Lots of reactions to the flu vax this year

Nurses General Nursing

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we've given a lot of vaxes through our home health agency and this year we're hearing a lot of minor complaints: feeling achey, low grade temps, etc. last friday monster got hers, and she's been running a fever ever since. unusual for her, she's never run fevers with vaxes before. not low grade, either, i've gotten some readings up to 103 at night.

yesterday dd#1 called me in a total panic at work, monster was running 105. i dropped and ran. took me an hour to get home and it had come down to 103.8. motrin brought it down to 100.6. by the time we got to the doc two hours later it was 99-something. fnp thinks it's just a vax reaction because she can't find anything else, but dang! she's on motrin around the clock for 3 days then we'll try a trial day of nothing to see if it comes back.

funny side note: i have a temporal thermometer. after the temp got down to 100 dd#1 said "her fever broke."

monster started crying and pointing to her forehead: "mama, my fever broke-ded here, can you fix it??"

Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.

I had about 24 hours of typical achiness, no fever. Of course we had flu shots available on my 2nd out of 4 days in a row working, so I just felt yucky the next couple of days. It was so busy I didn't even get a break to walk down the hall to get the shot, oh no, the nurse came to see me and I got mine in the middle of a chart check!

I have never had the pneumonia vaccine, however I am seriously considering it. The week after the flu vax I had that patient come in with the wild pneumonia (wild coughing, that is) and I'll be darned if I wasn't really sick the very next day- 5 days of zithromax, one missed day of work, I'm still trying to get my asthma to behave now. Upper respiratory stuff, if it goes beyond sniffles, just wreaks havoc on whatever control I had of my asthma. We had one night where I had to forbid the use of the odor control spray as it will cause me to have to use my inhaler, and that's bad if I've been drinking coffee; wouldn't you know it, some lady shat puddles all night long and the smell! Fans and open doors only do so much.

I dunno where this ramble is going. I just wish I had looked up the labs on that pneumonia patient to find out what bug he had.

The only thing we've noticed is that this year we are having more people with blood "trickles" after we finish the injection. We've all aspirated but it seems like every othr person bleeds.

:yeahthat:

Specializes in icu, er, transplant, case management, ps.
I had about 24 hours of typical achiness, no fever. Of course we had flu shots available on my 2nd out of 4 days in a row working, so I just felt yucky the next couple of days. It was so busy I didn't even get a break to walk down the hall to get the shot, oh no, the nurse came to see me and I got mine in the middle of a chart check!

I have never had the pneumonia vaccine, however I am seriously considering it. The week after the flu vax I had that patient come in with the wild pneumonia (wild coughing, that is) and I'll be darned if I wasn't really sick the very next day- 5 days of zithromax, one missed day of work, I'm still trying to get my asthma to behave now. Upper respiratory stuff, if it goes beyond sniffles, just wreaks havoc on whatever control I had of my asthma. We had one night where I had to forbid the use of the odor control spray as it will cause me to have to use my inhaler, and that's bad if I've been drinking coffee; wouldn't you know it, some lady shat puddles all night long and the smell! Fans and open doors only do so much.

I dunno where this ramble is going. I just wish I had looked up the labs on that pneumonia patient to find out what bug he had.

What most people do not realize, and this includes a good number of nurses, is the deaths from flu are not actually caused by the flu itself. Most of the elderly and the young die from pneumonia. And given the wide spread of MRSA in both hospitals and our communities, I would rather risk getting the flu vaccination then not.

Woody:balloons:

I just got my flu shot yesterday and it is a bad one! I woke up with severe body aches. Ugh! I have a cold right now but not body aches until I got the shot. My GP said she also got the severe body aches for about 2 days with this year's shot. My 3yo also got the shot and she appears to be doing okay.

Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.

I am not overly anxious to receive a flu shot this year. Before I started nursing school and worked as an aide in the clinic, I used to get them yearly with no problem. First year in school, without access to the vaccine, my husband and I both got really sick with the actual flu; in fact, I missed my microbiology final and had to reschedule. Now, being a nurse, for some reason, I'd just rather not. Not sure why...

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