Immunize Your Heart

If you’ve read the D’s blog, you know that we met, we mucked, she flued, we drove, we Starbucked, we fireworked, we pita’d, and we planned. One thing you don’t know is while Danica flued, I mucked more. I don’t have the photos up yet from my two days of Yellowstone mucking because I don’t have enough space left on Webshots to put them all up. So I have to remove some photos to make room but I don’t want to simply remove them because I’ll lose their captions. What I need to do is figure out a way to archive Webshots photos with their captions on my own website. Easier said than done.

Do I actually have any real Asia-related content for this blog entry? Hmm, I know, I can talk about vaccinations.

Vaccinations: I’ve been getting the major ones, Danica is not getting any of ‘em. Another way to look at it is that I am now tainted, Danica is pure. Don’t dig too deep into that. Here are the immunizations I have clouded my body with along with some relevant information.

• Tetanus – A booster shot every 10 years is recommended because tetanus lives in dirt so you can get it by simply pricking your finger on a rose bush thorn and touching infected dirt. That’s the example the nurse gave me anyway.
• Hepatitis A – 2 shots, 6 months apart. I’ve gotten the first one and that’s all I’ll have for the trip. You get Hep A from infected food and water so as long we’re careful about what we consume we should be fine. Danica’s pretty careful about that anyway due to allergies so with her influence I may be able to refrain from eating too much crap, maybe literally.
• Hepatitis B – 3 shots, wait 1 month for the 2nd shot, 6 months from the 1st shot for the 3rd shot. I got this shot at the same time as Hep A, I’ll get the 2nd shot in a few days, and then I’ll get the last shot at the same time as the 2nd Hep A (5 months from now). You get Hep B from dirty needles, promiscuity, or open wounds. I’m planning on indulging in all three a lot so I really needed this immunization.
• Typhoid Fever – 1 shot or 3-4 oral doses (pills). To avoid another shot and since the pills are $30-40 cheaper, I decided to vaccinate myself orally. About a week before I leave, I’ll take a pill every other day until I’ve consumed all 4.
• Malaria Pills – Doxycycline taken daily starting the day I leave and continued for a month after I return. Now that I have the pills I wonder if I should have skipped this vaccination. While it won’t hurt and doxycycline is a good antibiotic for a lot of other illnesses besides malaria, it feels like overkill. But it would suck to get malaria so…

Costs: While the regional health district was recommended multiple times for cheaper vaccinations, it ended up being MUCH cheaper to do them through Group Health Cooperative, my health care provider from work. Tetanus is completely covered and Hep B is covered under preventive (don’t tell them it’s for traveling). Hep A used to be really expensive because it was shipped in large vials and few people get the shot so they’d have to throw away the extra vaccine because once the vial is opened it’s compromised. So they’d charge you for the whole vial instead of just your small dose. They now ship it in unit vials and all you have to pay is $11, which is the price of the medicine. The other option for Hep A and Hep B is called Twinrix, which is A/B combined in one shot and only the regional health district offers it. The price is pretty high though, $60 a shot and there’s 3 shots, so $180. Typhoid shots are only offered at the regional health district but I ordered the pills, which are $40. Lastly, I think the malaria pills are covered somehow. All of this price information is of course only relevant to my location. I haven’t gotten a bill yet but I think it’ll be something like:

• Tetanus – $0
• Hep A – $11 * 2 shots = $22
• Hep B – %20 of the medicine cost = ??
• Typhoid – $40
• Malaria Pills – %20 of the cost = ??
• TOTAL: I’ll guess about $100

Side Effects: The only side effects I’ve experienced from immunizing is a sore arm and maybe a little sleepiness. Tetanus was the worst. It didn’t really hurt but the spot on my arm where the shot was given kind of knotted up and my arm felt half-asleep for a about 3-4 days. I could lift it above my head but I was pretty content to just let it hang by my side because that’s what it seemed to want to do. And arms generally hang by your side most of the time anyway so we lived pretty harmoniously despite its griping. One of the Hep shots was worse than the other but I don’t know which one because I didn’t see which one went in which arm. Maybe I’ll be able to tell when I get the 2nd Hep B this week. I played basketball the day I got the first Hep shots and even though my arms were complaining a bit I was able to raise them over my head without much resistance. The tetanus arm definitely resisted.

Hopefully the preceding horde of information wasn’t too wordy and boring. It probably was but I tried my best and I want to be rewarded for my efforts, prefererably with a warm, freshly baked, chocolate chip cookie. Mmm. Chocolate chip cookies are a real man’s vaccine. They may not immunize the body but they definitely immunize the heart. And wouldn’t you rather immunize your heart than your body?

BUFF-A-LO!