Flu, Flu Everywhere, But Not a Shot To Take

One of the mothers at my son's elementary school was talking about the swine flu and said she wasn't planning to get her children the H1N1 vaccination.

"I'm not an alarmist," she said. She hasn't given her kids the flu shot before and she isn't planning to now.

I am an alarmist as this blog I wrote at the beginning of the outbreak will attest. But it's hard to know what to be alarmist about – the virus itself or the vaccine.

[As a side note, this is the third incarnation of this blog post. Every time I was about to post it, something would change.]

At first I was sure I wasn't going to give my kids the shot. It's too new and I worried more about possible side effects. Then I talked to my pediatrician friend and she didn't mince words. If I were you, she said, I would have everyone in my family get the H1N1 shot. That's because both kids and myself have respiratory issues and the husband has Type 1 Diabetes.

Okay, she's the smartest person I know and an amazing doctor so I'm getting them the shot. But where? Kaiser had it, but we don't have Kaiser. Our old pediatrician had it, but he doesn't take our insurance anymore. Our current pediatrician's group won't have the shot for weeks. Can't get it at Target or Walgreens – I'm out of options.

Once I knew I couldn't get it, I had to have it. I wondered what would happen if my asthmatic 4-year-old got H1N1 and pneumonia. I thought about taking the kids to Tucson to get them a shot at the county health department, like one of my Arizona friends did. She has a new baby and didn't want to risk the others coming down with the flu.

But then I remembered the eggs. My 4-year-old son is allergic. It's not a severe allergy, but enough to result in him having a reaction to the regular flu shot. I made another call to my pediatrician friend and she said, once again in clear language, he absolutely can't have the shot. And because he has asthma, he can't have the flu mist either. I called the allergist about an article I read on the internet that said there was a way to test my son to see what kind of a reaction he would have from the vaccine. He didn't know what I was talking about but said I could bring him into the office and they would give him the shot a little at a time. But I'd still need to get my hands on the vaccine.

Here in Los Angeles, I can walk three blocks in any direction and buy medical marijuana, but I can't get the damn flu vaccine.

And here we are today, my older son is home sick. On Halloween morning, he went from energetic and peppy to laying on the couch moaning that he needed to take a nap. His legs and stomach hurt. His fever was 102. Similar symptoms to people we know who've had the virus. After reading up on H1N1, I wonder if my 4-year-old and I already had it. We were both sick, but we didn't have a fever, or a very high one anyway.

And remember my friend in Tucson who got the shot two weeks ago at the county health department. On Wednesday, her daughter came down with what her doctor thinks is swine flu. Apparently, it takes two weeks for the vaccine to kick in. Her middle child got sick on Wednesday, a few days shy of the two weeks.

I feel like my greatest responsibility is to keep my kids safe. But how can I do that when I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing? The government tells me this is a national emergency and my family and I must get vaccinated, but we can't actually get the vaccine. And even if we got the vaccine we could get sick before it kicked in.

It's a trying time for an alarmist, but with a sick boy at home, I have lots of time to think about it.

This is an original post for LA Moms Blog. When Yvonne isn't sitting in her bunker waiting for the end of days, she's baking gluten-free goodies and blogging at www.yvonneinla.blogspot.com