What with the somewhat-recent threads on vaccinations and swine flu, I figured I'd share a personal anecdote.
After much harping by my fiancee, who is an RN (Registered Nurse), I finally went for my Tetanus/Diptheria booster yesterday (which is given every 10 years). I've been due for a few months and just haven't made it in. So, the nurse sits me down and explains the process to me, and I tell her I've never had a reaction to a vaccine nor do I have any relevant allergies. So she whips out the needle, and injects the vaccine into my arm. She then presses a pamphlet into my hand which I try to politely decline (I've forgotten more about vaccines than the pamphlet even stated in the first place, honestly, I have no concerns) and go out into the lobby for the mandatory 15 minute wait.
And it's a good bloody thing I did. If I'd gotten in my car and headed home I could have caused a serious accident.
About 5 minutes after receiving the injection, I start feeling tired and my eyes start to involuntarily close. Within another minute, that has stopped, but I'm feeling severely nauseated. 30 seconds later, the nausea is gone but my body temperature has shot up and the sweat is LITERALLY RUNNING off my face, neck, and back. I'm thinking to myself "There is no way this is a reaction to the vaccine contents, this has got to be psychosomatic (mental anxiety manifested as physical symptoms)." BZZZT! WRONG! The sweating stops within 2 minutes and I start to get severely chilled, so I stand up to grab paper towel and mop the moisture figuring that the symptoms are already disappearing and I'll be fine in 10 minutes or so. The receptionist sees me and literally runs for the nurse (turns out I was as pale as a ghost). The nurse hauls me back into a waiting room.
So I'm sitting there thinking to myself that this is ridiculous and she tells me that I'm pale as a ghost, and I look down at my arms and my skin has gone from it's normal slight-brownish to translucent. My pulse was thready and low, and my blood pressure (systolic and diastolic) were 20 below their normal values. AWESOME! And the RN is getting the adrenaline out and ready just in case my blood pressure drops any lower (adrenaline is a vasoconstrictor which will tighten vessels to increase blood pressure and increase heart rate).
Within 10 minutes, I was back to normal. Jill came over to drive the car as a precaution, and we headed home. So what happened? My immune system works.
I post this because people often attribute reactions like this as bad reactions to a vaccine and either refuse to get vaccinated again themselves or refuse to do their kids. That's a mistake. What happened to me is a reaction to an injection. A reaction to a vaccine itself will take several hours to manifest (unless it's an allergic reaction to eggs or something used to grow the vaccine, which can cause anaphylactic shock within minutes). I have no allergies so it wasn't anaphylatic shock (though the symptoms mirror it fairly closely).
Our bodies have a natural defense against foreign material entering the body through the skin.
1. Nerve and immune detection cells trigger a host of automatic responses designed to purge generic pathogens. This includes nausea, designed to purge the stomach and throat.
2. Immune cells trigger a cascade which results in blood being re-rerouted from the extremities to the body core and brain. This is where my initial light-headedness (eye closing) came from as it takes a few minutes. This causes a simultaneously loss in blood pressure outside the body core. The mechanism is designed to prevent the spread of a foreign material through the bloodstream.
3. Body temperature rises dramatically for a short period. Most pathogens have a very limited temperature range of survival. Raising the temperature of the body even 2 degrees will kill most foreign biological materials.
So, the short of it is that I would have experience all these symptoms if I'd received an injection of sugar water. It was a reaction to foreign material penetrating the skin barrier, rather than a specific reaction to what the material was. It is a normal reaction to the introduction of foreign material (if a little more severe than most people generally experience).
Anyway, I just figured I'd share since I now have a personal experience to explain reactions to vaccines. There are three types: generic immune reaction to an injection (what I had, fairly common), allergic reaction to the vaccine medium (rare), and specific negative immune response to the vaccine itself (extremely rare). While all of them may make you feel crappy, they are infinitely better than contracting the illness.
