Vaccinations and Medications
BOLIVIA | Wednesday, 31 October 2007 | Views [503]
The illusion of the immortality of youth … oh, how I miss it. Long gone are the days that I could swing my backpack over my shoulder and take off insouciantly for foreign destinations. Twenty year ago I poured over the “where to” sections of guide books before hopping on a plane, now it is the “before you go” sections that are dog-eared. So began our marathon of collecting medical paraphernalia for our trip to Bolivia.
Thank goodness Christiane is just as precautious as me. We have collected a stockpile of pills and liquids to regulate whatever needs to be regulated. We can stop it from coming up or gushing out or any other problem in-between.
But the one thing we cannot do, and I don’t think that we would even want to, is to inoculate ourselves.
The list of vaccinations, just to name a few, that are recommended / required for Bolivia are; diphtheria, yellow fever, hepatitis A & B, meningitis, rougeole, tetanus, and typhoid.
Remember, we are travelling with a four year old. He is going to have to have all of those shots, too. I still remember the fear of getting shots when I was a kid, that antiseptic smell of a doctors office still gives me the willies. Now a parent myself, I was very hesitant about the battery of injections SB would have to get before we left. Someone once told me that you only become an adult once you have kids. If it were not for SB looking at me with an intent curiosity as I was about to be injected with the first of my many vaccinations, I would not have had a ridiculous grin stating “oh, isn’t this fun” plastered on my face. “See,” said I, blinking back tears,” didn’t even hurt!” SB jumped up on the examination table after me and he DIDN’T EVEN BLINK when he got his shots. All that worrying for nothing.
The only resistance I did encountered was when I removed the band-aid from his arm. I thought that he was crying because it hurt, instead he wailed “but it was for Bolivia,” and we had a hard time stopping him from trying to recuperate it from the trash.
Tags: the planning phase
