Getting shot of the flu
CHEWING the fat – in addition to the snacks – at a friend’s house the other night, the subject of flu shots came up. At that stage – two months after my own – I was feeling brilliant and convinced that, thanks to the shot, and for the second year in a row, I would again avoid all those winter nasties.
As I write this, swathed in blankets one minute and shrugging them off the next in rhythm with my fluctuating temperature, sipping green tea, and dosed up with whatever relevant medication I can find to chase away the associated aches, I realise how wrong it is possible to be.
What I didn’t realise though was what strong reactions the flu shot itself provokes. From the melodramatic: “It’s all a plot by the drug companies to keep us in their thrall”; to the unequivocal: “They don’t work”; and all shades in between, they elicit some pretty strong opinions.
“I’ll never get a shot again,” said a female guest at my friend’s house. “I got it so badly straight after having a shot last year that I’ll never have one again.”
She must have already had the bugs in her system when she went for the shot, I reckon. That’s what my own doctor – who has the vaccine annually to protect himself against all the bug-ridden patients he sees – told me can happen.
Not only that, as an ex-nurse at the party tried to explain, the shots only cover a certain number of known viruses.
The clever bugs are always mutating and once they’ve morphed into a new strain, it takes a while for the drug manufacturers to catch up.
“Well, I think you get it worse if you’ve had the shot,” chimed in someone else. “I know someone who did.”
Coincidence, insisted the beloved, as he went on to tell how one young journalist in a Sunday Times department he was running some years ago, just like my friend’s guest, refused to believe that it wasn’t the flu jab itself that made her sick.
He’d suggested to all 12 of his staff that they should take advantage of the companypaid vaccines on offer, led the way upstairs, and bravely went first.
One by one they followed suit until it came to the turn of the somewhat reticent young woman. Immediately after her shot, she turned a ghastly shade of grey-white, and had to sit down until her colour returned. By the time she walked back to her desk, however, she was white again.
Within minutes her eyes were streaming and she was coughing and spluttering so badly that she had to go home. Although she must have already had the bug, she remained unconvinced, vowing never to have a flu shot again.
Even if you’ve already had the flu this year, you should still have a shot, advises Trish M Perl, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, because more than one strain of virus can zap you. “Otherwise,” she advises, “you could be sick and unhappy twice.” I’m sure she’s right, and I’m glad I’m unlikely to get another dose this winter, but all I can think about right now is my current misery – and hauling myself back to bed.
Today’s Chiel is Stevie Godson. E-mail her at