Fun With Vaccinations

Tuesday afternoon Ricardo and I went to the doctor to talk about some of the meds we need to have for this trip. Only to find out that there are like a bazillion shots we have to get. I left having gotten Hepatitis A and B. I went to the free clinic on Thursday because that was the only place I could get the Yellow Fever vaccine. Turns out that I also needed the Typhoid Fever vaccine as well. Ironically all this cost me $144 (some freebie at the free clinic, eh?). So now all I need are the MMR vaccine, Dip/Tet, Pertussis, another Hepatitis B and a pneumonia vaccine. All I can say about this is ouch! If you can avoid Typhoid Fever vaccines, I highly recommend it. It's painful and nasty.

On top of all the vaccinations, we also need to take malaria meds for the entire time. This consists of the worlds most foul and bitter tasting pills which seem to disintegrate upon contact with any fluid and which you need every day for the whole trip and the week after yo return. So can't we just drink gin and tonics everyday? Wouldn't that work? It did in India.

And we need medication for the altitude. This is, apparently, some kind of diuretic that makes you lose the sodium bicarbonate in your system which makes you breathe faster and take in more oxygen. I don't think this sounds very good, personally. It's a little scary to trick your body into thinking that it's adjusted to high altitude when it's not.

When the whole Semester at Sea prospect was raised back last year it never occurred to me that there would be all of this health stuff involved.