Desiree Jennings thought that she was being sensible in having a normal flu shot back in August this year but little did she know that ten days later she was to be stricken down with a certain amount of brain damage.

What has happened to her is called dystonia and it is a very strange syndrome in that when she tries to walk her whole body just doesn't seem to coordinate any more and her movements are all twitchy and jerky, but yet when she walks backwards it is fine and it is also fine when she begins to run.  She can no longer talk properly as it has also affected her tongue and her neck but yet again while she runs she can speak perfectly. 

This recently married 25 year old woman was in the prime of her life and was a cheer leader before this tragedy hit her and as her ailments begin to get worse each day she now wishes that she had never had the flu shot.

All vaccinations have an element of risk in them and I suppose that each person has to weigh up the benefits and risks of having or not having them.  In my opinion, a healthy woman of 25 years old would have been more than capable of coping with the ordinary flu that circulates each year and so there really wasn't that much need for her to have a flu shot which is usually reserved for older people or anyone considered not to be strong enough to fight off the normal flu on their own.

Each year millions of healthy people catch flu and manage to get over it just by staying at home, drinking lots of fluids, staying in a constant room temperature and maybe taking paracetemol in order to lower their fever and alleviate their aches and pains, and within a week or so they are usually over it and back to their normal life.  So for the healthy person the flu doesn't seem to warrant the need for a vaccination.

Admittedly there are some other diseases which are much more lethal like for instance polio, smallpox, yellow fever etc, which if you caught them would really be a case of touch and go for you as they are indeed life threatening and so with these I think it would be sensible to opt for getting a vaccination against them and pray that you don't get any bad reactions because without the vaccinations for these diseases your chances of surviving would be very very low.

But to get back to the ordinary flu again I really think that if you are young and healthy, and I am sure that a cheer leader, with all the exercise that she has to do every day  would be healthier than most, there surely is no need to put yourself at risk by having the vaccination for flu.

Any medicine or jab that one puts into one's body has its risks.  Nothing can be claimed to be completely risk free and that is why if you read the description of the supposedly harmless aspirin that we have taken for so many years you might end up being weary of taking even that as it too can also have its dire consequences.

But having said all this, I feel very sorry for Desiree Jennings and I hope and pray that her doctors find a way of stopping the progression of her ailment.  She seems a very strong and brave woman and it is such a pity that all this has happened to her, but at least it looks like she has a kind and caring husband beside her but I imagine that he must be suffering almost as much if not more than her.