My very own adverse event

So considering my present status, my wife urged me to get a flu shot this year - all things considered, she'd rather not add on the flu to her list of grievances. As a veterinarian, I am no stranger to vaccinations - I strongly support the recommendations of the AVMA and the AAFP on vaccine use having read up on how things were before we could protect cats against panleukopenia and such. Regarding my own vaccinations, I make sure that I am up to date on my own rabies vaccine status, tetanus, etc etc... But up till this year, I had never gotten a flu shot.

So, two days AFTER getting my flu shot, I started feeling funny. I would suddenly get dizzy, and I'm sure I was raising eyebrows at work when I would suddenly adopt a wide legged stance in exam rooms. While the dizziness was lousy, my hearing loss had me even more alarmed.

Yes, at the age of 32, I suddenly couldn't hear much out of my left ear.

I went to my general practitioner. He looks in my ear, says everything looks fine, than asks how many guns I have fired in the past few days. None. Then he asks my many gunfights I have witnessed in the past few days. None. Finally it's decided I must be getting old.

So, now I'm 32, cannot hear out of my left ear, don't hang around guns often enough to justify my problems, and am getting old.

I try to explain that sudden hearing loss in a 32 year old is surely something to worry about, but he's pretty insistent that once you hit the crap age of 32, you should realize that your body has been shutting down for the last 10 years. I do manage to get the name of a specialist that might be of some help, but frankly, given everything that's been said so far, I have no idea if I want to try out his recommendation.

Thankfully, I took a leap of faith. The otolaryngologist was superb. Sure, having a nasal lidocaine bath and impromptu nasal scope is a rude awakening, but this guy was pretty no-nonsense in regards to taking me seriously. He confirmed I had dramatic hearing loss, and after a bunch of tests, introduced me to something called idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss.

I've learned a lot these past weeks. Antivirals are really expensive - I'm just not sure how the Valtrax lady on tv can find it in her to smile so darn much. And as hard as the antivirals are to swallow, prednisolone really isn't a lot of fun when you are a human (cat's tolerate it fairly well, and it's a go-to drug for a handful of ailments). Fingers crossed, I've got my hearing back presently, and there is hope that it will stay that way. As to why it happened, the specialist is pointing at my flu shot. He says that he avoids the flu shot personally for fear of exactly what happened to me. It's not terribly common (or else I'm sure more people would be talking about it), but it happens.

It's called an adverse event. When drugs and vaccines are studied and approved, it's accepted that there will be outliers that can have funny things happen to them from the drug or vaccine. It's a sort of compromise I suppose. Just because I should avoid a similar flu shot down the road doesn't mean that millions of others who won't lose there hearing should fail to benefit from the protection that the vaccine may provide. While I would love to not have spent so much money to regain my hearing, I'd rather focus on the fact that my body isn't shutting down just yet. I need a bit more time to find a better gp.