(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)
I think of John forcing me to drink water the last time I had food poisoning - so I try hard to be my own pusher, and keep hydrated. I spent the day at that clinic. I'm not putting myself in a position to have to go there!
Hour on the hour, I'm up - and it is worse each time, more violent. I may never eat peanut butter again after the taste of those noodles and weird sauce coming back up. Everyone is so thoughtful but I besieged by anxiety. How long will this last?
I don't want to be alone, and Meggie is the best nurse - we move rooms to be in one vacated by Peg and Nancy. Their room has a bathroom! Meggie puts on some music for me (precious battery life on the iPhone), gets me an extra blanket - I'm freezing - and half a case of water bottles. I want music with no words, and she makes me chuckle - the piano music she has is from an album called Dark Night of the Soul.
At one point I say, "Meggie, some day this is going to be a funny story."
The generator lights go out - must be around 10 PM - and thus I'm on the hourly puke-and-shit round. I've been able to do one, then the other, but can feel myself losing strength to walk very far, strength to carry my bucket in with me. (Thank god Meggie got me a bucket - I was so sure I wouldn't need it...)
Fluffing up a famous quote, our family friend Dennis is known for saying, "It's always darkest before it goes completely fucking black."
I sit on the throne. I am going to have just enough time to turn and flush before I have to vomit.
Pull. Pull on the chain. Pull on the chain again. Stuck, stuck. No movement. Nothing. "Meggie! Meggie!" I shout, as I realize it. "There's no water!"
"It's ok then, it'll be back on in the morning."
And standing there I look at the shower drain hole in the floor, and the unflushed toilet. Gotta do it. And so I vomit into the bowl, filling it further - a classic scream-puke, if you're familiar (second definition at that link). I'm also crying, just to add another liquid-shedding bodily function to the mess, and I stumble back to the bed - I've given up on fiddling with the mosquito net, and am just leaving it up, so let's hope that puking up the malarone is not putting me at any risk.
I'm out of breath and lay there, panting, sweating. Meggie has left - to get Joe, it turns out. He brings an unused half-bag sun shower; the water is cold now and he's going to fill the toilet tank with it (I unknowingly used the last flush an hour ago).
"Oh no, no, don't look in there," I half-call out.
"Oh, please. I'm a veterinarian," he says. "And I have four kids," he adds as he lifts the toilet seat. "Eh! It's nothing." Later I think that he looked to be sure there was nothing dangerous going on - blood or anything - since he's the closest thing we have to a doctor. I mean - it's him or Dr. Elton, the dentist at the clinic!
He fills the tank, flushes, fills it again, and comes out. "OK, you've got one more good flush in there for a bit. Need anything?" I sort of moan. Meggie tells him we're alright.
Eventually the two bodily functions merge into one, and I have to hold the bucket on my lap, and then dump it into the shower drain or toilet after using the throne - the bucket contains such clear liquid it looks like water you could drink. There is literally nothing left in me.
When I come shuffling back to bed again, and lay down, Meggie is hovering above me. "Here, drink some water!" She looks anxious. I'm out of breath from the sheer act of full expulsion and gasp, "Just give me a second!" I have to catch my breath before I can drink water - with that awful knowledge that I am providing my body with exactly what is going to be coming back up again, so painfully, soon.
A little while later, the water comes back on.
At about 1 AM, I awake but am able to ride out the urges, and I fall into something a little like sleep, a little like passing out.
Showing posts with label vaccine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vaccine. Show all posts
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Wired Magazine Rocks! And My Last Word on Vaccines.
Well, it is my blog. And I sometimes get emotional on it. That’s sorta why it’s mine.
For what it’s worth, readers -- and highest hits ever on Monday, woohoo, thanks Google Analytics! -- I’m not calling anyone a fundamentalist or immature if you are wary, cautious, or selective about your vaccines. But I AM calling people in the anti-vaccine movement who think EVERY SINGLE vaccine is bad both fundamentalist and immature. That I stick to with no problem whatsoever. If you say: Every vaccine is badly tested and ineffective at best or harmful at worst; then yes, that is a fundamentalist position that also happens to have no basis in any accepted science. It’s extreme and it’s hysterical, and it ought not be bothered to argue with - and wouldn’t, were it not for the insatiable needs of the internet, 24 hour news media and the like who claim to share “both sides of the story” a.k.a. false equivalency a.k.a. report on the controversy but not the facts.
I believe in healthy debate.
But just like I won’t debate whether evolution is true with you, I won’t debate whether vaccines are equally good and bad. They’re better than they are harmful, and who says so? Unglamorous people like scientists. Science itself isn’t sexy, even. (Though I would debate that, actually.) But if the peeps in this argument can’t agree that vaccines have been useful and powerful and life-saving things in their history, then we might as well question the veracity of Obama’s birth certificate just ‘cause we feel like it, and ignore all the legitimate proof that shows it is valid.
But. Argument and conversations like vaccines, feminism, nature versus nurture, the best pizza in town… they always have a predictable reaction in me. First I get defensive about how damn right I am and then I go, Wait. Where could I be wrong? Where is a middle ground? Where can I try to be a more peaceful person, which will probably require apologies, firm assertions, or both, or more?
So for me, the middle ground is that my reaction to anti-vaccine fundamentalists - or those I react to quickly and have been known to incorrectly rush and label thus - is to fully trust the CDC, AMA, governments doctors, pharmacists, you name it. And of course I can admit that’s not always smart. Mistakes get made, science grows over time and as individuals we ought to be cautious and investigate the world around us. It is my mistake to swing toward “all vaccines ARE amazing” as a reaction, just as others might swing toward “they’re ALL dangerous killers!”
Yes, it is both possible and proven that they’ve hurt or killed individuals. Yes, the good has far outweighed the bad. Those two sentences are provable facts. But from there? We get into the trenches and the muddy middle, and since most of us are not scientists or doctors, we can all – me included - find seemingly-reputable sources to back us up. Thanks (or damn) the internet for that. We can do it all day long.
I can be wholly firm in word and action when saying that the good outweighs the bad – I believe it does, and yup, I am currently up to date on MMR, DtaP, Hep A, Hep B and this week, flu – but I also have to recognize that the saddest, rarest, most real vaccine deaths and stories strike fear into the hearts of many people, largely parents, a category to which I don't belong.
But those factual statements above can exist at the same time!! Huge vaccine advancements and terrible, burning mistakes. And it doesn’t make either of us wrong for focusing on one over the other – though there’s got to be a way out of fear.
This story in Wired magazine is amazing, and I cannot recommend enough that you read it. It captures exactly what I mean about fear - and it reminds us all that there’s a risk in not vaccinating. Yes, it is a different risk. But it’s still huge. And because I am so strongly for one risk over the other, I can admit I make the mistake of projecting onto anti-vacciners the belief that they’re living risk-free. I don’t know for sure if they are thinking that they’re snug and safe/safer, but I sometimes assume they are. My mistake. (Because assuming, as we all know… adds up.)
Some parts of the so-called debate are tricky. The thing about the phrase “live virus” (in certain vaccines in use) is that it sounds scary – but it’s not like a watered down version of a virus, or a small germ. It’s cold-adapted; it dies at warm temperatures which include the human body. So that phrase “live virus” can assault us in layman’s terms, just like an “unpublished” study seems like a good and gotcha find, but is actually just unproven science.
The Wired piece captures the melding of the internet age with medicine, science with the burden in the modern world to know everything. Plus it has crazy vaccines-cause-autism people, too, who think chelation therapy works! It suggests we can’t do everything alone – after all, we live around other people and sadly (or not) their health choices affect each of us. And when I read something like this article, I do find certain concepts familiar to me – thoughts I have had regarding why are there so many vaccines now that we didn’t get as infants? – and I see how that gets shaped and warped into an full anti-vaccine movement for some fearful, protective, good parents. To recognize my own pattern of thinking, even on other topics… that I know more than experts, that we’re all being lied to, that I Am On My Own, that I have to do all the research, that mistakes must NOT be made… is humbling. After all, I do have a bumper sticker that says “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” and often I have to tell my overdrive-running mind that it’s ok. I can trust another human and we’re actually all doing the best we can.
To admit I’ve been wrong when I see it is No Fun At All but there it is – I can’t know everything. I wonder if anyone else sees anything familiar in that article about modern life and the drive to perfection? I'm interested in your thoughts, and I close on a side note…
The vaccine madness makes me frustrated on a grander scale of human thinking and tribal thought. It leaves no room for middle ground opinions, which aren’t very soundbite-y -- ALL vaccines or NONE, the armies tell us -- and that just doesn’t jibe with the way most of us live. We end up defending things we don’t believe in just to belong to the right community and it defeats our personal autonomy and spiritual power.
But I'm not rolling over on this one. There are some solid, certain things in the world, and the statistics of child survival rates in times and places of vaccination cannot be argued. I won’t enter into hysteria that shuts out numbers, stats, history. I won’t respect an opinion that says autism can be cured by a gluten-free diet. I will respect the middle-ground and I will be over the moon when we can all remember that we're not doctors or researchers and that our minds seek proof for opinions we already have. But not everyone gets an equal say. The "everyone wins a prize for trying" does not work when it comes to Holocaust deniers, Obama birthers, people who go for the loudest story over the scientific study. But I will remember that we’re all doing the best we can, we all want happy families and safe homes, and we don’t want to hurt other people or ourselves.
Ahem. Before I become A Pig of Successful Vaccines... the next post is in the works. I'm joining the crew of a web series sitcom here in Portland! I'll talk more about tomorrow and we'll get away from this ish.
For what it’s worth, readers -- and highest hits ever on Monday, woohoo, thanks Google Analytics! -- I’m not calling anyone a fundamentalist or immature if you are wary, cautious, or selective about your vaccines. But I AM calling people in the anti-vaccine movement who think EVERY SINGLE vaccine is bad both fundamentalist and immature. That I stick to with no problem whatsoever. If you say: Every vaccine is badly tested and ineffective at best or harmful at worst; then yes, that is a fundamentalist position that also happens to have no basis in any accepted science. It’s extreme and it’s hysterical, and it ought not be bothered to argue with - and wouldn’t, were it not for the insatiable needs of the internet, 24 hour news media and the like who claim to share “both sides of the story” a.k.a. false equivalency a.k.a. report on the controversy but not the facts.
I believe in healthy debate.
But just like I won’t debate whether evolution is true with you, I won’t debate whether vaccines are equally good and bad. They’re better than they are harmful, and who says so? Unglamorous people like scientists. Science itself isn’t sexy, even. (Though I would debate that, actually.) But if the peeps in this argument can’t agree that vaccines have been useful and powerful and life-saving things in their history, then we might as well question the veracity of Obama’s birth certificate just ‘cause we feel like it, and ignore all the legitimate proof that shows it is valid.
But. Argument and conversations like vaccines, feminism, nature versus nurture, the best pizza in town… they always have a predictable reaction in me. First I get defensive about how damn right I am and then I go, Wait. Where could I be wrong? Where is a middle ground? Where can I try to be a more peaceful person, which will probably require apologies, firm assertions, or both, or more?
So for me, the middle ground is that my reaction to anti-vaccine fundamentalists - or those I react to quickly and have been known to incorrectly rush and label thus - is to fully trust the CDC, AMA, governments doctors, pharmacists, you name it. And of course I can admit that’s not always smart. Mistakes get made, science grows over time and as individuals we ought to be cautious and investigate the world around us. It is my mistake to swing toward “all vaccines ARE amazing” as a reaction, just as others might swing toward “they’re ALL dangerous killers!”
Yes, it is both possible and proven that they’ve hurt or killed individuals. Yes, the good has far outweighed the bad. Those two sentences are provable facts. But from there? We get into the trenches and the muddy middle, and since most of us are not scientists or doctors, we can all – me included - find seemingly-reputable sources to back us up. Thanks (or damn) the internet for that. We can do it all day long.
I can be wholly firm in word and action when saying that the good outweighs the bad – I believe it does, and yup, I am currently up to date on MMR, DtaP, Hep A, Hep B and this week, flu – but I also have to recognize that the saddest, rarest, most real vaccine deaths and stories strike fear into the hearts of many people, largely parents, a category to which I don't belong.
But those factual statements above can exist at the same time!! Huge vaccine advancements and terrible, burning mistakes. And it doesn’t make either of us wrong for focusing on one over the other – though there’s got to be a way out of fear.
This story in Wired magazine is amazing, and I cannot recommend enough that you read it. It captures exactly what I mean about fear - and it reminds us all that there’s a risk in not vaccinating. Yes, it is a different risk. But it’s still huge. And because I am so strongly for one risk over the other, I can admit I make the mistake of projecting onto anti-vacciners the belief that they’re living risk-free. I don’t know for sure if they are thinking that they’re snug and safe/safer, but I sometimes assume they are. My mistake. (Because assuming, as we all know… adds up.)
Some parts of the so-called debate are tricky. The thing about the phrase “live virus” (in certain vaccines in use) is that it sounds scary – but it’s not like a watered down version of a virus, or a small germ. It’s cold-adapted; it dies at warm temperatures which include the human body. So that phrase “live virus” can assault us in layman’s terms, just like an “unpublished” study seems like a good and gotcha find, but is actually just unproven science.
The Wired piece captures the melding of the internet age with medicine, science with the burden in the modern world to know everything. Plus it has crazy vaccines-cause-autism people, too, who think chelation therapy works! It suggests we can’t do everything alone – after all, we live around other people and sadly (or not) their health choices affect each of us. And when I read something like this article, I do find certain concepts familiar to me – thoughts I have had regarding why are there so many vaccines now that we didn’t get as infants? – and I see how that gets shaped and warped into an full anti-vaccine movement for some fearful, protective, good parents. To recognize my own pattern of thinking, even on other topics… that I know more than experts, that we’re all being lied to, that I Am On My Own, that I have to do all the research, that mistakes must NOT be made… is humbling. After all, I do have a bumper sticker that says “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” and often I have to tell my overdrive-running mind that it’s ok. I can trust another human and we’re actually all doing the best we can.
To admit I’ve been wrong when I see it is No Fun At All but there it is – I can’t know everything. I wonder if anyone else sees anything familiar in that article about modern life and the drive to perfection? I'm interested in your thoughts, and I close on a side note…
The vaccine madness makes me frustrated on a grander scale of human thinking and tribal thought. It leaves no room for middle ground opinions, which aren’t very soundbite-y -- ALL vaccines or NONE, the armies tell us -- and that just doesn’t jibe with the way most of us live. We end up defending things we don’t believe in just to belong to the right community and it defeats our personal autonomy and spiritual power.
But I'm not rolling over on this one. There are some solid, certain things in the world, and the statistics of child survival rates in times and places of vaccination cannot be argued. I won’t enter into hysteria that shuts out numbers, stats, history. I won’t respect an opinion that says autism can be cured by a gluten-free diet. I will respect the middle-ground and I will be over the moon when we can all remember that we're not doctors or researchers and that our minds seek proof for opinions we already have. But not everyone gets an equal say. The "everyone wins a prize for trying" does not work when it comes to Holocaust deniers, Obama birthers, people who go for the loudest story over the scientific study. But I will remember that we’re all doing the best we can, we all want happy families and safe homes, and we don’t want to hurt other people or ourselves.
Ahem. Before I become A Pig of Successful Vaccines... the next post is in the works. I'm joining the crew of a web series sitcom here in Portland! I'll talk more about tomorrow and we'll get away from this ish.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Let's Talk About Flu Shots.
There are few discussions that rile me up faster than the current flu vaccination one. So let's have a little Q and A session, shall we?
They haven't tested the H1N1/swine flue vaccine fully.
Wrong. They have. Look it up at any reputable news organization. It was tested exactly like the other flu vaccines.
They manufactured the vaccine in a different way.
They did not. You are wrong.
I don't want to vaccinate against SWINE FLU! That's nuts!
Every single flu strain, every year, has a mix of DNA bits from chickens, pigs and humans. EVERY YEAR. This is not news.
Yeah but it's a separate vaccine, that is sketchy.
No. It isn't sketchy. The flu appeared in April. Usually vaccines are made then, so there was not time to safeguard against this year's strain of Influenza A AND H1N1. So there's two. That's it. Do you think the flu shot is the same every year? Are you an idiot? It's a new shot each year, tailored to the strain that is starting with flu season in other parts of the world. We make a vaccine, and use it for when our flu season starts. It's new. So this year, it's just two versions.
But the flu vaccine will make a superbug, an ultravirus that will kill us all!
That is antibiotics. Did you know there is a difference between antibiotics and vaccines? Look it up! It's amazing!
There was an unpublished Canadian study about how getting the regular flu shot makes people more susceptible to H1N1. Take THAT, Pig of Success!
So... great novels that are unpublished are still great. But do you know why scientific and medical studies are unpublished? Because the results have not been replicated anywhere else. Because the testing methods have not been determined to follow proper guidelines. Because the sample size is sometimes like four people. It's unpublished because it might be nothing. THINK ABOUT IT. (It's not unpublished because it's a secret. Scientists don't work that way. You're not sneakily discovering something "THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW." Pfft.)
What about thimerosal, the mercury derivative, in vaccines?
If you'd rather get medical advice from Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, then I hope Darwin's theories do their work. If you think it causes autism, then you're on the fringe of society. Which is fine, go for it. But do you think we got rid of polio by being strong people? And smallpox? Someone said to me recently, "I just think our bodies need to be strong enough to fight these things off."
Right.
Then you should probably expose yourself to AIDS and see if you're strong enough to fight it off. Influenza is, EVERY YEAR, in the top ten causes of death for Americans. TOP TEN. Is thimerasol related illness in the top ten? It hasn't even be proven to exist.
The whole conspiracy theory attitude, combined with the superior and selfish "my kid is perfect and shouldn't risk unnatural vaccines" attitude, combined with its-awesome-to-be-a-rebel in this day and age attitude has come together to make people think the flu ain't no thang, and the vaccine is out to hurt them. I suppose you can think of your government that way. You could also think that billions of dollars are spent on OTC products and lost days at work during flu season, and vaccinating might prevent some of that.
When in doubt, remember: post hoc, ergo propter hoc. That means: after it, therefore because of it. People get a flu shot, get sick two days later, and they tell 537 Facebook friends that the vaccine made them sick. Actually, they were already sick - for days, probably. It takes days of incubation and so the two things appeared to be related but weren't. Like when you eat something and blame your upset belly on it, but we know - it was the meal 2 or 3 before that. But no no: post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It's easier to blame the thing that came just before the problem. But it is WRONG.
I don't care if you don't get a shot. It's too expensive, you don't have time, you're between 20 and 45 and healthy. Fine. But jumping on the anti-vaccine bandwagon is selfish, stupid and like the people at the Tea Party Rally who were shouting, "What are these czars?! What do they do?! We don't even know! What powers do they have?!"
Your ignorance isn't someone else's fault. Look up what czars do in our federal government. Every night at dinner say, "What did I learn today?" And if you didn't learn anything, go look something up. Don't spout off, "I heard that they haven't even tested that swine flu vaccine," until you do some damn research and find out if it's true.
The great thing about the world is that any one of us doesn't hold all the knowledge. Someone else usually knows the answer to a question you might have. How novel!
They haven't tested the H1N1/swine flue vaccine fully.
Wrong. They have. Look it up at any reputable news organization. It was tested exactly like the other flu vaccines.
They manufactured the vaccine in a different way.
They did not. You are wrong.
I don't want to vaccinate against SWINE FLU! That's nuts!
Every single flu strain, every year, has a mix of DNA bits from chickens, pigs and humans. EVERY YEAR. This is not news.
Yeah but it's a separate vaccine, that is sketchy.
No. It isn't sketchy. The flu appeared in April. Usually vaccines are made then, so there was not time to safeguard against this year's strain of Influenza A AND H1N1. So there's two. That's it. Do you think the flu shot is the same every year? Are you an idiot? It's a new shot each year, tailored to the strain that is starting with flu season in other parts of the world. We make a vaccine, and use it for when our flu season starts. It's new. So this year, it's just two versions.
But the flu vaccine will make a superbug, an ultravirus that will kill us all!
That is antibiotics. Did you know there is a difference between antibiotics and vaccines? Look it up! It's amazing!
There was an unpublished Canadian study about how getting the regular flu shot makes people more susceptible to H1N1. Take THAT, Pig of Success!
So... great novels that are unpublished are still great. But do you know why scientific and medical studies are unpublished? Because the results have not been replicated anywhere else. Because the testing methods have not been determined to follow proper guidelines. Because the sample size is sometimes like four people. It's unpublished because it might be nothing. THINK ABOUT IT. (It's not unpublished because it's a secret. Scientists don't work that way. You're not sneakily discovering something "THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW." Pfft.)
What about thimerosal, the mercury derivative, in vaccines?
If you'd rather get medical advice from Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, then I hope Darwin's theories do their work. If you think it causes autism, then you're on the fringe of society. Which is fine, go for it. But do you think we got rid of polio by being strong people? And smallpox? Someone said to me recently, "I just think our bodies need to be strong enough to fight these things off."
Right.
Then you should probably expose yourself to AIDS and see if you're strong enough to fight it off. Influenza is, EVERY YEAR, in the top ten causes of death for Americans. TOP TEN. Is thimerasol related illness in the top ten? It hasn't even be proven to exist.
The whole conspiracy theory attitude, combined with the superior and selfish "my kid is perfect and shouldn't risk unnatural vaccines" attitude, combined with its-awesome-to-be-a-rebel in this day and age attitude has come together to make people think the flu ain't no thang, and the vaccine is out to hurt them. I suppose you can think of your government that way. You could also think that billions of dollars are spent on OTC products and lost days at work during flu season, and vaccinating might prevent some of that.
When in doubt, remember: post hoc, ergo propter hoc. That means: after it, therefore because of it. People get a flu shot, get sick two days later, and they tell 537 Facebook friends that the vaccine made them sick. Actually, they were already sick - for days, probably. It takes days of incubation and so the two things appeared to be related but weren't. Like when you eat something and blame your upset belly on it, but we know - it was the meal 2 or 3 before that. But no no: post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It's easier to blame the thing that came just before the problem. But it is WRONG.
I don't care if you don't get a shot. It's too expensive, you don't have time, you're between 20 and 45 and healthy. Fine. But jumping on the anti-vaccine bandwagon is selfish, stupid and like the people at the Tea Party Rally who were shouting, "What are these czars?! What do they do?! We don't even know! What powers do they have?!"
Your ignorance isn't someone else's fault. Look up what czars do in our federal government. Every night at dinner say, "What did I learn today?" And if you didn't learn anything, go look something up. Don't spout off, "I heard that they haven't even tested that swine flu vaccine," until you do some damn research and find out if it's true.
The great thing about the world is that any one of us doesn't hold all the knowledge. Someone else usually knows the answer to a question you might have. How novel!
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