I’m full of yucky stuff

So yesterday I read more about hep B and the hep B vaccine than I EVER wanted to know. Turns out the truth about how easy it is to catch lies somewhere in the middle (doesn’t it always?) but it’s a bit easier to catch than I thought. I read the UK study that linked the vaccine to MS and a whole bunch of other stuff and in the end we determined that the benefit outweighed the risk (Hep B is endemic in China. I didn’t know that.) After the research, we came to the conclusion that it was best for James to get it too.

So we had hep A, hep B and thyphoid vaccinations today. It was very yucky. Very, very yucky. You could feel the vaccine shoot through your veins. Blech. It was very expensive. And my arm hurts. *sniffle* *whinge*

We go back in a month for the second round of hep A & hep B vacs. At that time we also will get a combo vaccine that contains whooping cough (had a friend who had that recently. Very dangerous to children. We’re getting it so that FD can never catch it from us.) We’ll also be vaccinated for measles at that time. The doc wants me to be absotively, posolutely sure I’m not pregnant before I have the measles vac.

Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

But, in the end, the thing is…we won’t know for certain that FD is hep B free for six months. We don’t want to have worry about this for that long and we don’t want to hold ourselves back from her for any reason in those six very precious months. So now, no worries! (and I think, after doing all that research, very little risk of either of us developing MS as a result).

I impressed the doctor with all my paranoid knowledge of the issue, though. Heh.

 

Vaccinations

Tomorrow we have an appointment at the International Travel Clinic to have the vaccinations that we’ve been putting off. Someone usually jumps down my throat when I mention unease with vaccinations, but I do have some misgivings about getting the Hep B series. None of the other vaccinations are freaking me much, (measles, polio, Hep A) but that one is.

It’s been linked with an increase in MS, made worse if it runs in your family. MS doesn’t run in my family, but it does in James’. Why do something that might increase his risk in developing the disease? So right now I’m information gathering on Hep B, how easy it is to catch (lots of opinions about this) and the risk involved with the Hep B series (lots of opinions about that too, no conclusive evidence).

The reason we’re thinking about getting it is the chance (not a big one, but a chance) that FD could have Hep B and it may have been missed in testing by the SWI or she may have had a false negative result for the disease because of malnutrition. Some say Hep B is hard to catch and to just be careful until she’s been tested here at home. Others say it’s easy to catch and we should definitely have the vaccinations.

So, I’m still info gathering. Got an opinion about vaccinations? I’d love to hear it. This tends to be a touchy subject for reasons I don’t quite understand.

Once we get home we’ll have a titer done on FD and decide our course from there. She will have received some vaccinations in the SWI, but we’ll have to make choices about what else she needs once she gets home and how to handle that. Right now I’m just trying to decide whether J and I should have the Hep B series.

Tomorrow afternoon we’re going to have our wills drawn up, too. Fun day!! Heh.