Recently I was asked what I 'did' to keep occupied during the wait for our first daughter. Well one of the things was my husband and I had an 'injection of the month' club (we were the only members).
It sounds a bizarre thing to do but we really wanted to know that we were going to be in tip top condition before and after we met our daughter. The last thing we wanted was a vaccine preventable illness - and so called 'childhood illnesses' are no fun in adults and can in some circumstances be quite serious.
Having known several parents who returned home with a nasty cough and feeling dreadful, only to be diagnosed later with whooping cough, which they had caught from their child, and also hearing about children being handed over on 'family day' with active chickenpox, we weren't taking any chances.
Even if you were vaccinated during childhood the immunity does not last a life-time - you often need a 'booster' in adulthood. A few years ago the Australian Government provided free whooping cough boosters for young adults because of this (unfortunately we were a touch too old for these).
Anyway we sat down with our doctor and mapped out what injections we thought we needed and when they needed to be given. Some require a single shot, others a series of shots so you have to plan ahead. So we made a plan for a visit every month to get these done - hence the 'injection of the month' club, as we called it.
If you are considering doing the same, please speak to your doctor but this is what we had:
Hepatitis B and A (combined vaccine - offers long term immunity to HepB and 5 years for HepA) - series of shots over a number of month
Whooping Cough (comes in a combined vaccine called Booterix with tetanus and diphtheria) - single shot
Measles/Mumps/Rubella
Chicken Pox
Polio (high incidence in China still)
Influenza shots
Then after we received our referral we went to a specialist 'travel doctor' and gots shots and medication for 'conditions' that were common in the area we were travelling (I think we had cholera and typhoid injections and medication for malaria - cause we were going outside the city) .
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Great idea! It sounds awful (because I really do detest needles) but it truely makes sense. My hubby and I are headed to Ethiopia (only God knows when!) so we have a lot of shots to get.
Post a Comment