Quoted from metallik:Ok this is just stupid. Even people who get vaccinated can still come down with the flu. It's everywhere, it constantly mutates and vaccinations aren't going to eliminate it like polio or diphtheria. People who are at risk of DYING need to be in a hospital or other controlled environment during flu season. I'm 44, have never had a shot and at most just get a mild case of flu every few years (maybe.. might be bad colds for all I know). I avoid people on the day or two that I'm actually feeling sick, and my body figures out how to kill it off pretty quickly on it's own. I take no prescription drugs, no OTC drugs, and am healthy. Holding off as long as I can - the more you rely on drugs, the weaker you become IMHO.
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Quoted from metallik:So you're asking me to voluntarily inject manufactured, partially-killed disease into my bloodstream that will make me mildly ill, for a 65% chance it'll be the correct formula to maybe help kill a bug I only catch every few years, and that I can kill myself quite handily?
Sign me up!
As far as I'm concerned, flu vaccines are perfect for those people who get their asses kicked by the flu every year and need a cheat-sheet for their immune system to get the upper hand. I'm not to that point yet.
I agree with both of these posts.
I went to the doctor about 4 years ago because I was having abdominal pain for about a week that wouldn't go away. I was not in agony by any means, just had some pain that was a 5/10. I was just concerned that it wasn't going away so I wanted to be checked by a doctor to make sure it wasn't something serious.
Before having any tests done, and therefore not really knowing what was going on, the doctor just wrote a prescription for some antibiotics.
You know, the magic cure all.
Well a week or two later, I started having terrible diarrhea. It got so bad, I was going to the bathroom up to 16 times a day.
Turns out that the antibiotics wiped out my "good" bacteria in my digestive system. So I wound up with C. Difficile. C. Diff is the number one cause of death of older people in hospitals. It was not fun having this, I can tell you that. It was without question the most sick I have ever been in my life, before or since. Nothing has even come close.
It took several months to combat this. I had to go to a specialist. Another round of antibiotics were used to combat the C. Diff, and it wasn't working. The specialist indicated that he would try one more round of antibiotics and if they didn't work that round, they were going to have to try more drastic treatment. Thankfully, the final round finally did the trick.
One of the main side affects of C. Diff is severe dehydration. Despite my best efforts to avoid this, it would still happen to a degree. It's hard to explain how this effected me from a personality point of view, but it wasn't pretty. Concentration was difficult. Not a good thing in my line of work.
I found out later about one of my classmates from HS who had a teenage daughter that also got C. Diff from antibiotics. She was hospitalized for months and almost lost her life from C. Diff....all caused from antibiotics.
Ever since then, I am extremely hesitant to use antibiotics. I will only take them under very specific circumstances where there is no question about the need to use them.
I know we are not talking about antibiotics here, but the general concepts and concerns are still similar. Taking a flu shot as preventative medicine is not something that I am remotely interested in doing. Especially since I very rarely get sick, and even this last round was more than likely not actually the flu (it only lasted a couple of days and I didn't have body aches).
In my case above, the cure was far, far worse than the disease.
