flu shot, flu chaser

[jazzfish]

Me 364.25 days of the year: GET YOUR FLU SHOT IT IS AWESOME AND WILL SAVE LIVES

Me two days after getting my flu shot: my head is wrapped in cotton wool and i have zero energy. dammit flu shot!

Which is to say, Thursday night I went and got my flu shot. They gave me a tetanus booster as well, since I am pretty sure I've not had one of those since just before immigrating (and how is that nearly ten years ago already). So in addition to my standard "mild flu-like symptoms" my upper left arm is too sore to lie on.

Worth it, though. My standard "get yer flu shot story" is of the time I spent an evening comforting a friend who'd just had a bad breakup, and getting cried all over... and the next day she came down with a nasty flu and I walked away entirely fine. So, you know. Especially this year with a co-plague in the form of Covid: get yer flu shot.

Comments

[shadowkat]

It's funny - I didn't get sick at all with the flu shot. I did have an itchy and slightly sore upper arm but that's it.

I'll give you another reason to get the flu shot - the flu shot provides you with T-cells - which fight off viruses. COVID turns off T-cell development. They've figured out that people who got their flu shots - and contracted COVID afterwards, had mild cases, and did not have a horrible immune response, because the T-cells were already there - fighting it off. They didn't have to develop the T-Cells. So it didn't matter that COVID turned them off. COVID's affect on you - has a lot to do with the state of your immune system at the time you contract it. With a flu shot - your immune system has been boosted.

I got the flu for the first time last fall, and then I got it again in October.

[davidgoldfarb]

I'm sorry you get a bad reaction to flu shots: I've been having them yearly for decades and never had anything worse than a little soreness.

[reedrover]

I'm with ya on getting the shots, and the tetanus shot can be a real beast.

Achaosofkittens skipped his flu shot last year and was horribly ill. I've been giving him the eyeball about it all year... he got one recently. I hope we have an event-less flu season now.