Hey all, I wanted to bring up one the DISboard's famous winter topics: The Flu Vaccine!
I'm not really posting to debate it as I think that's been beaten to death; however, just looking for your experiences with it.
I'm 55 years old and I've never had a flu shot, for various reasons. One, I feel that I am one of those *sensitive* people and I get side effects to everything, so I've never wanted to deal with it and, two, debatable, but I've never overly been convinced it works as well as other vaccines so in my internal benefit/analysis, I have skipped it. I've probably gotten the flu 3 times in my life with the most recent time being in 2016. I was sick for a while but it wasn't the worst thing I'd ever had.
With that said, I am going to Disney in about 2 weeks and will flying and then immersed in the petri dish of humanity for a week during the kick off of the flu season. Already where I live, they think we've had an early start to it so, with that on my mind, I took the plunge and while I was at Target Friday evening, I impulsively asked for a flu shot. One thing that boosted me on was that I got at TdAP shot this summer due to an injury (hadn't had one in 40 years) and I did really well with it--minimal pain, no side effects. For this flu vaccine, I think I did all the wrong things: I had on a tight, pullover that I couldn't roll the sleeve up so I had to pull the shirt down and offer up my shoulder/deltoid (apparently a no-no) and I think the the person giving the shot was higher than me. Honestly, I was so nervous I can't remember. The injection itself was painless and done. I was so proud of myself.
Of course, as the evening wore on, my arm got more sore, but that was expected. By Saturday morning, my arm was REALLY sore and I had joint/body aches pretty much all over. I didn't have a fever on Saturday morning, but by the afternoon, I was up around 99.7 and just feeling like poop. Arm *very* sore--started to fret over the location of the injection. Was it too high? Am I going to get one of those vaccine shoulder injuries (yes I needed some Xanax at this point).
It's now Sunday morning. I woke with a low-grade fever still (around 99.1 on waking and 99.7 in the middle of the night). Usually I'm well below 98.6 in the morning. My arm doesn't seem any worse today for pain, but I think it's a little warm, but not red or swollen.
I guess I'm a little surprised because "googling" says that I really should not have many side effects and, if so, it seems like today they'd be on their way out (I'll be at 48 hours post-shot around 4PM). I've talked to all my friends/parents who get them and no one seems to ever have anything happen so I'm feeling a bit unnerved. I do remember my coworker getting one last year at his physical, coming to work the next day and then having to leave because he felt so bad from his vaccine, but was totally fine the next day.
So, am I having a standard reaction? Anyone else have this or am I just going to be a weirdo as usual and, if so, maybe not do this again!
