Karin thanks the gift of vaccination

nurse

Somehow summer just keeps roaring by and I just realized that Craig and I are leaving for India and Nepal in two weeks! While I spent a great deal of time buying a jaunty outdoors wardrobe from Patagonia and LL Bean, I sort of forgot to do the more important things like, oh you know, get my visas so I can enter the aforementioned nations. I also realized the other day that I’m not just jetting off to Milwaukee, but halfway around the world and I might need a few vaccinations before I go. You know, so I don’t come back with one leg and half a liver.

Luckily, my doctor’s office has this amazing travel nurse who will check all health advisors and epidemics in the country your traveling to and inoculate you appropriately. So in I skipped today to assure that my vacation can be a vacation and not just lots of exposure to disease.

The last time I got major vaccinations it was much less fun. In fact, it was extremely traumatizing. I was living in Hong Kong at the time and the reason I went to the doctor was not even to get a vaccine, but because I was convinced I had an alien trapped in my brain. I just woke up one morning and there was an enormous bump on my forehead. Like half an orange had been shimmied under my flesh and was taking residence on my face.

I lost my mind. I screamed so much that my then boyfriend threw me over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. Then, in the elevator to my doctor’s office some British douche bag looked at me and said “oh, an alien of the third kind.” I of course started to cry hysterically and the whole doctor’s visit was one big hysterical mess. But at the end of it all, I was able to mutter that I was leaving in Mongolia in a few weeks and I was poked and prodded with vaccinations against every disease on earth.

So this time, it was a tad less dramatic and I managed to not shed a tear as Nurse Lori saved me from a future of polio! Three cheers for modern medicine.