Flu Jab

[jacey]

Have you had yours?

Best Beloved,  Ageing but Active Mother and I all trooped down to the local health centre for our annual flu jab this morning. I've been having flu jabs for the best part of sixteen or seventeen years and though the doc said he didn't know why, it does also seem to be the case that immunisation against flu does also give you a certain amount of protection against the wheezles and sneezles.

There is no scientific evidence for this (he told me) but it seems to work.

As someone who was always very prone to catching coughs and colds which rapidly turn into somethig approaching bronchitis, avoiding them in the first place if I can is a sensible thing to do. I don't know about scientific evidence, but I can say that it has worked for me. Maybe it's all in my head - but that's fine if it works, it works.

I went through the whole of last winter without a sniffle.

Of course now I work from home I'm not exposed to as many people who have the dreaded lurgy, but for thirteen or fourteen of those years I was being hugged by random members of the audience after each concert - some of them only telling me afterwards that they were fighting off stinking colds. I wasn't entirely cold-free during my performing years, but I did maybe only have one (or at most two) a year whereas when younger I used to get them almost monthly.

In the UK anyone who has a compromised immune system due to illness or age (and that includes diabetics) gets a flu jab free on the national health (green_knight  this includes you now) but I noticed the other day that the pharmacy in the supermarket is advertising them for just ten quid for everyone else. Well worth it, I say.

BTW, green_knight  you are now also entitled to an immunisation against viral pneumonia and that's just a one-shot for life. Ask if your doc forgets to offer it.

Comments

[slrose.livejournal.com]

I'm taking my parents for ours in about two hours.

I had a boss who refused to get the free flu shot at work because it made him sick for two days. He got the flu and was sick for three weeks. He took the shot the next year.

I generally run a mild fever for a day. Easy to cope with when I know that it's the shot and not an unknown illness arriving.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I don't tend to have any after effects from it other than a localised sore arm from the injection - and that varies from nurse to nurse. A few of them have got the idea that the faster you pump it in the sooner it's over, but in fact slow and easy and you hardly feel a thing. It's not the needle breaking the skin that hurts it's the fluid being forced into the muscle fibre too fast.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Technically, I think I'd entitled to a flu jab -- I have a completely non-serious hole in my heart. But I've never taken it up. My pet theory is that the more colds you meet, the fewer you catch -- I hardly ever got them when I was teaching, as students came from all over the place and the staff just stacked up immunities. Sadly, that wears off after 6 years and I am now back to cold-0catching. But I wonder if this is what happened with you when you were touring.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I don't think so because I had my heaviest cold-catching period when I was at school and when i was working in public libraries. Kids can't keep anything to themselves, the little snots!

Maybe teaching in university is a bit different. Students aren't forced to come to lectures so if they're sick they can stay home with a Lemsip and may, in fact, tend to do that more than people who are either in the workplace or at school.

I dunno. Just a theory.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'll contact my surgery, thanks for the tip. (I've never had a flu jab -and I'm healthier than I have been for years.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Great that yolu're healthy. I'm so pleased for you. Glad you have the diabetes under control and you're not worrying about it so much now.

I do recommend the jabs, though, as long as you doin't have anything that countra-indicates you should have them. (Allergy to eggs I think is one of the usual contras.)

I don't know if you've ever had flu, but it's miserable. All those people who have a heavy cold and call it flu don't know what they're talking about.

I've had flu twice in my life - once age 19 and it wiped me out completely for two weeks and left me with a cough for six weeks and a tendency to get bronchitic at the drop of a hat. And once age 39 when I sat and stared at a wall for two weeks and then took about another three weeks after that to sort myself out. Both times wiped out Christmas for me.

For the sake of someone sticking a needle in my arm once a year I definitely do not want to risk getting flu again.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

By now I've pretty much worked out what I can eat and how much of it, and the weight loss has helped.

But yes, flu is definitely one of those 'you'll recognise it when you get it' things; it's fundamentally different from even the nastiest cold.

And pneumonia is not much fun, either, particularly when your surgery receptionist looks at you and says 'do you want to make an appointment in three weeks' time?'

I mean, I cannot exactly have been a picture of health...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

We're lucky in that the docs at our local health centre will always make time to see an emergency case on the day you call. You might not get your own preferred doctor and you might have to wait until the end of surgery time, but you will be seen.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I was in seeing my GP about something else, and he said en passant, "Flu jab?" and I said "the nice receptionist said you'd do that while I was in here," and he said, "oh yes, you're not getting out without it; and I'm presuming you'll have had your pneumovac?" and I said "actually, no" - so I ended up leaving the surgery with two sore shoulders. Yay for the NHS, and go do it...