When I started blogging, I never envisioned that I’d be spending so much time discussing the H1N1 vaccine. So this is to be my LAST post on the subject. And I promise I will post something non-swine flu related in the next few days.
Well, I’ve made my decision, finally, on whether or not E and I will get the H1N1 vaccine. And I wanted to post about it last night. But I couldn’t. I survived the 4 hour delay between the time I checked in at the clinic and the time I received my vaccine (thankfully only about 1 hour of that waiting was done IN the clinic. I was able to leave and return.) The needle itself was relatively painless. After all, giving birth is still only a 19 month-old memory, so not much seems painful anymore.
I decided to get the vaccine first without E, because I always knew it was something that I would do to protect her, whether she received the vax or not. I have a friend who remarked that the H1N1 vaccine is the “worst” thing one could put in their body.
Worst? I highly doubt it. One thing I know for a fact is all those cigarettes I smoked in my past WERE DEFINITELY CARCINOGENIC. Yet I seemed to have little concern about putting them in my body.
So I’m sorry, but I’m sure there’s many other things out there far worse things a person can put into her body.
When I got home from receiving my shot, I remarked to T how funny it was that by left arm where I received the seasonal flu shot (I opted for both shots) was in much more pain than my right arm where I received the H1N1 shot. I had heard that the swine-shot was much more painful.
I decided to turn in for the night after a few too many pieces of pizza, a half glass of wine, and my Wednesday night corny sitcom block. I laid down, and started to notice that now both arms were throbbing. “Ah well,” I thought. “How long can this last?”
A few hours later, after trying desperately to find a comfortable position to lay in, I suddenly began to feel chills. And nausea. Then nausea turned to vomiting.
So all day I’ve been trying to keep E entertained with Sesame Street and playing toys on her own (bad mommy!) while I lay on the couch. I even coerced her into 2 naps! Every time the tylenol wears off I’m in PAIN!
But enough about my crappy vaccine experience. After all, according to the literature from the Province I’m only one of about 0.1%-10% of people who receive the vaccine who will experience these symptoms.
After much back and forth, and all of the arguments FOR and AGAINST the vaccine that I listed in the past 2 posts, I finally had a few breakthroughs.
The first occured when I finally went back to an old message board post that I had only glossed over in the past. There was a link to an article that said that several of the children/teens who died in the US from H1N1 this year had neurodevelopmental disorders.
Now I don’t usually like to comment on E’s medical info very much because I don’t want that to define her and I don’t want people to judge her before meeting her. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: she is a very special girl! And she does not have any sort of “diagnosis” either. But what the doctors do know is that at this time she has both a neurodevelopmental delay and low muscle tone. Neither one is a huge issue for us in everyday life.
But after reading that, I reviewed the information on the CDC website. And it seemed as though most of the children also had additional medical concerns along with neurodevelopmental disorders, but there it was. In the past I haven’t always agreed with E’s pediatricians demeanour, methods, attitude, or advice, he was really great when we had a very difficult experience with E in September. So I decided to call him.
Like I thought he would say, she is at no increased risk for side-effects for the vaccine. In fact, he would recommend that she receive it.
And that makes sense. After all, when she gets a cough, it stays forever. It’s as though her low muscle tone prevents her from being able to “cough it out.”
So I have no way of knowing right now whether or not I have made the right decision for my daughter. But what I DO know, is I haven’t taken it lightly. There are risks either way, and I believe for my E the benefits of getting the vaccine outweigh the risks.
I wish I could just keep her in a bubble for the rest of her life, but I can’t. When we sedated her for her MRI, we knew that the potential benefits outweighed the risks of sedation. (And this was NOT an easy decision to make, since they knocked her out with PROPOFOL a week after MJ died.) I know that there are potential side-effects from a vaccine, but in her case we’ve got to try everything we can to keep her from getting a flu that won’t be able to leave her lungs.
So, my daughter will be getting the full strength vaccine sometime in the next few days. And now, much to my husband’s relief, I will not utter the word H1N1 in this house again.