by Jennifer Margulis
When Katie Tyler, who’s 33 years old and lives in Truckee, California, went in for her 28-week pregnancy checkup, the nurse at the doctor’s office urged her to get the flu shot.
At first, Tyler, a real-estate agent, was skeptical. About to go on a 10-day vacation with her husband, she didn’t want to do anything that might make her sick. Because she was pregnant she was avoiding medication, and was a bit perplexed about why she should get a vaccine. She had never had a flu shot before.
“I want to do whatever’s right for the baby, and for myself during pregnancy,’” Tyler, who has shoulder-length brown hair, light brown eyes, and a warm smile, remembers telling the nurse.1
The nurse responded that every pregnant woman in the practice was getting the flu shot. She reassured Tyler that she’d be fine, and that the vaccine definitely wouldn’t make her sick.
Within 12 hours of being vaccinated for influenza, Tyler had a sore throat, aches and pains, and was feeling generally horrible. She was sick with flu-like symptoms for two and a half weeks. One night, on vacation in Hawaii, she began to have trouble breathing. Wanting to save the out-of-pocket expense of an emergency-room visit, she called her doctor, who, over the phone, diagnosed her with bronchitis. When Tyler mentioned that up till then she hadn’t been sick during her pregnancy, had never had the flu in her adult life, and thought the illness might have been caused by the vaccine, her doctor was adamant that there was no possible connection.
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