Time for some shots ⁵

by Katrina • Daily Life, Travel • Tags: Ailments, Health, Minnesota, Travel

No, not those kinds of shots.

These kind of shots.

Photo by .v1ctor.

I’m travelling to Ecuador at the beginning of May, which meant the time had come to get immunized.

After doing some research, I learned that Small Town doesn’t offer the Yellow Fever vaccine, which is required by the CDC for entry into the nation of Ecuador. Further digging revealed I would need to travel over an hour and a half to an even smaller town where Yellow Fever was on the menu of available shots.

Again, not those kind of shots.

This afternoon, I embarked on my pilgrimage to a little travel clinic near the North Dakota border. The highlight of this drive was entering into Otter Tail County and being greeted by a field full of buffalo that just happened to be for sale.

Is it weird that I wanted to buy one? Because I really wanted to buy one.

So I could dye it pink, of course.

Yup. This is where I live now.

I arrived at the clinic promptly at 3:15, only to wait thirty minutes while they kept calling for some no-show girl named Taylor.  I mean come on people…she missed her chance and now it’s my turn. Chop! Chop!

Eventually, I remembered that Taylor just so happens to be my last name.

Yes, I am that girl.

The nurse brought me back to her office where she proceeded to Google what shots I would need while calmly stating “The girl who usually does this is gone and nobody around here knows how to do her job. Hahaha!”

The old me would have smiled, released a fake giggle and muttered something along the lines of, “Oh, don’t worry…I’m sure you’ll figure it out!”.

The new, crabby me remained stone faced while hoping I wasn’t mistakenly injected with botulism or something.

No.

Wait.

Isn’t Botox made of botulism? I officially retract my last statement. Feel free to accidentally inject away. Liberally. And yes, I would like to request the vaccines be injected around my crow’s-feet, thank you very much.

The nurse eventually figured my shots out, and I was sent to meet with Dr. Wennerstrom.

Yes, he shares a last name with the villain from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I’ve previously mentioned how this made me instantly distrust him.

And then he walked in, practically oozing with pure, unadulterated Norwegian-ness.

It was beautiful.

He made me like him even more by honestly revealing the following information:  ”You don’t need a rabies shot. It’s ridiculous. If you get bit by a dog in South America you can come back and I’ll give you one then. Don’t waste your money.”

I reluctantly took his advice. (Although if anyone would be foolish enough to forgo a rabies vaccine and then be bit by a rabid South American canine, it most certainly would be me.)

Half an hour later, I received shots for Hepatitis A  and Yellow Fever, as well as prescriptions for Malaria pills, an oral Typhoid vaccine, and emergency diarrhea medicine.

I’d heard horror stories about how painful the Yellow Fever shot can be, but I personally didn’t feel a thing. Sure, under normal circumstances it probably would have been quite uncomfortable, but today I was kind of distracted.

Distracted by the sharp, shooting pain that has dominated my mouth for the past two days.

Curse you, Crest White Strips.

You see, before I travel to South America, we’ll be vacationing with friends in Puerto Vallarta.

Sure, I may not be able to drop sixteen pounds in time for the beach, but I’ll be darned if I’m not going to have the whitest teeth in all of Mexico.

The fact that my mouth is more sensitive than a Lifetime Original Movie is a small price to pay for such a title.

I promise, this will all come full circle.

When I picked up my oral vaccines from the Walgreen’s pharmacy tonight, I arrived at a sobering realization: the cost of all four vaccines, and the anti-diarrhea meds combined cost lest than one packet of Crest 3D Whitestrips.

Wow.

I’m not quite sure what it all means, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that I’m cray cray.

But just this once, can you let me blame it on the vaccines?

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