Week 7 blog 1

So….my question is….can the flu shot actually cause you to get the flu???

I took myself and my kids, as I do every year, to get our flu shots yesterday and Miles (my youngest) woke up at 1 am with a 102 fever. He gets one every year due to his asthma and he has never done that before. I wonder if it is just a fluke thing or if the shot actually gave him a touch of the flu.

I decided to do a little research just for curiosity sake and found http://www.umm.edu/features/flu_vac.htm.

According to this article from two UM experts this is a total misconception. I always thought there was some live virus in the shot to boost your immune system but they say there isn't. However, they do say that some people do experience a common seasonal virus after they receive the flu shot. Am I crazy or is that the same thing??? They say the flu shot doesn't cause the flu but in the very next sentence say that people do get "the common seasonal virus" after they get the shot. Seems to me that they are kind of talking in circles. 

I decided to look at another website here they say its "not uncommon" to have some side effects shortly after receiving the vaccine. They say that the side effects can be a mild fever, achiness, and fatigue that may "feel like the flu to some people"....that's the flu if you ask me!!!

It appears to me that all the professionals are trying to downplay by not actually calling it "the flu" but are listing all the side effects for flu-like symptoms

It's kind of crazy really. He has never had a side effect before so I wonder why he did this time. I wonder what the nose spray does and if it's basically the same thing. I know because of Miles having asthma he can not have the nose spray but his pulmenologist (however you spell it) says he MUST have the actual flu shot every year because he is at a very high risk for developing complications from the actual virus and everyone in our house must also get vaccinated to reduce the risk of bringing it home to him.

Remember a few years ago when people were dying from the "swine flu"? Of course you do, who could forget. Anyway, that entire winter, under the doctors strict "advise", I could not take him in public AT ALL because his asthma was acting up so bad that his doc said if he did get that particular flu he would most likely end up in the hospital with "very severe problems". The poor little guy could go to his Nannie's and that was it!!! He hated being stuck in the house all the time and we would sometimes have to put him in the car and go on long drives just so he felt like he was getting to do something. I have never been so glad for Christmas lights in all my life. We hit every neighborhood in every surrounding town several times over. People probably thought we were stalking there homes but we were just trying to keep, a then 4 year old, from going in sane and taking us with him.

I have never been so excited for a season to end as I was that particular year. Thank goodness it's over now!!!!!