Jessica's Blog

I have suspected for a very very long time that the whole flu shot thing was bullsh*&.  In college I refused to do it, and did it once as a requirement for swim season and got the flu.  SInce then my luck with it has been about 50-50.  But after this last week, I am now going to say... forget that noise.  I've done it the last few years due to pregnancy and guilt by the medical community, but c'mon people...

Last week we all dutifully (yeah, the baby too) got our flu shots.  Achy for a couple days, sparks were off...No fun.  My body still aches a bit and it seems so stupid.

Big Boy got his shot on Wednesday after school.  Thursday after our parent-teacher conference we took him home because he was asleep at his desk with a "flu shot fever" of 101 or so.  It is idiotic that this is thought of as a simple side effect of protecting ourselves from some greater evil.  I mena, how many difference viruses can cause flu?  No one knows!

Big Boy has not returned to school yet, and will not be going to school tomorrow.  He has been in a waffling fever syndrome of going up to 104 in the evenings, and bouncing in and out of fevers through the days around 102-103.  He's had some dry-heaves.  He has no appetite.  No mucus, no cough, no bladder pain, just body ache and lethargy.

It sucks.

I took him in to his pediatrician and after quite the thorough exam she gave the simple explanation I was expecting: the flu shot wore him down, he's in a state of fighting off something else big.  He hasn't gotten that something else, but is in a state of serious battle, so keep him home, keep him comfortable etc etc etc.  My sis the nurse said the same thing when I called her late on Saturday night when he hit 104.

I just came back downstairs after kissing his drenched with sweat little brow.  He's snoring loudly after his fever has broken.  Today I got some beautiful but sad little pictures of him wrapped in a blanket, holding warm cider in a mug on the couch by the window sound asleep.  It's a picture in which he looks competely ageless.  This pic could be taken when he's in college, when he's our age or older.  Sound asleep surrounded by "work", wrapped in a blanket in a warm sunny spot.  He's in a phase of only wanting to wear oxford shirts, so he looks all grown up much of the time.

No more.  I'm tempted to blow off Little Lady's next shot.  For whatever reason, babies are told to do the flu shot twice the first time they ever take it.  A six months old?  Are you freakin daft? 

I caved because Hubby got influenza once.  I remember it very very well and how tragic it was.  Carting him to the hospital, helping him walk, his body in such pain.  The days flat out in bed unable to move.  The shivers, and drugs.  I got it loud and clear the big difference between colds, flus and INFLUENZA... but there really is no guarantee that that stupid shot really helps.

Yeah, I'm ranting a bit.  Mostly because my son has missed two days of school and four days of his five year old life over a damned shot and not even a sickness he picked up on his own.