My doctor said I would be stupid not to get the shot. MJC was sure I should get it. But I was not sure how I felt. I am certainly not anti-vaccine. I believe in the big bang, in science, in global warming, in medicine, and in vaccinating children. But I've also never received a flu shot. In general, I believe in controlling your health from a preventative stand-point with diet and exercise. I believe in stretching & applying heat to sore muscles over ibuprofen and yoga over a stiff drink if I need to relax.
As rooted in rationality as I tend to be, I am open minded to hippy, earthy, and homeopathic. So although my doctor assured me that the H1N1 vaccine was safe for me, I still wanted to educate myself and make my own decision.
I do have a process for making big decisions like this one. I usually already know what I want to do but I need to verify that I am correct. So I:
1) Ask everyone I care about what they think.
2) Find out what they experts think.
3) Find out why they think it.
4) Make my decision which is usually right where I started but I feel much better about it.
In loyalty to my process, I asked my doctor about the H1N1 vaccine. He said simply "You should get it. It would be silly of you not to." MJC nodded in agreement as if to say -Great. Decision made. There we have it.
I'd read the reason NOT to get this vaccine was because it was released too quickly to be tested and because it contains a chemical called thimersol, a mercury-based preservative, which for the most part has been removed from vaccines due to speculation it is linked to Autism in children.
Dr. J assured me according to all of the research he'd done, he was certain that thimersol's connection had been disproved by all credible medical experts and scientists. However due to a very active autism activism group, there was a lot of misinformation being distributed.
MJC nodded again, looking at me like - Okay, M. You see? You're getting it. I still was not sure.
For three weeks, I read as much as I could and I asked everyone for an opinion. Everything I read said to get the shot but every woman I talked to said not to. They could not explain why but they thought it might be a bad idea. I weighed the dangers on both side and I went not with my gut (which was totally, unhelpfully silent) and not with my peers who said they would be nervous to do it, but with my brain that proved to me that I was doing the right thing. I wasn't sure until the moment the needle was in my arm, but my body kept leading me toward getting the shot while my heart throbbed about the what ifs for baby orange. I didn't ignore my gut, but it did not tell me what to do. I knew, however that I had made the right decision, because right after I got the vaccine, I felt calm instead of scared.
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-flu-pregnancy23-2009oct23,0,409451.story
http://health.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2009/10/05/getting-the-swine-flu-vaccine-how-long-a-wait.html
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1 comment:
The first one was an excellent decision. There will be tough ones coming but that was a good rehearsal.
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