotics, and still cannot hear out of my left ear. (Also have a horrible cough, bad enough that my ribs hurt after a night of relentless hacking.)
I do have an appointment with an ENT -- Ear, Nose and Throat specialist -- this coming week, but I'm wondering whether at this point the ear infection has become just impacted wax in there. Accompanied by a constant "ringing in the ears" which is more like a perpetual dull roar.
IME, "flu" has several different meanings in everyday usage, most of which map onto "cold with body aches and general yuckiness" but don't include the high fever nor the weeklong recovery. Thus, it's pretty easy for the flu shot to give you the flu, if the word can mean "almost any winter cold."
A doctor at an Urgent Care Clinic said I had an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics. At the ER they gave me IV antibiotics, since I had already started a course, but they didn't have evidence that I actually had an ear infection. Ear infections are quite rare in adults. They saw a whole lot of wax which had allowed fluid to build up and told me to use the Debrox drops.
On follow-up after the night in the ED, my PCP told me that I probably would not have needed antibiotics even if I had a bacterial infection (though my ear canal was inflamed), because I'm basically healthy.
She said that I needed to use the debrox drops and come in to have someone flush it out. I had been listening to podcasts with ear-bud type headphones which was pushing it all in. I had a cough too.
The infection would not become impacted wax, I don't think. How do you know that it's an infection and not just terrible irritation?
34: Huh. I don't know that it's an infection. My primary care physician just looked in my ear, remarked that there was a lot of wax in there, and it was certainly inflamed, and since I'd gone in complaining of rather intense pain deep in the ear (bringing me to tears when I coughed), she declared ear infection. I was not aware that there was such a thing as further evidence of an actual ear infection.
I figured the wax was a response to the infection, for protective purposes.
Is it painful to have it flushed out? One wants to be prepared for these things.
Is it painful to have it flushed out?, no.
IME, no. YMMV.
Ah, good. Thanks. I'm so looking forward to ear clarity again and the disappearance of the internal ear roar.
35: Not usually painful, Parsi. Might cause some vertigo, but usually not much.
I got the standard flu every year when the kids were small and we travelled every winter. One week of high fevers, aches, coughing, thinking about death being better, three or four days of feeling much better, and then a repeat of the first week. I will happily suffer minor side effects from the shots.
My only observation about the annual flu vaccine is that since I started getting them (in the late 90s) I have not gotten anything more than a couple of bs-type 24=hour things. And I've also read that a lot of '24' or "48" hour 'bugs' are often from some kind of food poisoning or bug in foods.
Once in a while I get a sore arm. But I thiink vaccines are going to the the thing that saves us once antibiotics stop working. (scary much? it is happening. Until suitable vaccines are developed, it may be that we go back to the infection mortality rate of the 1920s. Which is horrid.)
35: Too much wax could cause the inflammation.
If you aren't softening the wax first and an ENT is removing it, s/he'll probably use a syringe thing to plunge it and pull out the wax.
I should have made a candle joke but it's probably too late now.
Ear candles didn't really do anything for me. I think I was doing it wrong.
Ear candles are hoaxes, like homeopathy or Cookie Crisp cereal. I was thinking of jokes about making a candle out of ear wax.
43 and 44: Yeah, no, stay away from the ear candles. They're actively harmful.
Being inanimate objects, they can only be passively harmful.
Great job on the post title, Stanley, btw.
47: Thanks. I kind of think it should have been "Flu's Nest", but whatever.
That would have been closer to exactly paralleling the original, but it's not like it would have made it make any more sense on its own terms or anything.
Peep and I had a meetup this morning. It was wonderful, though the servers at the restaurant seemed baffled that we weren't enjoying our date more, to the point where we didn't even want to share one romantic tiny test slurp of hot chocolate. The blog seems to be doing well enough that I don't think we need to fall madly in love and leave all our obligations behind to keep the rest of you entertained, right? For one thing, we couldn't afford to keep eating such luxurious, expensive oatmeal.
51: I thought about it, but that seemed like a lot of work. Sorry.
It's really not much work. Remember, nothing has to make any sense.
Which reminds me, we're having a Boston meetup next saturday. Somebody should probably post something at some point.
I will add that there was a little tunnel walkway between the parking lot and entrance and as I approached it, a man who'd gotten there first gallantly ushered me through. I hoped it wasn't peep or that if it was he was being ironic. I was also really tempted to insist on holding the door for this non-peep dude but instead I went docilely through and waited about thirty seconds, after which the real peep arrived. Then I could have found a five-dollar pancake but chose not to because they had bananas on top.
50 is one of the funniest meet up reportbacks evar.
I was in Richmond today and halfway thought of a meetup with Will. It was his birthday today, so I gather he was happily busy.
31: On follow-up about the tests, there are so many illnesses which start with flu-like symptoms, e.g. acute hepatitis. In that case (if it's Hep B, although C now has treatments too), it seems like it's important to know what you're suffering from so that you can treat it, but, you'd need to know first. If you just say, "it's the flu," you'd probably only treat the symptoms.