Time for the shots!

For those who might be traveling soon….

KC & I posted a blog entry earlier in our process about “shots” and what we needed to get. Well, we have finally gotten around to having enough money to pay for them. (They are expensive!)

I learned some very valuable news yesterday while calling to schedule our appointment(s) for today. When traveling to Ethiopia one of the shots recommended by the CDC (which you can find all of this online on their website, it is very simple) is a Hepatitis A & B shot. Luckily they come in a ‘combo’ shot so you can get them at the same time, but it is three separate shots. So you have to go three different times. The nurse asked me yesterday when we were leaving for our trip, because according to the CDC you have to have a month between the first shot and the second. You can’t have them any closer together. They also told me that they suggest you get two shots before you leave, you obviously aren’t required to get any shots, but recommended. I mean who wants to bring Meningitis or Polio home with them? Not me. But they said as long as you get two rounds of the shots into you, you should be okay, but they obviously suggest going ahead and getting the third during the process, just to make sure.

So I thought I would pass along that information. We were planning on waiting as long as we could before we got the shots, but I am so glad we called and checked. Not that we have any information on when we are traveling, but I would have been pretty upset with myself if we were told we were traveling in two or three weeks, then if we went to get shots and we found this out. So here is some unsolicited advice, I would recommend calling your local travel clinic or doctor to see what their recommendations are and really, when you should start getting them. So you don’t run into any ‘timing’ issues. Just a thought.

Also, I guess it’s a good thing that the Hep. A & B shots are a set of three that way we can spread out the other shots that we are recommended to get and we wont get them all together at once. I am 6’ 3” and weigh, on a good day, about 205, so getting some of these aren’t that big of a deal, but KC on the other hand who is 5’ 4” and weighs about 115 probably couldn’t handle as many shots as I could in one sitting. Some of them are live viruses! So we plan on spreading them out, getting three today, two later, etc.

Well, we go today to get the shots and I will update you all later after it is done. I’ll take pictures too. Really, what the post will probably consist of is how I screamed during every shot and how KC just sat there and made fun of me. She laughs at me every time I have to get a shot and says, “you would have never survived as a women, childbirth is way harder than this.”

(For those of you in Alabama who need shots, we have found that the cheapest place in our area to get them are at the Alabama Department of Public Health as well as the AUM Nursing Clinic in Montgomery – Google them their numbers are on-line.)

Until later –

J.W. Godwin