HughHC,
Whether or not to get a flu shot is a question for your doctor, because it depends on the risk if you do vs. the risk if you don't. In some cases it's pretty clear but there are borderline cases where only doctors should make the call.
Here is some general information about the flu vaccine:
There are two ways to get the flu vaccine, as Sally mentioned. The injected version has an inactive (dead) virus so you can't get the flu from it. People can, however, get a low-grade fever or soreness from the flu shot.
The other version is the nasal spray, named FluMist, that uses a weakened but live virus. It's fine for healthy people but not for babies, seniors, youngsters with asthma, or pregnant women. I doubt doctors would recommend this over the shot for an MDS patient.
Two other points to keep in mind:
- Whether or not the doctor advises an MDS patient to get a flu shot, other members of the family are well-advised to get the vaccine. The last thing a patient needs is a family member with the flu! After my wife's bone marrow transplant she wasn't allowed to have immunizations for a while but her doctor reminded the rest of our family to get flu shots.
- The flu vaccine doesn't take effect immediately. If you get a flu shot on Tuesday and have the flu on Wednesday it's because you had already caught the flu. This type of coincidence causes some people to insist that they caught the flu from the flu shot, but that's not the case!