Shingled out

One of the weird bonuses of working where I work is that I have access to vaccines that aren’t always automatically given to the rest of the world. No, this isn’t about COVID; when there is a vaccination for that I’ll be standing in line same as anyone, I would guess.  But not every American has had the rabies vaccination and most probably don’t take a typhoid preventative every five years and haven’t had the yellow fever vaccination.

And now that I’ve hit the age for the shingles vaccine, the doctor at work encouraged me to get it. As I’ve heard how bad shingles can be, it seemed like a good idea. It’s a nasty, nasty thing to get and no one in their right might would want any part of it.

The vaccine consists of two shots; I’ve no idea if they’re identical or what, but before the first one, which I got in March, I listened to a lecture of side effects, read about more and signed a piece of paper saying I understood like could get ugly after it. The embassy doctor advised me to do it on a Friday in case I had any ill effects.

Dose one, no issues. Yeah, I had a little soreness in my shoulder but none of the flu-like symptoms I’d been warned about, so last week I really wasn’t worried about getting the second one. I’d planned to do it on Friday, when I was in the office, but I wound up having to go in on Wednesday to do a particular work thing, so I went ahead and lined it up for then because I wasn’t sure if I’d have to go in Friday, too. (We have a health unit at the embassy; I didn’t go into a local medical facility to get it.)

A meeting ran a bit late and I rushed in to the health unit, which thrilled the doctor because he’s pretty much starved for human contact. There is virtually no one in the office all week, and he’s in a location where the few people who are on site don’t run into him, so I was probably the first human being he saw on the job. We chatted, I got the shot, he reminded me that I should take an ibuprofen or two just in case.

That went in one ear and out the other and I pretty much forgot I got the shot, which had been around 4:30 and, when my shoulder started hurting on the walk home an hour later, I didn’t connect that to the shot. My mind went to the fact my shoulder hurt like it did before I’d had shoulder surgery and I had wild thoughts about having three shoulder surgeries in four overseas tours.

At home, I tried to chillax but the pain increased. At some point – maybe when I saw the Garfield BandAid – I remembered the shot and the suggestion to take ibuprofen, so I gulped down two around maybe 6:30 p.m. By around 8 p.m., I was in agony. The left shoulder hurt just as it had post-op.

A couple hours later, I downed two of the knockout PM pills, assuming I would fall asleep and wake up fine, like what normally happens. Nope. The pain was excruciating and just as bad as Day One after surgery. No matter how I arranged the pillows, I could not get comfortable and woke up screaming “Oh God” so many times my neighbors must have thought I found a new man. I took two more painkillers at 4 a.m. but didn’t get any sleep at all. The pain was so bad I was nauseous.

The next day plan had been to meet someone for breakfast and then have the three of us (the person and her pup) come work at my apartment but I felt so miserable I called it off. Feeling hot, I took my temperature and it was over 100, but again, this is not a COVID story.

 Come to find out, I was the poster child for side effects. Here’s what the CDC said about the shingles drug:

Most people got a sore arm with mild or moderate pain after getting Shingrix, and some also had redness and swelling where they got the shot. Some people felt tired, had muscle pain, a headache, shivering, fever, stomach pain, or nausea. About 1 out of 6 people who got Shingrix experienced side effects that prevented them from doing regular activities.  Symptoms went away on their own in about 2 to 3 days. Side effects were more common in younger people.

It's one of the occasions when I would have loved to have been “most people,” but I’m rarely most people. I guess I got lucky because not only was I one of the six who experienced side effects, but I experienced the whole lot of them, all day long. Fortunately, I’m teleworking now, which, that day, meant crashing on the sofa between emails. It was awful.

Our doctor came and checked on me and offered me Benadryl and some other painkiller. Those, combined with a single melatonin, helped me get sleep that night buy boy howdy, that was not a lot of fun.