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

[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.