It’s not all fun and games when you travel…
Honestly, the things we do to travel sometimes! My husband and I spent an hour of our Saturday morning sitting on a plastic chair surrounded by snotty nosed kids and coughing seniors. Ahh, the glamour of international travel! Why were we here? Egypt in 5 weeks, that’s why.
On the edge of sanity after listening to a one sided conversation from a teacher with a broken toe aimed in the direction of an overworked receptionist about the trials and tribulations of having a child, and god forbid going back to work after 2 years off, it was finally our turn. Going into the doctor’s office I was thinking 2, maybe 3 injections, after all I have been traveling since I was 19 and had several vaccinations along the way. My husband has never had a vaccination in his life (gotta love the Irish health care system?!), so with some smugness I had been teasing him all week that he would be getting MANY injections.
Checking my medical records, the doctor informed me that yes, I had previouly had a couple of the vaccinations I would need for Egypt, so I began to relax. Hmm, it might just 2 shots after all. That is until he finished the sentence “…but they have expired and you will need a few boosters.” Dammit!
In the end I needed 5 shots, and he needed 4! Yes that’s right, he who has never been immunised needed less than me. How does that work I hear you ask? Well apparently these days Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B vaccinations are combined into one, whereas when I originally got mine, they were still separate and the boosters still need to be separate.
Getting over the shock of this news, I resigned myself to a second visit next weekend - surely you don’t get 5 vaccinations in one day? For the second time in a day I was horribly wrong. How silly of me, I have 2 arms right, so let’s just get 3 in one arm, 2 in the other, oh it just kept getting better and better! I now have a new resolve to visit all the exotic destinations on my wishlist covered with this set of immunisations in the next 10 years before these ones expire.
By lunch time our bodies were swarming with microscopic quantities of 5 nasty diseases, our arms hurt like hell and we were $430 poorer. Egypt - you better be worth it!
If you are traveling overseas, don’t forget to check for health advise and recommended travel vaccinations before you go - a preventable disease is not the kind of souvenir you want to bring home from your trip!
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August 10th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
A week later and my arms have finally stopped hurting and I’m immune to 5 nasty diseases - it’s all worth it in the end.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
At least the $430 was all you had to spend. If you had gotten sick overseas, god only knows how quickly your medical bills can soar. I’m a Canadian, I tend to forget that healthcare isn’t provided by the government….lol…
Along with relevants shots, it’s SO important to get travel insurance. One accident/illness can quickly put anyone in the poorhouse. Through my own research, I’ve found http://www.healthquotes.ca to be helpful and quite inexpensive.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
It was worth the pain and money, the trip to Egypt has now been and gone and not a sign of illness!
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:47 am
[...] Temple fatigue - it happens in Egypt, it happens in Asia and it happens in Europe, only there it’s called church fatigue. Basically, there are only so many ancient/old sites you can see before they all look the same. On my recent trip to Egypt this phenomenon threatened to take over the vacation with no end in site. With an ancient civilization of over 4,000 years, you are bound to run into a little temple fatigue along the way. You know it’s struck when you are looking at an incredible piece of artwork carved thousands of years ago and all you can think is “yeah, seen it before at so and so temple!”. Traveling in Egypt, this is as big a risk as contracting hepatitis and tetanus! [...]