![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vaccination.jpg\" "\\"vaccination\\"")
Winter is coming…<\/p>\nWinter is coming…<\/p>\n
We visited the medical practice yesterday for some travel inoculations. That was fun, as you can imagine: me, plus three large teenagers, in a small nurse’s office, each receiving a variety of jabs in both arms…<\/p>\n
Anyway, as we were wrapping up (and retrieving one feeling-faint daughter from the floor) the nurse said something in passing about coeliac daughter.<\/p>\n
Has she had her pneumonia jab?<\/strong><\/p>\n Um… no? What pneumonia jab? We decided long ago that we wouldn’t take up the winter flu vaccination, as coeliac daughter is very healthy; she just needs a special diet.<\/p>\n The nurse dug around in her paperwork, and found our daughter on a list of people to be called in. Apparently, these days, infants all receive a pneumococcal vaccination as part of the routine series of inoculations. Because of their ages—born long before 2006—my children did not receive the pneumococcal vaccine: too old.<\/p>\n And now, it turns out, it is recommended that coeliacs (especially those whose spleens are not working well – fortunately, this doesn’t apply to us) should receive this jab, no matter what their age. And, we should be reconsidering our views on the winter flu jab.<\/p>\n The pneumococcal vaccine will protect her against pneumonia for 10 years, apparently; the winter flu jab against influenza, but only for one season. <\/p>\n