On the Vaccine Super Highway to Immunity....

Well, today was the first round of vaccinations... my oh my what a list of things I needed. Apparently, an MMR booster is now recommended which I'll need to go back for but I did manage to walked out with about half of what I'll need for my trip:

• Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis
  
• Hep A & B
• Influenza (yes I finally broke down and got one and will need another one in May)

I still need to finish the Hepatitis series, Typhoid, Meningococcal, Yellow Fever, maybe Polio, and as I mentioned earlier; an MMR booster. The four shots I got today took 2 hours. Here at UCSB it's almost like a counseling session. I walked out of there with about 50 pages of information and feel like Bob the travel vaccine guy should be a family member at this point.

I have to go back for another information session before getting the malaria prophylaxis prescription, altitude sickness medication, and Cipro to treat any potential bacterial infections. Most of this falls in the "better-safe-than-sorry" category but I have to admit that the process is a bit intimidating.

At least I didn't have to deal with the military style inoculation guns - something I thought I had blocked out of my childhood memories...

With the exception of a little soreness in both arms, I'm all good. The actual injections were low on the pain threshold for me at least. Since the hepatitis vaccine is a combination of both A & B, it did hurt a little bit more than the others solely because the volume of medication was twice that of the others. In any case, I survived!