Greetings Beefriends, I hope everyone is well and warm today. I'd like to talk about a view I have that generally people on BOTH sides of the ...shall we call it the "western medicine debate?" - don't like. So, you know, don't flame me or anything. ;) It's simply that, it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.
Here's what I mean. People tend to feel like either you hate all of western medicine, you never take any drugs, you never take any vaccines, you don't go see a doctor except maybe if you were in a car accident and carted into the emergency room. Everything must be "natural" (which is a helluva broad brush term), and "chemicals" (also a helluva broad brush term) are "bad." OR you must be pro-meds to the extent that you unquestioningly take any scrip your doctor recommends, you must be pro-vaccine to the extent that you take every new vaccine with the enthusiasm of the recently converted, you scoff at diet/herbal/lifestyle changes even when they are proven to be more effective, and you make jokes about "hurr hurr, you're afraid of dihydrogen monoxide, haaaa hurrr durrrrr."
Both of these extremes are horseshit, in my not-so-humble opinion.
an older photo of my apothecary
Western medicine has done great things. Western medicine has also done some horrible things. Sometimes researchers hit upon something wonderful and save a lot of lives. Sometimes they screw it up royally and end up hurting a lot of people. Some doctors are really in it because they want to help people. Some doctors are in it because they want a nice paycheck. None of it is a monolith.
Doctors and naturalists are always trying to pigeonhole me and put me into a box about whether I'll agree with them or not, and sorry - I'm never going to always be 100% in agreement with either. I believe that everything has its place, that everything is different for different people and different bodies and different life circumstances, and, you know, nuance exists. And people - doctors, especially - fucking hate that. If you don't unquestioningly agree with their assessment that they made after seeing you for ten minutes, then you're a craaaaa-aaaaaazy anti-vaxxer crunchy granola hippie, or some shit. The last time I saw my doctor, I about made her head explode, because I got my tdap booster vaccine, but didn't get the flu vaccine. Whaaaaaaaaaat? Why would you take one and not the other? Well, because tdap definitely is effective. Meanwhile, the flu shot's efficacy rate kinda sucks (that's a link to the CDC showing an efficacy rate varying from 10% to 60% over several years), because they have to guess what strains to put in it every year, and frankly, I have the immune system of a God and I live alone, so it's superfluous to me to get it. If you're always catching the flu, sure, give it a shot, your whole family can try it and see if y'all stay well this season; I'm not judging those who get it at all. I just feel like it's unnecessary to me, and we're certainly not getting herd immunity out of it with those statistics so it's not like the MMR shot in that respect. Maybe one day if they're successful in developing a universal flu vaccine I'll get that one, but in the meantime, eh. That's what I mean by not all-or-nothing.
Oh yes, we're gonna run headlong into this nest of vipers; it's time to talk about vaccines on the internet.
Look! I'm old!
So one of the big things that makes people nervous about vaccines is that there are so many new ones from when we were kids, right? But if you look at my childhood immunization chart here, you can see that I had the actual chickenpox, because I was a kid before the chickenpox vaccine was a thing. Nowadays kids just get a shot; when I was little your parents purposefully had you go play with your sick friends so you'd catch it and get it over with at a young age (because chickenpox is generally not a big deal when you're young, but becomes possibly dangerous if you get it as an adult). I remember having the chickenpox. It wasn't life threatening, but it sure wasn't fun. Who remembers being covered in that pink anti itch goop so you wouldn't scratch yourself so hard you were left with scars? Raise your hand. 🤚
But some people don't even want the vaccines that have been around for decades and that they themselves had as children. Please note those "1978" dates on my record. Tdap (tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis), polio, and MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccines have been around for decades. Millions and millions of people have had them and are fine. That whole MMR-causes-autism scare has been disproven so many times, but in short: Japan stopped using the combined vaccine and it didn't lessen the rates of autism diagnosis, and the doctor who first made the claim was filing patents for single-disease vaccines, so he was doing what everyone thinks big pharma was doing: claiming bullshit because he was trying to make a buck. His goal was never to make people stop getting vaccinated, it was to make people want to get three separate vaccines: more vaccines, more money. That he held the patents to, naturally.
Now, do people sometimes have allergic reactions? Yes. But it is very rare (from the link): "We identified 33 confirmed vaccine-triggered anaphylaxis cases that occurred after 25,173,965 vaccine doses." Those are some pretty low odds. It happens. No one is saying it doesn't. It just doesn't happen often. A friend of mine's daughter is one who had anaphylaxis after a vaccine, and she is why the concept of herd immunity is important: she can't get the vaccine, so she's reliant on the majority of the population being immune so that she's not likely to be exposed.
So, what's my point? You've surely read a lot of this "why vaccines are ok" stuff before, but you're still nervous. Well, it is simply back to my original premise: you don't have to be all-or-nothing.
Did you also have the MMR, tdap, and polio vaccines when you were a kid? Your siblings, your parents? Maybe you can stick with those ones to start. Talk to your doctor about the new ones. If they're a decent doctor and not an ass, they should be willing to give you information, answer questions, and the like. Despite what nonsense you may have read online, they can and will give you the insert information if you ask; either they can print out a copy from their medical records program or just go find one in a box. I was a medical assistant before and I did that for a patient once. There isn't a vast conspiracy about it. I dug into the fridge where the vaccines were kept and found one. No big whoop.
I'm thinking your doc would be happy for your kids to be safe from the biggies that they are most likely to come into contact with, and discuss/spread out/whatever any other vaccines that are "new" in that they weren't around when you were a kid.
Balance is possible
I firmly believe that these people who harp on "if you question even one vaccine then you are an idiot and I will treat you as such" make the problem worse, not better. Who are you convincing with that attitude? No one, that's who. But similarly, having a few fair questions about something you're not familiar with and wanting to understand it can also lead you down a rabbit hole of fearmongering that makes you suddenly question whether up is down, and it's easy to be led astray. Discernment is important.
Don't let others shame you one way or the other; don't be ashamed to ask questions because you're afraid your doctor will judge, but also don't be ashamed to go get the vaccine because you think your mom group will yell at you for it.
Personally, any time a doctor has recommended a medication or a test, I look that shit up, because I don't do anything blindly. I know where to look, though: medical assisting school taught me a lot. I look up meds in the PDR (or an online PDR), the Physician's Desk Reference. It's the big ass book of drugs, basically, and it will tell you everything. This is the med, this is the common way it's taken, this is what it's for, these are the common side effects, etc. That way, I know specifically what questions to ask. "The PDR says the most common side effect is x, which I already deal with, can we try something else?" or "You want to do this test with or without contrast?" I even stopped a couple of dentists - more than one! - who wanted to prescribe me vicodin after pulling a tooth, but you aren't supposed to crush vicodin because it can make you go blind that way, and I can't swallow pills; yet these dentists who didn't know any better because everyone pops pills, amirite when I said, "I can't swallow pills" were like, oh, just crush it. I could have gone blind. Yeah, I look shit up.
Also, side note: refusing opiates from a dentist is about the opposite experience from telling any other doctor that you have pain. Tell a GP you're in pain and they'll look at you like you're a drug addict; tell a dentist that you'd rather have something else and they'll look at you like you're an idiot. One of them argued with me about it, trying to insist that I really needed it (I didn't, I was fine).
And finally, here's a good video I came across because I like this doctor on YouTube and was actually surprised by what she had to say about the HPV vaccine that I didn't know before (she's an obgyn). I had heard so much about this vaccine, and if you've even breathed the word "vaccine" on the internet, you probably have too. Give it a watch:
credit: Mama Doctor Jones on YouTube
That's it from me Bees, be good to each other, think critically, and stay safe. <3
