Giving bad news is sometimes the hardest part of medicine.

H1N1 Vaccine

The CDC has directed all patients who want to avoid the H1N1 flu to get the vaccine. They have declared it perfectly safe and have reported no adverse events. They specifically have denied GBS or ascending paralysis with this vaccine. I have believed everything I have been told. I have promoted the vaccine to all my patients. I have given hundreds of doses. I have taken it myself and given it to my children.

This week however, I have hears from 3 patients who claim to know someone who knows someone who got GBS from the vaccine. This is a disorder where your muscles start being paralyzed from the feet moving up the body. It can paralyze your respiratory muscles preventing you from breathing without mechanical ventilators until the disease runs its course.

I can find no official info on this reaction anywhere in the news or from the CDC. I do not know if this is just urban legend or if this is the start of something real. I am bothered enough by this though to recommend that the MOZ family delay getting the H1N1 vaccine until more is known. If you've already had it like me, you're fine. this is not a delayed reaction type event. It happens very quickly after being vaccinated. However, I would not put anyone else at risk at this time. The H1N1 or "hiney" flu as I like to call it has died down. It was not that significant in it's severity when it was prevalent, only highly contagious. So the risk from the disease to family members is very low at this time.

I do not like being an alarmist. But I will let you know when something concerns me. I will post more information and opinions as I find out more.

Your Faithful Family Doctor.

Wow!!!!

I can't believe this site is all mine to play with. Thanks Brother D and Ms. Bren and all the guys who built this site. I am honored by the place.

As my official MOZ blog I intend to use it to honor the podcast with zombie related posts from my medical perspective. I'll give you medical news when it is relevant, movie reviews when I see something interesting and in general just spread my thoughts here.

I also will use this as a site for more serious medical alerts when issues come up. As swine flu news was just breaking last year I tried to keep my analysis on the web for those who wanted my opinion to see. In the future when such events occur, I will use this site to keep the MOZ family informed.

What I will not do is type correctly, spell correctly, or use proper punctuation. I suck at those skills.

So anyone and everyone who is so inclined in the MOZ family, welcome to the Med of the Dead blog. And thank you for this great honor.