Scared about Cervarix

[jix.livejournal.com]

So the other day (Wednesday) I went to the gyno and she got me hooked up with a new form of HBC and also suggested I do the Cervarix thing. Since I don't want cervical cancer, and want to be protected to a degree (well, the degree to which I can be protected), I said okay.

So on Friday I pick up the shot from the drugstore, and they tell me that I have to keep it refrigerated and make an appointment with my doctor to have it injected by him. I haven't made the appointment yet, as it's the weekend, but now I'm not sure I want to.

Last night my friend came over and I casually mentioned that I'm going to take Cervarix and she started freaking me out by telling me that a lot of girl have gotten brain damage from it and like severe paralysis, etc. So obviously now I'm too scared to use it, after I paid for it and everything.

Anyways, so my questions are:

How valid do you think her claims are? Has anyone here had a positive (well, normal, no problems) experience with this vaccine? Anyone know anyone with negative experiences with this?

Thanks for any and all responses. I didn't really want to google it too much because I'm afraid of reading something that's totally bogus or whatever and believing it.

Comments

[kat1031.livejournal.com]

Her claims aren't valid at all. It has about the same potential for reaction as any other common vaccine. The brain damage thing is a false rumor spread by anti-birth-control politicians with absolutely no medical credentials at all.

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing. All medications have risks, even statistically infinitesimal but scary risks like strokes or death. The second to last antibiotic I was on had a good paragraph about the potential for liver failure, and when I had tingly hands and feet while taking it, I freaked out and went to the doc. She checked me out and declared the tingling to be unrelated. (Turns out being sick in general can have that effect!) But god, did I manage to convince myself that my body was shutting down.

Full disclosure pamphlets are good, but can be misleading as a whole. Of all the people on any given medication, some of them will experience awful symptoms that may or may not be related to the medication. The people who have experienced brain damage or paralysis--if they even exist--may have had other medical issues that were worsened by the vaccine or just happened to flare up around that time.

My tingling extremities were probably not directly related to Bactrim, but were due to my immune system being beaten by both a virus and a UTI. My doctor was only able to determine that it wasn't due to the Bactrim because my liver function was actually fine. But because I called in to work with the excuse of "having an awful reaction to antibiotics", my coworkers thought that I really was one of those people who had drawn the short straw with side effects.

tl;dr version: Statistically, it's not impossible. But, stories inflate as they're told and you don't know the reality behind the maladies.

[slinkslowdown.livejournal.com]

I panicked when I got a facial rash after starting on Lamictal and thought it was "The Rash" and I'd lose my skin and die and dfsfgfdg goodbye, rational thought. Turns out my body decided to develop rosacea at a really crappy time. @_@

OP, please don't worry too much! The vaccine wouldn't be sold still if that many people were getting such serious side effects from it.

[jix.livejournal.com]

good point! it really is common sense, i guess, haha.

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

The vaccine wouldn't be sold still if that many people were getting such serious side effects from it.

Well, there's a loophole in the FDA approval process that allows certain experimental drugs to get a conditional approval, so that people with some terminal illnesses can obtain last-ditch meds. Sometimes the drugs are later found to be unsuccessful or have serious issues, and get pulled. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/18/avastin-breast-cancer-fda-approval-revoked_n_1101468.html)

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

some reading:
Minnesota Public Radio on why the HPV vaccine has a bad rap. (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2011/09/science_and_the_things_we_find.shtml)
Politifact on Bachmann's claims. (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/sep/16/michele-bachmann/bachmann-hpv-vaccine-cause-mental-retardation/)
An actual scientific article on Gardasil side effects. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X09013395) (I haven't read the study, only the abstract, so I can't verify that the authors are unrelated to Merck.)

Argh, most of the stuff I'm finding on Google Scholar are about attitudes towards HPV vaccines, not actual side effects from people who have taken it. That said, the only negative things I'm finding are from urls like truthaboutgardasil.com and Fox.com. Hardly neutral or science-friendly.

[jix.livejournal.com]

Thank you *so* much. It's nice to real like...balanced information. My mind is already becoming eased.

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

Well, others could argue that NPR, Politifact and scientists themselves have an agenda.

[jix.livejournal.com]

Very true, but I definitely trust NPR more than Fox, haha.

[shyshutterbug.livejournal.com]

All of this, 110%.

[realt-stea.livejournal.com]

it's the same BS people pull with gardasil(similar vaccine made by merck). if you look in certain places(please don't, because you will only scare yourself), you will see plenty of "true stories" of people "seriously injured" by this vaccine. which may or may not be true, i don't know. if you look at it from an overall perspective, the statistics are very good.

personally, i've gotten gardasil and have had no ill side effects. i work in health care and have administered thousands of doses of gardasil, without ill side effects.

you take a risk with any vaccines/medications, the key is to make an informed decision based on good information from reputable sources.

[theatreant.livejournal.com]

I think it's incredibly insulting to say concerns about vaccinations is "BS". As somebody who chose not to get Gardasil because I don't believe its been tested enough long-term, I'm insulted you think I chose to do it just because I'm scared about nothing. Just because you got Gardasil and had no short term effects doesn't mean others haven't, or that others won't have problems in the years to come. But dismissing it as BS is insulting and short-sighted.

Saying the OP shouldn't research the vaccine because they might "scare" themselves is not an appropriate thing to say.

OP. I suggest not freaking out and instead doing some serious research about the stories you friend told you about. Some of them won't be true, but some of them might be. It's up to you to make an informed decision about your body.

[realt-stea.livejournal.com]

you're right about the BS part, and i do apologize for that.

i was encouraging the OP to not look at sites such as youtube which has thousands of videos for probably every vaccine saying how horrible it is and how it's going to kill you. for what i could stomach, the ones regarding gardasil were all short term effects, not long term.

i'm not sure if you read my post the whole way though, but i did encourage the OP at the end to do her own research from reputable sites, not youtube, not propaganda sites.

[sabishii-kirito.livejournal.com]

Another person who was kind of offended by your wording here.

You didn't say anything about which sites weren't reputable. Mentioning YouTube in a reply isn't quite the same as talking about places that have bogus true stories. Yes, places like YouTube and wikipedia have a lot of false information because it is user-based, but... I don't know. I guess just vaguely saying that many places have bad information doesn't really help anyone know which sites ARE truthful.

For the record, I also haven't taken the vaccine because I'm worried about future effects. I know that many stories are just stories, correlation != causation, etc. But acting like people who want ALL opinions on a given subject that has yet to have longterm research done are stupid (which is how I took your reply) is rude.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense. I'm half sick and pretty tired, so my brain isn't working how it should.

[realt-stea.livejournal.com]

again, i apologized. i should have worded it differently. i can't edit my post since people have replied to it and i'm not deleting it since i feel as though i have valid points. i didn't mean that people who want to make well informed decisions are stupid, clearly since at the end of my post i encouraged the OP to do that exact thing. i work in healthcare and am seriously annoyed with people who say "omg one person died from this vaccine it's evil!"

i didn't mention which sites that bad/good info because i didn't want to flame any sites(such as youtube), and at the time i didn't have time to research which ones have good info. thankfully, someone above was nice enough to post what looks like some good links, and the OP went and looked at the info for herself.

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

I think realt_stea is saying that the heavy-handed campaign to discredit HPV vaccines (see: everything certain politicians say) is BS. When the statements come alongside actual misogynistic and inaccurate assertions (like how abstinence only education is the #1 way to go!), they seem more like a political endeavor than actual education.

[kat1031.livejournal.com]

This is the problem with lots of the anti-vax stuff. It's not based at all on science, it's based on hearsay and as anyone who's ever played the elementary school game of Telephone can tell you, the more something's repeated, the less reality-based and more freaked-out it sounds.

There is no reputable proof that any vaccine, whether it's an HPV vax or a common childhood vaccine, causes brain damage, mental disabilities and/or autism.

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

However, as scientists we can't say that "we have no reputable proof that y doesn't cause x, therefore y doesn't cause x." We just can say that there is a lack of evidence that y causes x. That's why it's difficult to find reputable proof that y doesn't cause x: Science doesn't work that way.

We can, however, say that all the stories so far don't hold up to scientific scrutiny.

[catrinaz.livejournal.com]

This. Thanks for being a voice of reason on the side of science. :)

[realt-stea.livejournal.com]

thank you, that was what i was getting at :)

[catrinaz.livejournal.com]

That is how i read the comment as well.

[darth-eldritch.livejournal.com]

All of this.

Thank you for calling on the BS. It's vital that health care professionals respect the concerns of patients, regardless of personal experience and beliefs.
The concerns about various vaccinations and side effects ought to be respected, not dumbed down because some political something out there by x group of people said or does something that has nothing to do with a patient's personal life.

[lurkerwisp.livejournal.com]

If it helps any, I had the Gardasil (similar thing) shot series a while back. It kicked my ass for the rest of the day after I got it every time. I was dead tired, could barely move, and ached all over, but that all passed overnight and I was fine the next day. As far as shots go, it hurt less than the chicken pox vaccine, and more than the flu shot - so not terrible on my own personal injection pain scale.

Just don't plan on running any marathons the same afternoon you get the injection and you'll be fine. :) I wouldn't let the warnings scare you too much. The benefits outweigh the small risk.

[sweetchild92.livejournal.com]

I think the most likely side effect you may have is a sore arm. Vaccines really kick my upper arm's ass, all the time. Gardasil. Flu. I'm sure any other vaccine I get in the future will leave my arm in pain as well :P

OP-have you ever googled a birth control method? You'll find many, many horror stories for any of them, some true, some not. But the you're going to find much more people turning up to voice complaints than they are positives.