Vaccines

Look at this brave little girl...

We are one more step towards being ready to travel to India.
This past week, Matt and I went to the Travel Medicine office at St. Alphonsus.  This lady was so nice and thorough.  I thought I wouldn't need any more vaccines besides getting some malaria medicine.  Boy was I wrong!
I needed four shots and Matt needed only two.
I got my adult polio booster.
I got the flu vaccine which was my first ever to receive.
I got the Tdap vaccine. That's tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis.  It came out in 2005 for adolescents and adults.
And the 4th shot I got was the 1st in a series of 3 for Hepatitis A & B.  Lucky me... I get to go back next Wednesday for the 2nd one and two weeks later, 2 days before we leave, for the 3rd one.
Yesterday we both started the oral typhoid vaccine.  We each take a pill every other day with a total of four pills.
And tomorrow I will be picking up our malaria medication which we have to start taking this week and every day through our visit and for a week after we return.
We decided against getting the 3 part rabies vaccine.  It would have cost us each $300 per dose.  That would have been $1800 and we are pretty sure that insurance wouldn't be covering that.  So, we leave it in God's hands that we don't get bit by a monkey, dog or bat while we are there!
We also decided against the 3 part Japanese Encephalitis vaccine because we don't have the correct amount of time before our departure to finish all three doses.  That is another disease, like malaria, that is transmitted by mosquitoes.  It's recommended for people traveling to Asia for more than a month.  So hopefully, since we aren't going to be there even half that time, we will be okay.

I could get freaked out over all of the diseases I could potentially be exposed to while in India.  But I choose not to freak out.  I don't want to be afraid.   If I was afraid then I'd miss out on so much that life has to offer.  And this girl isn't going to miss out.