My visit to get my Immunizations!

When they stuck the foot long needle into my spine I lost feeling in the lower half of my body... The pains we'll go through for our dreams... Actually no, I'm kidding. Walking up to Thagard, the Florida State University clinic, I felt like I was opening up a brightly colored door label Africa-or-bust and walking through. Somehow the promise of getting shot with small doses of diseases, so that on my great pilgrimage home to the land of my ancestors I don't keel over dead, made Africa all the more real. I walked through the hot sun, into the cool clinic, into the elevator, announced my arrival and into the waiting room filled with nurses and needles. "Yes this makes it official I thought."


I was sitting, waiting and truly cool, but something strange was brewing. Nurses were moving about the room coming in and out making remarks like "oh wow, you're getting a lot of shots," "five shots, wow," "well I have given 6 shots before but not often..." But I'm still cool you know? I'm thinking well they may hurt but hey, I'm a metalworker. Flying sparks and burning metal regularly singe my skin, I breathe iron and make knives. I'll be okay. "Well, this arm is going to be sore," "sore," "this arm is going to be sore," "well the tetanus shot will be the worse". Then nurse looks at me sincerely and says something like "well I guess you need Aaall of these, so... well hopefully it wont hurt too much."

I dunno, maybe it's just me but there seemed to be a theme emerging. I figured maybe I'd chant my mantra. For those of you who don't know mantras are magic words learned in yoga class that make everything better. Sort of, kinda... well y'know... Anyways so I'm hoping on this mantra. The nurse pulls out an oil drill disguising itself as a needle that's just been filled with some disease I'm hoping not to get and well... I think I stopped breathing. Imagine your at the starting blocks in a race and the gun goes off. Well something in you changes, most likely your heart is electrocuted and your limbs start failing trying to get you down the track. Well for a millisecond that was me on the inside. Panic. But remarkably I felt nothing. Magic nurse right? Wow, I'm thinking she's good. I'm good to tho because besides that millisecond of horror y'know I'm chillin'. My outer facade is a peaceful lake and a cool breeze. Plus the chanting has me feeling pretty good (I'm chanting inside my head of course).


She sticks the Grandfather of all mosquitos in my arm a few more times and I'm good, just maybe one twinge of ow-there-is-sharp-metal-stabbing-into-my-muscle. Then she says okay here's the Typhoid. Now again... I don't know about you, but doesn't Typhoid sound a lot like death. Bubonic plague? Then she sticks it in my arm... I also forgot to mention early on the nurses mentioning all the possible side-effect of these shots and how I had to stay there for 30 minutes so they could watch and see, I guess, if I actually caught the disease or something. So I'm just thinking about what if I catch TYPHOID... It may not be bad but it sound like it. Then the nurse says and here's the Hepatitis. So I'm thinking no. In retrospect I look back and I see myself running screaming down the hall, though I didn't. Hepatitis... can't we call it the pretty Green shot? Geez. I think the last shot was leprosy mixed with a little uranium. Actually I don't remember, but well... that was slightly disturbing. The nurses would say I'm exaggerating all this because I was truly sitting there looking half asleep (chanting), but some words are bad words that shouldn't be said.


All in all it was a funny trip, really a breeze, so much in fact I thought I wouldn't feel anything much afterwords. Unfortunately I did. I didn't get sick, it just felt like someone had taken a hammer to the area I received my tetanus shot in. For a day it was hard to use my arms and I looked a bit pitiful the next day, because as most people know about me I'm usually trying to do things the hard way engines at 150%. I'm never bored I will tell you. At any rate I am now certified to gain entrance into African countries and not drop dead upon arrival, at least from Typhoid, Tetanus, Hepatitis, Yellow Fever, and Uranium. Next stop entrance visas! Airline tickets and Afffffrrika! You have to stretch the f to make it dramatic!