Yikes, @charlotte12

I’m sorry you’re left hanging in the breeze to weigh very complex medical information and make potentially important choices on your own. That response would not be helpful for me. While I do my best to keep my primary care provider (PCP) informed about my cancer care by ensuring that they have treatment summaries from my oncology facility’s online portal, and by signing releases so that communication can happen back and forth when needed and possible, I do not expect my PCP to have expertise around specific cancer treatments and ways they might make me vulnerable to the effects of something as widespread in use as a Covid vaccine. I look to my oncology team for information about how my oncology health status may impact other health issues, not just the other way around. Perhaps, if you request and they are willing, your oncologist could consult with your primary before the next round, or vice versa?

It almost seems as if policy and policies around liability may have an impact on what and how your oncology nurse feels comfortable communicating with you about this.

Laws/policies say one thing about vaccines; that they serve the community by reducing spread of an infectious illness and by reducing severity of illness in those infected, in general. What individual practitioners might believe or what information they might have about how specific vaccines might impact individual patients with their unique constellations of medical history, treatments and vulnerability along various dimensions of their health, may or may not conflict with those policies. So much of the research that would need to be done for them to be able to answer you clearly has not likely been done (yet?).

I would appreciate hearing a practitioner (oncology or otherwise) stating that they cannot (yet?) know b/c there isn’t specific research available about the intersection of my specific diagnosis, my overall health and my treatment history because there are not enough people (yet?) who share enough of those same kinds of characteristics to have been studied that way.

If you are in a position to limit your exposure (which depends on you AND all those who enter your orbit and how) to COVID, then opting out of a vaccine or choosing to narrow your vaccine schedule might be an option. If you did opt out or reduce your vaccine coverage, you would then need to find other ways to limit your risk and the potential impact on you of becoming infected. For this kind of information you might find an integrative oncology provider helpful. Mine helps to bridge gaps between my PCP and my oncology team in other areas and has helped me to gauge my personal risk that way.

Wishing you the best with your cancer care and overall health, and doing my best to sort this stuff out too,

Gynosaur