slayer fitspo

A friend of mine who had similar worries was told by her doc that taking antihistamines ahead of time could help, as can drinking a lot of electrolyte water. However @thebibliosphere has very similar concerns and just got her vaccine today. I believe she is resting right now but there is some info on her blog about how she and her doctors handled it and why she made the choice (getting COVID will be worse.)

I am really sorry you are dealing with this; ideally enough people without health issues would be getting vaccinated that you would be at less risk than you are :/ Good luck.

Eta: to clarify I am not saying you Definitely Should get one; I am.not your doctor nor do I know anything about your condition. However I do know a number of other immune compromised people who have made the decision along with their doctors to get the vaccine, and who have taken a number of precautions to do so (having an epipen ready, getting vaccinated at a medical center setting rather than a pharmacy etc) due to how much worse the option of getting COVID would be for them.

So I suppose weighing these risks also depends a lot on how much you would be able to self isolate/how likely exposure would be if you were unable to get the vaccine

There is a lot to consider and I am sorry that you are in the position where you have to :/

methuselah-honeysuckle:

creekfiend:

thebibliosphere:

In an ideal world, folks like us would be able to wait and rely on herd immunity to protect us. That’s not happening, and with the risk of the delta variant allowing for asymptotic transmission from vaccinated folks, we’re in an even more vulnerable and dangerous situation.

My doctors are 99.9999% sure I had covid early last year long before they thought it was here in the US. My symptoms were a dead match, and I’m saying this as someone who nearly died in 2019 from my complex health issues: Covid is the sickest I have ever felt in my entire life.

I was bedridden for two weeks with a cough that bruised my ribcage and made everything taste like blood. The fever was brutal, and the damage done to my sympathetic nervous system is still being uncovered. Ironically, my overactive mast cells and the medications I’m on to regulate them likely saved my life. I fought the active infection off in two weeks, and while I was still ill for months afterwards, being experienced with chronic illness, meant I knew how to rest and recover better than those around me. Unlike my husband, an otherwise healthy cis man, who ended up with a debilitating cough that lasted eight weeks before a doctor finally caved and prescribed him steroids. It took him much, much longer to recover.

So as you can imagine, I spent the last year thinking very carefully about what I’d do when a vaccine became available. I knew based on past experiencesthat the vaccine could flare up my multiple conditions. I also knew it could be life-threatening because of how my mast cell dysfunction works. My own hormones can send me into anaphylaxis, and all of my worst life-threatening reactions that have put me in hospital have been to injections. Knowing this, I still opted to get vaccinated as soon as I was cleared for it by my medical provider because the threat of Covid is worse. It is so much worse, and even if you do survive, the risk of setbacks and flareups from an active infection is a great deal worse too.

With the vaccine, you take a calculated risk for which you and your healthcare team can prepare.

With Covid, there is no way to plan; there’s just risk.

I’m 12 hours post-vaccine right now. I feel very much like garbage, but thanks to my care team, I was able to prep and mitigate it from being worse. As far as I can tell, I’ve had no mast cell reactions. My POTS is the worst it’s been in over a year, but we thought that might happen and I prepared myself both mentally to be on bed rest for a while, and also my environment for unexpected falls and so that salt and water are within easy reach at all times. I am currently tracking my progress on my blog if you’re interested in following along. Arm hurts, head hurts and I’m running a low-grade fever, but those are all pretty standard reactions.

I don’t know what your condition(s) are, anon, but I empathize fully with your fear.

I was prepared today to go into anaphylactic shock. I was bracing myself for it like the moment before a car crash. I’m still bracing myself, quite literally, as it’s made my hEDS more bendy than usual. But 12 hours post-vaccine, and as awful as I feel, I am also relieved that I have started the progress of mitigating my chances of catching covid again because, I’ll be honest, I probably won’t survive it a second time. Not without the help of the vaccine, which has been shown to reduce both the risk and severity of breakthrough infections by a significant margin.

Ultimately it’s your choice and something you need to weigh the risks of with our physician. At the start of the pandemic, I was urged caution against it by my doctors. Now, with more data and numerous chronically ill people reporting moderate to middling issues and the delta variant on the rise, I was urged to get it as quickly as possible. We took steps to try and make it as safe as possible and fallout manageable. I hope the same can be done for you. If not, I hope you stay as safe as possible. Take care.

Thank you for sharing your experience Joy. I hope you recover from the shot quickly 💜

I am a Covid Vaccine Nurse.

Please please please please please talk to your doctor about getting the vaccine; they will most likely recommend that you get it! I have vaccinated hundreds of people with various medical conditions that questioned getting it at first, but ultimately were encouraged to get it by their doctor. Conditions like cancer, diabetes, lupus, cerebral palsy, etc etc etc… I am telling you, the ONLY thing that is a hard stop for us is a severe allergy to the actual vaccine itself.

If you have any type of medical condition that makes fighting Covid more difficult– it is even more important that you are vaccinated. The vaccine does not come with zero risk, but you must weigh them against the risks of Covid. Beyond the threat of pneumonia and respiratory failure, there is possible lung scarring, blood clots, stroke, DIC, brain fog/memory impairment, and longterm issues with taste/smell. The minuscule percent of vaccine reactions pales in comparison to the millions affected by Covid at this point. 

I am so sorry that our society has failed you. I have so much grief and frustration built up… It shouldn’t be this way. But unfortunately, here we are. Those that SHOULD feel guilty about not getting the vaccine, do not. And those that have legitimate health concerns are the ones shouldering all the burdens of the pandemic. 

I am grateful that I was able to get vaccinated as early as possible, and I am dealing with my current feelings by trying to vaccinate as many people as I can and spread the word.