Public Health
Why it's important to get your flu vaccine - care setting
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Tina. Amanda. My name's Natalie. I'm a deputy manager of a nursing home. A week before Mother's Day, I started off with a tickly throat, feeling quite cold. As the afternoon went on, I left work, I went home and I was shivering. I went for a shower and I was really cold, teeth chattering and everything. Went to bed, I woke up with a cough, followed by being sick, sweats, hot and cold. I went to A&E and they admitted me overnight and then they let me go the following day with Tamiflu tablets. and to isolate. So sort of cold like symptoms, sneezing, runny nose, headaches, body aches, fever. I was literally bed bound for two weeks. I was off work for two weeks. Shivers, hot sweats. I was struggling with my voice as well. I lost quite a bit of my voice so I couldn't really talk. My children was coming round to see me with the grandchildren. So obviously that had to get put on hold because then I couldn't see anybody for a few days because I had to isolate. I couldn't even get out of bed. I've got two older girls luckily that was helping me. But I do have a little girl so we had to sort out like school runs and childcare and quite a bit of help at home. It affected the whole house. We were supposed to have a New Year's Eve party which we had to cancel because we couldn't mix the residents on the different units. So yeah, we had to cancel it unfortunately. If you like me and didn't have the vaccine done because it made you feel poorly for a couple of days, it's better to feel poorly and protected for a couple of days than being hospitalised and feeling really poorly for a week or so. Our residents' care is paramount and if they don't get the vaccine, they get unwell, they could pass it on to a resident. You know, that could have really severe consequences for that person. So potentially someone could die. That's worst case scenario. People like we've got here, you know, are very vulnerable, very frail, and have other underlying medical conditions. So all of that together and then if they stop eating and drinking, they have high temperatures, it can just, it can lead to hospitalisation and it could eventually lead to someone dying. It's not fair to them if we come in and we're not vaccinated and we're spreading the flu around for them. Passing it on.