So this news is a little old--items for the internets are like pints of milk on a hot summer day in tucson with no refrigerator in site, nary a cactus to shade your container o' calcium--but i figured i would post it anyway, since i'm trying to keep up with all the various aspects of planning and preparing for my adventure.
Anyhoo, i went to the travel nurse at the student health clinic on Friday, to get vaccinated against various and sundry diseases and loaded up with all manner of crime fighting tools. Some might call them antibiotics and antihistamines, but hey, bacteria invasion is a form of crime, right? breaking and entering? willful destruction of propery? if you think of your cells as your property, i suppose, which is sort of a strange and uber-capitalist way of thinking about your body...but i digress. I'm no big fan of biomedicine to begin with, and i was having a little bit of a hard time with the idea of asking for antibiotics just in case i might have some sort of infection. But given the alternative--and oooooh, i've seen the alternative--i suppose it's better to have those sorts of things just in case you eat the bad bite of fish that gives you a buffet of microscopic creatures.
So I go into the travel nurse, and she provides me with a list of shots i should get before going, along with a lot of amusing information about travel safety that, given my destination, seems ridiculous (yes, ok, i won't eat any fruits. and then i'll starve. yes, i'll make sure everything is properly refrigerated...except there aren't any refrigeration units for miles. yes, i'll close and lock the door to my hotel room. um, what if there is no door?). The nurse then reveals that she can give me all my shots today! right at her desk! talk about convenience. I have to receive four shots, two in each arm. She tells me that the tetanus shot usually makes your whole arm hurt all day, so i say, "Please give me that one in my left arm! i have work to do!" I begin to think maybe it wasn't such a great idea to see the travel nurse first thing in the morning, to get it out of the way and have the rest of my day to Get Things Done, but i quickly banish that thought. Travel Nurse also mentions i might feel a little "flu like" that afternoon. Hmmm. So I get the shots, which weren't all that bad, withstand the shocked and humorous quips of the nurses and pharmacy people at the sight of the four FleshTone bandaids gracing my shoulders like a bad brand of epaulets for the military of the infirm and accident-prone, and then head out.
Later that day, I learn two valuable lessons: first, it's not the Tetanus shot that hurts, it's the Typhus! In my right arm! It felt like thousands of tiny elbows had given each of my individual muscle fibers a special charley horse. And, that darn typhus shot, along with its three pals, made me feel very, very strange. Not simply flulike in the "whoa, i might throw up" kind of way, but in a "i can't really look at the printed word, let alone try to type up some of my own." at the same time, i didn't feel all that bad--just really weird. i went home and laid on the couch and whined for the rest of the afternoon, before taking a nap. so much for getting things done.
Did I mention that, while all this was happening, Travel Nurse's pal Nurse was in the office, telling me about her friend's mormon mission and the calling her friend had? Odd visit.
