Quote:
Originally Posted by
Baron Von Strucker
I know some one who got the shingles vaccine and still got shingles maybe less severe than she may have had. I am probably going to get this at some point. its not covered under canadian health umbrella so $600. not bad to mostly avoid a painful affliction.
As some of you might remember, I had shingles in 2010. And... while I don't want to encourage the anti-vax crowd, I'm almost sure my shingles were a result of vaccines.
If you recall, 2010 was the year when the formerly-dead disease pertussis (whooping cough) came back to the US, thanks to an idiotic "vaccines cause autism" campaign by geniuses like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. Parents listened to these morons, stopped vaccinating their kids, and the baby-killing disease persussis came back, after decades of dormancy.
It was also learned that the pertussis vaccine (TDaP) wears off after 10 years in adults, and you need a booster. It was recommended that all adults expecting to care for young babies should get the booster. I had a baby coming that year, and obviously I planned to get that booster, because pertussis was making a comeback.
Also, I had ignored flu shots my entire life up until 2010, as I knew the flu wasn't very likely to harm me at that age (it still isn't, at my present age). However, sicne the flu can also kill babies, it was also advised to get a flu shot.
The problem was that the second half of 2010 also brought me my worst string of colds in my life. I kept catching cold after cold, and all of them were severe and long lasting. One of them came from the germ factory known as the WSOP, but I caught other colds as well. You're not supposed to get these vaccines when sick, so I kept waiting for a clear break in the colds to where I could get it done. However, I was running out of time until the baby was projected to be born.
Finally, with only about 3.5 weeks left until the projected birth date, I had gotten over a cold and felt healthy. I went in to get my flu and TDaP shots.
:baddecision
2.5 weeks later, I got shingles. One day after that, my son came a week early, and I couldn't hold or touch him for the entire first month of his life. Brutal.
I wondered if the shingles was related to the shots, as shingles comes not from catching a virus, but from an existing virus (from chicken pox) breaking through your immune defenses. It seemed a bit too coincidental that I got shots which affect my immune system, and then got shingles right after.
Indeed, upon googling it, while there were no studies on this, I found a forum where people were discussing the matter. Amazingly, almost everyone in the shingles discussion had the exact same time frame -- 2.5 weeks after the TDaP shot, they got shingles. The following year, I even saw a tweet from a female poker player (not someone well known) who was pregnant, and said she got shingles "2 1/2 weeks after the TDaP shot", and she was also wondering if it was related.
I think my mistake was probably jumping the gun with getting the shots so soon after the cold got better. That cold was particularly bad, and I'm guessing my immune system hadn't fully returned to normal yet, and then I hit it with two vaccines. I didn't ask anyone else who got shingles from TDaP whether a cold preceded it.
Fortunately I jumped on the shingles super fast (credit to my girlfriend for immediately recognizing it, despite never having it herself), got the medication, and I didn't develop any permanent nerve damage from it.