Just as a warning... I'm getting on soapbox here. As a future preventive medicine physician, there are few things that I deem more important than vaccines, and few things more frustrating than seeing patients with vaccine-preventable illnesses. Despite what Hollywood mothers like Jenny McCarthy would have you believe, there is no link to vaccines and deafness or autism.
Anyway, we had two 22-year-olds come in yesterday during my shift with pertussis (whooping cough). It was a classic story for both of them, with a barking cough that comes in paroxysms (intense, uncontrollable, painful coughing for a few minutes, followed by a few hours of feeling perfectly fine, followed by more uncontrollable coughing for a few minutes). So we took throat cultures and wrote them prescriptions for azithromycin (Zithromax, or Z-pack), and then I had a little chat with them about their vaccinations, which, of course, neither of them knew. Before a couple of years ago, kids got the DTaP vaccine, which is diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis, and then adults got a booster of Td (tetanus and diphtheria) every ten years after that. However, the CDC started to notice that whooping cough was coming back, especially in adults who had gotten the full DTaP series as kids, so they changed the recommendation for adults to get Tdap (yes, the capitalization is important, but I won't bore you with the explanation) as one of their tetanus boosters.
Fortunately (?) for me, I needed a tetanus booster as part of my pre-travel vaccines, so I got my Tdap less than a month ago, which meant I "won" the debate about who got to see these two patients. When I presented my history and physical to one of the attendings, he rolled his eyes and went off on his soapbox about vaccines. Apparently, his sister-in-law is one of the Jenny McCarthy-type mothers who think vaccines will kill their children, so his nieces and nephews aren't vaccinated. Last year, the whole family had whooping cough.
So, in conclusion, GET YOUR VACCINES! If it has been more than ten years since your last tetanus booster, go see your doctor and get a Tdap, because enough people have gotten lax about that that whooping cough is coming back, and there's no need for that, since we have a vaccine that works.
Okay, stepping off my soapbox now. In happier news, they finally posted my grades from my two preventive medicine rotations, and I got honors in both :) They also upgraded my overall ratings, so I'm now a "very good" medical student, not just a "good" one. So I'm average to above average again.
4 comments:
We learned about the vaccination problem last May in Moses Lake with the measles outbreak. One large unvaccinated family gets themselves exposed and the whole town was put into upheaval for a few weeks trying to figure out who was and was not vaccinated adequately. That reminds me, I still need to go get the second one. Seems I was born in the gray years when they weren't sure if the vaccine worked all that well, so I had it redone so I wouldn't make Nicholas or Thea sick.
Yeah, we saw some of the same thing with chickenpox while I was on pediatrics. A lot of teenagers now weren't required to get the chickenpox vaccine as kids, but they might not have been exposed when they were younger, so no one is really sure who in that age group is immune and who is not.
You will be happy to know that when I went in for my physical the nurse practioner recommended this vaccine and talked about the resurgence of whooping cough. Yes, I did take her recommendation and got the shot.
Do I get any points for getting my flu shot?
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