Immunity time

In getting ready for my trip this weekend, I was asked to go by the medical office to get some routine overseas vaccinations. I don’t know if my skin has toughened as I get older or if the needles have gotten smaller, but I don’t even feel the prick any more. I had to get a Td and typhoid. Overall a much more pleasant experience than I remember as a child or during inoculation day in boot camp.

Every time I have to get a shot I think about the day in Basic that we got what came to be called the glue shot. It was so named because, I swear, this stuff was a thick as Elmer’s glue - like the stuff you used in elementary school on your construction paper piggies and popsicle stick Christmas trees. Once injected we had to sit on the floor with legs crossed, rocking back and forth for 30 minutes because it formed a little knot at the injection site and actually had to be worked into the surrounding tissue. I remember the little nurse that gave me my shot was about 5’3”, and had to inject this thing using both hands, one holding the syringe as you would a tennis racquet and the palm of her other hand to push the plunger. I could, no joke, feel her shaking as she struggled to empty that monster into my backside. While waiting in line the DI said that this shot would cure anything, then proceeded to name off about 10 illnesses that this thing would kick, of which half were obviously made up on the fly, and most of those I wouldn’t repeat on a website that might be read by my kids. I don’t know what was in that needle, but I didn’t get so much as a runny nose for 10 years.

So Anyway, after today’s shots, the nurse gave me a little travel first aid kit and a don’t drink the water speech and sent me on my way. Nothing left to do but pack.