Speak Your Truth: Flu Shots

Email conversation about me signing a declination regarding the flu shot:

To Sue Deacon, December 6:

Good morning,

I am one of the volunteer doulas and I normally sign a declination for the flu shot. I have lost/misplaced in cyberspace the email of the woman I contacted last year for this. Would you be so kind as to point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Pam

From Sue to Abby Melendy, Samual Mooneyham, me, December 6:

Sure. I am assuming you know you will have to wear a mask and that
Lynn and Sam are aware. You will contact Abby Melendy
978-630_6545
Abby.Melendy@Heywood .org
I will cc her and Sam on this.
Thanks!! Appreciate all you do!

Sue

From Abby to Sue, me, Samual, December 6:

If a declination is signed then a mask will have to be worn when in three feet of a patient especially a baby. If you are found to not be wearing a mask you can be excluded from working on the floor.

Abby

From me to Abby, Sue, Samual, December 6:

Yep. This will be my third year of mask wearing. Thanks!

Pam

From Samual to me, Abby, Sue, December 7:

Pam,

Have you signed the declination yet?  

I want to remind you that you need a mask while you are now on the unit.  

Sam

From me to Sam, Abby, Sue, December 14:

Finally signed it and emailed it in this morning. Wearing the mask is within 3 feet of patients, is it not?

Pam

From Sue to me, December 14:

Hi Pam

I think you need to check with Sam on when you need to 

wear the mask. I believe it has to be worn the whole time you are on

the unit as it is a high risk area.  

Please check with him directly on this.

Thanks!

Sue

From me to Sue, December 14:

Thanks, Sue, I will check with him.

Pam

From me to Sam, December 14:

Hi Sam,

I just wanted to double check on wearing masks. In the past I was only required to wear them within three feet of patients so I thought I'd better make sure before I go in and find out it is otherwise because I'm not. 

Thanks,

Pam

From Sam to me, Abby, Sue, December 14:

Pam,

I would prefer that you wear a mask at all times while on the unit.  You are right about it requires to wear it within 3 feet of a patient.  Due to infant having an immature immune system, I would ask that you not go into the nursery please.  

Sam

From an English perspective, I probably could have worded that last one better. Still, me being me, I probably wouldn’t have. In fact, I did look at it somewhat objectively, decided it might not be as easily understood by someone who does not know me as it is by myself, and let it stand.

Also from an English perspective, it seems clear to me that just having a Master’s of Science in Nursing and being a registered nurse and neonatal nurse practitioner does not mean you are very good at English. If I were writing Sam’s last response, I would have written it like this: “I would prefer that you wear a mask at all times while on the unit. You are correct about hospital policy requiring masks to be worn within three feet of a patient. However, due to an infant having an immature immune system (or due to infants having immature immune systems), I would ask that you please not go into the nursery.”

In all fairness, I realize that Sam probably is quite busy and does not have time, or even the inclination, to check his emails for grammar, punctuation, etc. Especially when the email in question is being sent to a lowly volunteer.

Such things do matter to some of us lowly volunteers. Perhaps they matter too much. At the same time, I remember sitting at an awards banquet not long before graduating from MWCC. My only reason for being there was because I was in the honors program. I had a GPA of 3.91 at the time and while awards were being given out, the nursing students often had their GPAs announced. Quite frankly, if mine had been even 3.5, I would have been embarrassed. Most of these people had in the neighborhood of 3.0. I get that some of the classes are hard. I get that some of these people were not traditional students in that they had children and a life outside academia. However, I also get that I am not overly fond of the idea of being treated or seen by a doctor or nurse who slid by with a 3.0. That’s a B average, for goodness sake. Average. If he/she did not get solid Bs, it means that for every A, there was a C. Do you want to know why mine was a 3.91? Because I got a B and a B+ amid my mostly As. And the B was because my mentor didn’t like me much.

Also, what good is being fluent in medical terminology if you are not able to adequately communicate in English?

This is what my declination looks like:

Just in case it might be hard to make out my reason to decline, it reads, “I fail to see the benefit of subjecting myself to the possibility of being sick for potentially several weeks in order to avoid the inconvenience of having to wear a mask for a few hours.”

Seriously. I’m pretty sure I’ve had the flu twice in my life. I’ve had strep throat a few times, I used to get tonsillitis like clockwork in the winter, I very rarely have a cold. I do have allergies but I can tell the difference between allergies and an illness.

Five years ago next month, I got a flu shot because I was completing a phlebotomy internship and I had to wear a mask otherwise. I think if I didn’t have to wear glasses, I might have just worn a mask but when you are sticking needles in people’s arms, you kind of need to see what you’re doing and when I have a mask on with my glasses, I often get foggy and can’t see as well as I’d like. I think if I had it to do over again, I’d ask to complete my internship after flu season. Still, the past is in the past and can’t at this point be changed.

Later that same year, I got a second flu shot because I was entering the flu season again as a volunteer doula at the hospital. I hate masks and just thought it would be easier to get the stupid shot. However, after that second shot, I didn’t feel well for about two weeks. For that entire year and the following, I felt like crap a lot. I didn’t have really full blown colds and I didn’t get the flu, but I just spent way too much time feeling unwell.

Since then, I’ve declined. Last year, I went in with Jonathan and Elizabeth when Rebecca was born and because they were personal friends, I went as a private doula rather than a volunteer because I thought it incredibly stupid to have to wear a mask around them when they hadn’t had flu shots either and I saw them on a minimum once a week at church and often during the week as well.

Let’s talk for a moment about how the flu spreads and how to avoid it. I’ve borrowed heavily from WebMD for this. It appears that the flu spreads from one person to another via the little droplets of goo that are produced when you cough or sneeze. This goo flies through the air and gets literally everywhere including other people and whatever surfaces are near by. If you breathe in the goo, or it lands on your mouth or nose, guess what? You’ve been infected. If you inadvertently touch the goo that landed somewhere and then touch your own gooey places on your face (think eyes, nose, and mouth) within 2 hours of the goo landing, guess what? You’ve been infected. Sounds like fun, eh?

What are the best ways to avoid catching or spreading the flu? Well, webMD has seven suggestions that they list before mentioning, as the CDC wants them to, that the best is a flu vaccine. We’ll get to that in a bit. Those seven suggestions are:

1. Keep your distance. Big duh on that one. I mean, seriously.

2. Stay home. Bigger duh on that one. One of my pet peeves is when people take their obviously sick offspring to church. Maybe they aren’t concerned about their own family, but I am about mine. Keep your sick self and family home, dude.

One of my favorite sick stories happened at the library in Bonners Ferry once. It doesn’t involve the flu, but it could easily have been that rather than what it was. I was at the check out desk and was very pregnant with Seth. I had Cedric, Amena, Daniel, Joanna, and Laura with me although Joanna and Laura weren’t right at the desk with me. This woman who can barely speak says, “I had to check out a few books to keep me occupied. The doctor just told me I have strep.” Are you freaking kidding me? You were just breathing and coughing and probably sneezing all over the library where I and my children were and you have strep throat? Stay the heck home. Seriously. Idiots abound.

3. Cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze or cough. Really. Do this. Don’t just cover with your hand which you can then go and touch things with and don’t just cough or sneeze into your elbow because it isn’t going to catch everything. Use a Kleenex or paper towel or napkin or bath towel or something. Cover your whole head. And then properly discard or wash whatever it is that you used.

4. Wash your hands—a lot. You think? Yeah. All the time. You need to wash your hands like I do. I wash them when I’m washing dishes or cleaning the kitchen or reading or cooking or watching Vikings (because, you know, they didn’t) or any other activity I happen to be doing. Wash your hands. Wash them so much you need to use lotion because they’re all red and chapped. Well, maybe not that much. Or maybe that much.

5. When you wash your hands in a public restroom: they have a whole list of what you should do in this instance. Basically, use warm water, hold a paper towel under an arm, use soap, sing Happy Birthday or the ABC song twice while you wash, and rinse. Dry, use the towel to turn off the water and then use a towel to open the door. Some people do this all the time. For me, it depends on how dangerously I feel like living at the moment. Generally, I prefer not to use public restrooms and I rarely sit on a public toilet seat, never mind touching the sink or soap dispenser or towel dispenser. I mean. Yuck.

6. Don’t touch your face. Within reason, here, you know? If you are in the shower and you need to wash your face, go ahead and touch it. If you haven’t washed your hands for an hour or two, maybe you should do that first.

7. Practice good health habits in general. You know, eat good food, get enough rest, relax, exercise. Basically, be healthy and don’t add to the stress of just living in this germ infested world.

Got it? Good. Just common sense. Which is another subject entirely.

Now, flu facts. Here is a poster that is on the door of the exam room in which Amena and I spent way too much time in October:

Let’s examine this. Up to 1 in 5 people get the flu. One in five. That’s 20% of the general population. If I am a woman of childbearing age and I am pregnant, I have approximately 1 in 3 chance of having a cesarean section. That’s 33%. So, if I’m a woman and I’m pregnant, I have a better chance of c-section than the flu. Based on that, I think I’d take my chances.

The population of the US is, according to quickly found information online, about 325,256,236 as of right now based on UN estimates. I don’t trust the UN but I’ll take that number. Out of that number, up to 65,051,247.2 people will get the flu. That means that possibly more than 260,204,988.8 people will not get the flu. Are we good so far? Okay.

More than 200,000 hospitalizations result from flu-related complications every year. So, out of the 65,051,247.2 who get the flu (even though that’s an “up to” number), 200,000 will end up in the hospital. That’s like 0.3% of all the people who get the flu. That’s .006% of the general population. Statistically, that is not a big deal.

20,000 children under the age of 5 are hospitalized every year because of influenza complications. I’m guessing that those are part of the 200,000 but I could be wrong. Let’s just go with the idea that they are. That’s 10%. Ten percent of those hospitalized are under the age of 5. I don’t mean to make light of a child being sick, but that’s 0.003% of those who get the flu and 0.006% of the general population. These are pretty small numbers.

And they get smaller.

Flu can be deadly for young children. In 2014-2015, 148 pediatric deaths were reported to the CDC. 148 out of over 65 million. I’m not even going to break that down.

90% of influenza deaths are in people age 65+. Same thing. I’m not breaking that down.

You can go to the CDC website and there you will find a lot of numbers and tables and what they will be telling you is that the flu vaccine helps prevent both deaths from the flu and people from even getting the flu. What they don’t really point out very well is that they really don’t know. They don’t really know how many people get the flu because not everyone who gets it goes to the doctor. Not everyone who gets a flu shot reports adverse affects and even those who do often are told that their symptoms are not related to the shot. You can visit them here and see what they have to say.

What would the numbers look like without flu vaccines? Who knows.

There are some things to remember, though. For one thing, each year the flu changes. The flu shot changes. Each year the flu shots have vaccines for those flu strains the experts think are most likely to be dominate. What on earth does that mean? It means that even if you get the flu shot, you could still get the flu. It could be that these experts are completely wrong or that you were just exposed to a different strain or whatever. For another thing, it’s all just a bunch of guess work. They, meaning the experts, don’t really know how many people get the flu each year. They don’t really know how many people have adverse reactions to the shot. Even when someone reports an adverse reaction, it is not often recognized as such.

Don’t be a sheep and blindly follow the masses. Be a goat and do a little research. To me, the numbers, my own personal experience, and my general mistrust of the government just do not justify subjecting myself and my family to this. However, if at the end of the day you still think the flu shot is the way to go, I’ll still be your friend. I might think you’re crazy, and you’ll probably think I am too, but that’s okay.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Billy Idol video to finish watching.