Time for flu shots again

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starfire
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Post by starfire »

I've never had a flu shot. Doc keeps asking if I want one but I keep declining. :grin:

Love, Shirley
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber"
-- Winston Churchill
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wonderwoman
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Post by wonderwoman »

Polly, In April , 2010 I asked the GI to check my vitamin D and he did a Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy test. The results came back 46 with the normal range being 20-100. Looking back to 9/10/08 the result then was 56. According to this, my Vitamin D level had decreased but I was still within normal range. I was diagnosed in Feb 2010 with CC. I have started taking 2,000 IU to bring up the figure. I have not been doing as much daytime swimming this summer as I have in previous summers. I have been going about 5:00pm when the pool is more shaded and my friends are there at that time.
Charlotte

The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison. Ann Wigmore
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Post by Robbie »

I got my one and only in 1976, the year of the bad flu shot. I have often wondered if it was the start of all my health problems because that's when I started fighting fatigue (I was only 19 - too young to be so tired all the time). I had a head injury that same year, a few months before, so that might have had something to do with it. Then again, I believe a tick got me while I was in the mountains cutting firewood, but I'm not 100% sure (99.9%) if that was before the fatigue was so bad that I became practically bedridden in 1980. I remember getting a bulls-eye rash and not giving it a second thought because I did not know what it was (still don't). Maybe it was a combination of things. I guess I'll never know. I know one thing - I will never have a flu shot again in my life.
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tex
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Post by tex »

Robbie,

A bulls-eye rash is a unique marker for Lyme disease. As far as I am aware, no other tick-borne disease is associated with that particular rash pattern, but it is typical of Lyme disease. That could certainly explain the origin of your health problems.

I suppose it's possible that the flu vaccine might have somehow interacted with the dissease, also, but that may have just been a coincidence.

Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by Robbie »

Tex, you said no other tick-borne disease is associated with that particular rash pattern. Do you know if something else causes the same rash pattern?

I don't know that it was from a tick, but I don't know that it wasn't. I spent a lot of time in the mountains in those days and always checked for ticks - never saw one. It was not until years later, after I saw pictures of the Lyme disease rash pattern, that I put two and two together and decided it must have been from a tick. My rash looked exactly like the pictures I've seen of the Lyme disease bulls-eye rash.
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tex
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Post by tex »

Robbie,

That sure sounds like a match. The first case of Lyme disease was described in Connecticut in 1975, but ticks in other parts of the country were soon found to be carrying the disease, so it may have existed for years before being discovered.

The only other disease that I'm aware of, that can cause a similar rash pattern, is inflammatory breast cancer, (the rash pattern would have appeared on the affected breast, of course), and that form of cancer is so aggressive that you would have needed prompt treatment, in order to survive, so that's surely not the cause.

Have you ever been tested for Lyme disease? If you actually have it, treatment might still be advised, because it can cause all sorts of nasty cardiac and neurological issues, and a high percentage of cases develop arthritis in a knee, or some other large joint.

The problem is, the antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease can cause MC. Polly believes that this was the source of her MC, for example. Maybe she will see this post, and she'll be able to offer some insight on your situation. At any rate, you might want to discuss this with your doctor. There might be other treatment programs available these days, for late-stage untreated Lyme disease, if you test positive for the disease.

Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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