Don’t put off getting vaccinations
Ibelieve in vaccinations, but I’m not the first guy in line. Growing up, I had the mandatory childhood vaccinations, and when we went to work in Libya I got vaccinated for everything you can imagine. A little soreness on my upper arm is about all the reaction I get.
For years I didn’t bother to get an annual flu shot; I was too busy to bother with taking 30 minutes to run by the pharmacy. It came back to haunt me.
One year when school was out for the Christmas holidays, we started packing for our annual ski trip to Winter Park, Colo. Early snows had made the Rockies a skiers’ paradise, and we couldn’t wait to hit the slopes. We would ski every day from Christmas to Jan. 1. Our family had long since passed being beginners.
After settling into our condo after a day of traveling, we were all up on the mountain by 9 a.m. the next day. The snow was perfect and the weather was just right. We had lunch on the mountain, and at about 5 p.m. we headed to the condo.
At dinner that night, I told Vertis I thought the altitude was making me feel a little queasy. I went to bed early, and told her that a good night’s sleep would put be back in top shape. I was wrong. The next morning I could barely get out of bed, and had every symptom of the flu.
For the next five days, I lay there suffering while the rest of the family lived it up. I insisted they go skiing, and they did. By the last day of the trip I was over the flu just in time to fly back home, but learned a vaccination lesson. Now, I don’t miss a seasonal flu shot.
It seems new vaccines are coming out almost every week. If you are anything like me, I find myself procrastinating, thinking I’m healthy and there is no hurry. But when the covid pandemic hit, the severity of the disease had me standing in line to get a shot and a booster.
As we get older we are susceptible to viruses that we ignored earlier in life. Several doctor friends had cautioned Vertis and me not to ignore shingles. If you had chicken pox when you were a child, you still have its virus in your body, and that virus can give you shingles when you get older.
In the late 1980s a one-shot shingles vaccine was available, and I dutifully marched down to the pharmacy and got a shingles shot.
Last year my brother William, who is a doctor, told me the old shingles shot loses its effectiveness after about five years. Since I received my initial shot some 7 or 8 years ago (I can’t remember the exact date)m he told me I should get the new two-shot version, which is a lot better than the initial one-shot version.
I just nodded like “I’ll take care of that.” But I wasn’t in any hurry. After all, I reasoned, if by some outside chance I do get shingles, it will probably be a very mild case.
I work in our yard almost every day, and about a week ago I noticed a little red rash (like from poison ivy) that would likely clear up with a little calamine lotion. But I couldn’t get the rash on my upper right thigh to heal. In fact, it got a little worse every day, and then it seemed to spread to three areas on my upper leg and groin.
I finally told Vertis I was going to let our doctor take a look at it.
The next day, I got a 1 p.m. appointment with Dr. Bob Watson. I had searched Google, and there are other skin rashes that would fit the symptoms. I figured maybe I was having an allergic reaction to some of the stuff I was grinding up with my weed eater.
Dr. Watson came into the examining room. We’re friends, and after a few pleasantries, he asked what my medical needs were.
“I answered, “Bob, I think I could possibly have shingles.”
I pulled down my pants far enough for him to see my upper thigh, and he took one look. “You have shingles,” he said. No tests, X-rays or bloodwork. It was that obvious.
Dr. Watson wrote a prescription for an antiviral, and I’ve been taking the pills for a few days.
Shingles are what I call a hanging-on disease. I’m slowly getting better, but it’s going to take some time for the rash to completely clear up. After I was confirmed to have shingles Vertis took off to the pharmacy, and she has had the first shot of the twoshot vacillation. Our daughter Lara is also on her way to get vaccinated.
Shingles are painful, and stay with you for several weeks. I’m miserable, and am really regretting not getting the shot earlier. If you are over 50 and had chickenpox as a child, you should get the shingles shot.