After the second attempt to get all sorts of injections and pills for traveling outside of the U.S. of A., I saw the nurse. As a side note, nothing adds to good old-fashioned American-style xenophobia than preparing for a trip to the continent of Africa. The hand-outs and WHO and CDC warnings are all about the germs, parasites, viruses and horrible afflictions for which your weak, pampered American ass is wholly unprepared.
I saw the nurse, yet I am still Yellow Fever prone. Apparently, there’s a shortage on account of it being a live vaccine that mad scientists whip up in small batches and keep alive. So, they have a big old let’s open the yellow fever vaccine bottle just this once appointment, where me and four or five other folks will get poked at the same time with the fresh bottle. You’d think they would have mentioned this little, fucking thing when I called, oh, I dunno, a half dozen times trying to get this shit straight.
Fucking HMOs.
No Yellow Fever, but I apparently am all set for Hep A, Typhoid and polio. I kind of want to sleep with a drug-addicted hooker to check out how my liver fends off the hepatitis. Maybe I should just trust the medical establishment.
I don’t know if I”m a total hypochondriac or I’m diseased. She said the typhoid vaccine would hurt my arm (I swear I could feel it surge through my veins), and that I might get a fever and a headache. I ended up riving home with the kind of skull-slicing pain that makes your eyes water. I laid on the couch complaining that the typhoid had gotten me. I'm probably minutes from a messy, old-fashioned demise.
Weirdly, the nurse was a pretty big proponent of the Lariam solution to keeping the nasty, malarial bugs at bay. I opted for the every day Malarone.
I mean who wouldn't want the potential for chemically induced vivid dreams or depression or extreme anxiety on a business trip in a foreign country?
Sometimes I think it's not paranoid to skip the modern pharmacopeia of magic elixirs. The trade of is only having to take two pills, essentially, one at the beginning and one the second week, with the potential of psychosis VERSUS a pill a day and no side effects apart from diarrhea unless taken with a full stomach. Yeah. If I wanted to trip, I'd stick to the stuff I could get on the street.
Truth be told, I'd prefer to get all turn of the century British ex-pat. A bit of quinine and lime in my Bombay Sapphire sounds a bit more civilized, malarial mosquito-wise.
Technorati Tags: Africa, healthcare, Louise_Fitzhugh, travel, Uganda, United_States
what no sleeping sickness jab
what about the whyles desease
what about the anti ebola sickness
oooo an i scaring you
and lets be honest your going to get the shits anyway
it happens
eat local honey it cures most things in time
time being a sort of flexible thing it took me three years and 79 jars to cure my piles
oh and go see son of rambow funniest film for years
dave
oh dear
hills won
hills wants to obliterate another arab state
ol bob declares a victory
what a sad day for democracy and freedom of speach
can i let loose the Dee Rob of War
feel free girl
do the fucking lot of em
wave your majik wand
and free the dogs of war
just point it in hills way do we need that much radioactive oil
love n hugs
davve
gone to talk to swans and robins
far cooler than death and destruction