I've Got Whooping Cough. Thanks a Lot, Jenny McCarthy.

[quakerboy]

144. Actually, I understand you can, in rare cases.

Catch something from a flu shot, that is.

First, there's the immune response to the shot. Not technically the same as actually catching the flu, but for some of us who's immune responses tend to be a bit over hyped, the difference can feel less than important. Essentially like the symptoms of having the flu, but shorter lived. Ive had that happen a few times with flu shots. That's happened to me on 3 of the 7 flu shots I've gotten. It seems to last 24-48 hours till my body decides it hasn't really been invaded by foreign organisms and there's no actual need to stay on a war footing.

Stepping past that, however, my understanding is that there are some people carrying relatively benign forms of flu in their mucous membranes. However, when they come in contact with the dead virus in the vaccine, on rare occasions the live will co-opt some of the rna and become an less benign version of the flu virus. Or so it was explained to me when I got very sick directly after a flu shot, apparently with one of the strains i had been vaccinated against. By what I was told, it is extremely rare, to the point of not being an issue if you haven't had it happen, and even if you had, the chances are good that it wouldn't happen again with a different strain of flu in future vaccinations.

I dont know if this applies to flu vaccines, but I also understand that some vaccines use a weakened (not dead) version of whatever they are vaccinating against.

All of that said... Get your vaccinations unless you have a damn good reason not to. Once my ACA coverage kicks in, you better believe that I will be asking a DR about a variety. For instance, I never had the chicken pox, and the idea of encountering that as an adult, now that the majority of my friends kids are reaching school age, scares me quite a bit. I hear there's a vaccine now.

I also read a while back that somewhere in Europe they are working on or may have figured out a vaccine against the main cause of Dental Carries. That seems like a brilliant idea, and I need to remember to go look it up and see what the status of that is.