No Shingles, Thank You

Spent much of yesterday sick as the proverbial canine. The reason? Because on Tuesday I went and got not one but two vaccinations -- for the flu, and more importantly, for Shingles. I had been meaning to get the latter for some time. I’m a prime candidate for that ghastly disease because I had chickenpox as an adult. Apparently, that means there is a strong, strong likelihood that I would get shingles sometime after middle age.

And I wasn’t planning on getting shingles...not if I could help it, anyway. It’s incredibly painful, can be a bit disfiguring (at least in the short term), and there is no known cure. And that’s just if you get garden variety. A friend of mine, a writer I’ve worked with, got it in her eyes. Feel free to shudder at that thought. I certainly did.

So, I got the vaccine. The problem is that I’ve got a strong immune system (apparently) and whenever I get a vaccine the old body swings into overdrive. It interprets the serum (as it should) as an attack and responds accordingly--i.e., it generates the antibodies which will give you immunity later on. The trouble being that may make you may feel sick in the short run. You may feel fever, aches, queasy stomach, and all the other things that are designed to make life impossible for viruses...and, sort of by accident, miserable for you.

Ergo, I spent pretty much all day yesterday flat on my back and feeling, to quote the immortal P.G. Wodehouse, like something rejected by the pure food committee. 

It wasn’t fun to say the least...but I knew the alternative was to court something a whole lot worse. Better to suffer a little today than much more more next week.

In other words, I was doing something mature.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?