Got the Shot(s)
There’s nothing like a government official firing all of the C.D.C. vaccine panel experts from the advisory committee to get you to schedule your overdue shots. I had been moving “get my shingles vaccine” from to-do list to to-do list, putting it off because I didn’t want to feel crappy all weekend.
But this weekend was the perfect time to kick off a two-shot plan because I could get them Thursday morning, feel crappy by Thursday night, lose Friday to soft moaning from my bed, and then still have the rest of the weekend to feel weekend-y vs. achy. I will sacrifice a random weekend in September for the second part of the shingles shot.
In addition to the shingles vaccine, I layered in my pneumococcal vaccine, too. And I got blood drawn. I like to stuff as many dreaded tasks as possible into a single visit.
The shingles shot hurt going in (I didn’t feel the pneumococcal one at all), and then my arm hurt for a few minutes. Then, the pain went away by the time I was walking to the car. Then I got home and felt exhausted by noon, though that could also have been the fact that I was off-schedule with my coffee consumption. I worked late a few days that week to make sure that I had only easy tasks left for that day. I wasn’t up for a lot of thinking.
I took Advil at noon when my arm began to throb with pain. Treating the pain may have preemptively impacted other reactions. But in the beginning, I mostly felt… slow. I was thinking slowly. Moving slowly. I felt like I was mentally and physically moving through gelatin.
That all changed around 10 pm. I pulled on a sweatshirt in 90-degree weather because I was shaking from chills. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t stay asleep because I felt so terrible. I woke up on Friday feeling washed out from a lack of sleep, but overall fine. It set me up nicely for the moaning-from-bed portion of my plan. Until I started to actually feel terrible in the afternoon, dozed on and off, gave up and went to sleep at 9:30 pm, woke up a few times, but reset to normal by morning. Nausea + chills = horrible way to spend the weekend but happy I’m protected against shingles and pneumonia.
My main advice is to do the shot leading into the weekend or take off of work the rest of the day/next day. But do it. It’s a few hours of suck (10 pm to about 4 am, for the worst of it for me) for a lifetime-ish of protection from something much worse.
3 comments
That sounds miserable. I’m glad you did it – that was a wise choice. Especially the pneumonia one – seems like everyone has been getting pneumonia these days.
Good reminder to everyone. We get the shingles vaccine here free at 65. Otherwise it is hundreds of dollars. I’m wondering if I should get it earlier.
The worst reaction I remember having to a shot, beyond a sore and/or red arm, was the first covid shot (AstraZeneca). A few hours later, I was horribly fatigued and achy all over and got the chills — had to go to bed early. But I woke up feeling a lot better. A small price to pay for a bit of peace of mind!
Apparently I did have a bad reaction to the oral polio vaccine when I was a toddler. I have no memory of that, but my mother made sure it was highlighted in my medical files every time we moved and changed doctors, and at school, since we got a lot of booster shots at school. She did NOT say “No more vaccines for my kid” — the other kids lined up for their sugar cube while I got pulled aside for the actual shot, lol.
I had a mild case of shingles about 25 years ago, while I was in the middle of infertility treatment. (I’ve written about this on my blog.) It was just after my 40th birthday weekend, part of which was spent attending a baby shower. My doctor told me shingles can be stress induced — stressed?? Moi??? He did offer us a shingles vaccine a few years later, and we took him up on it, even though we had to pay for it. Not sure if that’s still the case. Most vaccines here are free.
I did ask our family dr about the RSV vaccine last year, but he didn’t think it was worthwhile for us at that point.