Fever

One of my very favorite lessons to teach is the one about general immunology and my favorite rules for keeping you and your family healthy.

It goes like this: When we're born, we have a big juicy set of organs that are full of cells that are REALLY special. These cells are designed to remember all the bad things they encounter. Which brings me to my first set of rules.

1. Let your children get dirty. Not to the point DHS is going to come a'knocking...but grubby. All the memory you're going to make happens in roughly the first ten or so years of life. Hence all those pesky injections. Which brings me to:
2. Jenny McCarthy is a MOTHERFUCKING IDIOT. She makes me twitch. Autism is not caused by vaccines. Period. And if you'd like to see the impact this silicone enhanced twit has incurred click HERE. And if you'd like to watch a slightly less biased video - click HERE.
3. Get your flu shots. They can't hurt, you know? Unless you have an egg allergy, and especially if you're around little ones, get it done.

Now, we all know that memory immunity is all well and good and that pertussis is nasty and we should remember that immunizations only work if greater than 80% of the population get them. What you may not realize is that your immune system wages war in your body every day. Every swollen lymph node is a soldier who has quarantined rogue cells in your body and is seeking out the good cells (the white blood cells) that are perfectly equipped to destroy them. Along that line, your body is also probably releasing some very potent chemicals that cause you to drop an atomic bomb on these bugs that have infiltrated you. That bomb is FEVER.

4. Fever is not the enemy. Microbes grow at the temperature of your body. Elevating that temperature even slightly is tantamount to napalming the germs that are making you sick. If you dose your kid every time he gets a fever with naproxen or acetominophen, you're crippling his body. A good rule of thumb is this: Keep it below 103. Tylenol lowers a temperature by approximately 2-3 degrees. If the fever is at 100 or 101, leave it alone. Push fluids and rest. If it goes above that, dose him/her. If it won't respond to meds, call the doc (a real one, not me, I'm a science type).
5. Keep your ass out of the Emergency Room. That place is full of sick people. Eeep. If your kid or you are having trouble breathing, moving, speaking, or keeping down fluids for more than a day, by all means, go... but fever, as scary as it can be, is not a reason to go to the ER.

That's all for today. I plan on doing more of these. If you like them, let me know. And by the way: I know that I've got some readers who are anti-vaccines. I respect your decision to do with your own body what you will...but I want you to watch the Vaccine War video posted above and look at the baby with pertussis. That child was too young to get vaccinated and contracted the illness from someone who didn't immunize. Is THAT your choice? Really? Just think about it.