I’m the seven dwarves of mild sickness today: sneezy, sniffly, sleepy, hazy, dopey, snotty, and…okay, even with redundancy (I guess I could get really redundant and add snuffly or snoozy) I can’t come up with seven truly legitimate offerings. Should have gone with “The four horsemen of mild illness.”
I don’t think I’ve ever had the flu. This year and last year I got the flu shot, but I don’t think I’ve ever had it regardless, even as a child. Now, the *stomach* flu used to be a Christmas tradition of sorts. One that I don’t miss. Not having had the flu-flu makes me unwarrantedly proud, like I’m immune-superior, but then I remind myself that I’ve had both mono and bedbugs (yeah yeah–bed bugs aren’t a communicable disease in technical terms, but they follow the same type of epidemiological pattern…) and probably shouldn’t count on my luck.
Because I’m going on a trip in March, I may be getting a typhoid vaccination. I’ve had it before, when I was about to move to Thailand for a year, although when I went back to Thailand a few years ago I forgot about typhoid entirely until the night before I left. No harm done, but no harm done in getting it this time.
Maybe my interest (obsession? You be the judge) in vaccination and immunity is related to my interest in epidemiology (or it’s related to OCD…or column a, column b, etc etc). I’m always surprised by how rarely doctors–at least in my experience–ever bring it up. I’m sure that if I had been with my current health center for 10 years, they would have had my booster shots in their system and would have flagged me for needing current ones, but who goes to the same doctor for 10 years? That sounds divine. I didn’t even do that as a child, and there were paper records then, which always seemed to disappear. I knew I hadn’t had any vaccines in recent memory (well, I remembered getting Hepatitis A/B vaccine when it first came out; I was 16 or 17), but my doctor’s office had no way to confirm that, so they tested my immunity titers (a word I love) and it turned out I had no antibodies agains: measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diptheria, polio, pertussis, hepatitis A and hepatitis B.
I can’t recall a doctor ever asking me when I had last been immunized (except that they all mention flu shots). Obviously there were no ill effects even though I ride around on the subway all the time where there’s every form of virus and bacteria (did they not find plague on the F train or something?) But I would think that would be a standard question…so public service announcement: TITERS.
