…I think.
Having been pronounced in excellent health one day, to feeling like total shit the next, I was pondering:
“Quoi?”
Then I remembered that as I do every year at my physical, I’d got a flu shot on my visit. Aha!
So my body, which is increasingly starting to hate me as I get older, obviously decided to teach me a lesson. “Don’t trust me to take care of myself?” it must have said, “I’ll teach you to have some Russian nurse* inject some strange lurgies without my permission!”
I have to admit, though, that given all the abuse and punishment I’ve subjected my body to over the years, it probably has a point.
If you want me, I’ll be lying huddled in my bed, whimpering.
*yes, she was Russian, with that wonderfully liquid Russian accent which makes you just want to drink vodka and flirt with her until you pass out. I know the breed, unfortunately.
She might have looked like that, except she was wearing a paper face condom so all I could see were her eyes. Which were magical.
I think there’s something going around. I’ve got the same illness as you, which I apparently received from my daughter, and not from flirting with some hot russian nurse who’s too young for me.
I’m glad you got the flu shot, Kim. The mother of a good friend of mine (about your age) caught flu three weeks ago. Otherwise perfectly healthy, but ended up damned near dying, and was just moved to a rehab hospital a couple days ago for intensive PT so she can go home eventually.
So was this the mRNA flu shot or the kind they used to give out before Covid eliminated the flu from 2020-2022?
No mRNA flu shots are being used outside of Phase III trials, as far as I know. I could, of course, be wrong; I’m just a dumbass lawyer, not a doctor or nurse.
I’m really looking forward to when the mRNA flu shot become available, though, as I can’t get the traditional inactivated virus flu shot due to an immune condition.
Regular flu shot. I specified.
And that is the problem. Every year thousands (if not millions) come down with the flu that shot is supposed to prevent, because Big Pharma predicted wrongly, and produced a shot that was just “one or two molecules off-center” for the virus du jour.
I am not an anti-vaxxer since I truly believe that the body will make antibodies against certain microbes injected into it conferring immunity. HOWEVER, the new mysterious concoctions they want to inject nowadays are not a sample of the virus that they want to protect you from. How could it be? That particular strain of flu is not yet in circulation – it is a guess as to what will be (an engineered, artificial mutation of a virus) is what they shoot into you. I trust my God given immune system a lot more than science now that CV19 has educated me into the workings of our medical/pharmacological system.
If you get Chicken Pox and survive, your body has overcome it and made antibodies against it and you are now immune to it. Now they say that if you had that childhood disease, you have the Shingles virus in you and they have a vaccine that will protect you???? No thanks.
there is no way I’m going to try to convince you about the need for a shingles shot, particularly since neither of us trust big pharma; I’ve no longer any idea what they put into the vials from which the liquid for the shot is removed.
our mothers used to take us over to the spotty kid’s house in high hopes we’d come down with whatever caused the kid to break out in a rash – hopefully it wasn’t poison ivy – and we (almost) all came down with it and that was that.
but, be aware: like Chicken Pox, any infection by the varicella zoster virus may lead to a fatal encephalitis; and, because quite a few of us prefer to take aspirin for fever, pains, and aches, there’s a possibilty of winding up with other probs (Reye Syndrome is one, discuss ’em with your doc), sometimes fatal.
and your immune system, like the old joke “what’s the second thing to go when you get older” is really the first and the virus which may have resided latent in the dorsal ganglion cells of your sensory nerves for all those years, can come back, very,very painfully, usually at the worst possible time.
your choice, however.
Every year when I worked in healthcare, we were told to push flu shots in the fall. by the end of January we’d have several admissions of patients afflicted with the flu. then there would be a quiet release from the CDC admitting that the vaccination was made for the wrong flu strain. As far as vaccinations go, it has a very low success rate. If you have lots of medical conditions then give some serious thought to getting the flu shot.
JQ
In re: Slavic nurse.
I’ve said this before on this blog. As a kid during the cold war, we thought of all Russian Wimmens as dumpy, coarse, armpit-haired, grunts. Now having met several expats we were VERRRRYYY wrong.
As it turns out we were thinking of American Feminists.
You mean the FLU is back?
Had my physical today and the annual exchange with my doc:
Doc: “Flu shot?”
Me: “No, once again.”
Doc: “The flu is supposed to be especially bad this year.”
Me: “That’s what you said last year when I said ‘No’.”
I sure wish we had a thumbs up/thumbs down feature on this blog. Can that be done?
The flu shot is worthless. It is at best a guess, and most the time they guess wrong. I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I’ve gotten more vaccines than I can count, but I got the ones that actually work. I’ve never been sicker with the flu than when I’ve gotten the flu shot. When I don’t get the shot, I don’t get the flu, or I have a mild illness. If it weren’t for the military I’d never get another flu shot, and once I retire you can be damned sure I’m turning it down every single year.