So I've never had a flu shot or a pneumonia shot before, and this really is germane to what follows.
Yesterday when I saw my doctor, she wanted me to get both shots. Of course, she's the doctor, I am a good patient (most of the time anyway) so I agreed to get the shots
If I'd had one or both of the shots before, I would have known that getting them both in the same arm was not exactly the smartest thing a person could do.
What frustrates the crap out of me is that Justin--the nurse who gave me the shots--is supposed to know stuff like this, and shouldn't even have given me the option to have both shots in one arm.
The situation was exacerbated by the fact that I am right-handed and the injections were made into my right shoulder. I use my right hand to do just about everything, and I like to sleep on one side or the other (not my back).
I got these shots around 11:00 am; by 4 pm I was in agony.
I went to bed around 9:00 pm but failed to fall asleep until hours later.
Rolling over in bed was horribly painful and I'm not sure that I didn't scream a few times; I do know that I moaned and groaned and swore and complained about the pain.
While I was laying down--trying and failing to sleep at around midnight--one of my cats made the mistake of stepping on my sore shoulder and I literally threw him off the bed. He hasn't been near that shoulder since.
Today I went to my co-ag (coagulation) appointment and I mentioned to Charlene (the co-ag nurse) that I wanted to rip my arm off and beat Justin with it because it hurt so bad. She asked me why and I told her that I'd had the two shots in the same arm.
She had me roll up my sleeve so she could get a good look at my upper arm, and compared the temperature of that arm to my left arm. She immediately had the doctor prescribe antibiotics.
My upper arm is swollen, hot to the touch, and red as well as being sore, and she said that Justin should have known better than to give me both shots in the same shoulder.
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Sorry to hear about your sore arm. I once had Cholera and Typhoid shots (in separate arms), and I was sore for weeks. It's strange, because one started out sore, and after a week it got better, then the other one got really sore. Even sorer than the first.
I've had the flu vaccination via nasal once, and that was better except I had to hibernate a few days since it was live virus.
At the time I was still under 50, and it was the year the flu vaccinations were in short supply. We had to drive 100 miles round trip to get it!
My husband caught the flu one year and had a week of 100°+ temperature. I had Pneumonia in my 20s, and believe me, it's something best to skip. You made the right decision. The flu shots are an annual thing, and sometimes my asthma doc suggests boosters in January if it's a bad flu year. The Pneumonia is good for five years I think, but check with the doc. Did they suggest tylenol?
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