Mr. and Mrs. Pin Cushion

Well, as I'm sure you are aware, when you travel overseas for an extended period of time you need a battery of immunizations to (hopefully) keep you from contracting some horrible disease. Cece and I require a round of SHOTS including hepatitis A and B immunization (three shot series), polio vaccination, typhoid immunization, tetanus booster, and a flu shot. We went to the Fulton County Health Department's Travel Clinic yesterday to begin the process (Cece actually got her flu shot last week at KC's health center...surprisingly incident free). The Health Department was definitely the place to go for the traveler on a budget. The series of shots will end up costing us well less than half what a private travel clinic would charge us, and you know how much we love a bargain (especially when it comes to having sharp objects jabbed into us).

After going over reams of paperwork supplied by the nurse as to what deadly viruses and bacteria we'd be snuggling up with on our journey we prepared ourselves for the "Invasion of the Giant Needles". As I was sitting closest to the nurse I became what we will refer to hereafter as Victim #1. The mean old hag (okay, she was actually quite pleasant and friendly...but she was weilding HUGE needles man!) came at my left arm with the hepatitis twinrix, the polio, and the flu shot. The last one, the darn flu shot, is the only one I really felt. And I felt it deep in the muscle (play along as if I actually had muscles in my arm). This attack on my person was actually met with ambivalence and manly bravery by me. My wife on the other hand...she was visibly shaken as she saw her husband, her loving partner for life stuck like a human pin cushion. I laughed as the blood fled her face and she winced as if someone was poking her in the ribs. I turned around in the chair and let Typhoid Mary complete her brutalization of my arms with the final two punctures.

Cece and I switched seats and my beautiful wife proceeded to explain her bionic arm to the nurse. Most of you know that Cece broke her arm in a snowboarding accident about five years ago (five years ago this week I think...eerie) and had a metal plate and nine screws imbedded along the upper half of her left arm. She is very sensitive along that arm, especially the scar, and the nurse decided to only give one of the shots in that arm and the remaining three in the right arm. I think Cece was already a little gunshy after watching my shots and her mind started working against her body immediately. She winced a little at the first shot and then made a face that showed me she wasn't enjoying this...at all.

[seriously, aren't camera phones awesome].

After the first poke, Cece took a couple of seconds before rolling up her other sleeve. During this little break, our prescient nurse slipped a smelling salt in my hand. I laughed thinking we wouldn't be needing this. Mary then proceeded to give Cece the ol' double jab on the second shot and moved quickly to stick her again. As needle #3 plunged into her shoulder, Cece tried to move. This is where things went into slow motion...for me anyway. Mary said, "now don't move away from me honey." Cece went to put her head down on the arm of the chair (or so I thought) and started to say something. I started to stand up (not really sure why I was standing, just thought it was the right thing to do) and Cece's head began to wobble on the arm of the chair and she started speaking in tongues. I came to a realization, "Holy cow, my wife just passed out." Mary grabbed the smelling salt out of my hand, broke it, and waved it in front of Cece's nose as I gently lifted my gorgeous wife by her shoulders. Her hair was all hanging in front of her face and she kept mumbling. All of sudden she was about 80% back into coherence and she said, "I just passed out didn't I?" (total elapsed pass out time - 3.6 seconds). Her second sentence let me know my practical, efficient little engineer was back in charge of her faculties - "Did she at least give me the last shot while I was passed out?"

Mary fetched her a "juicy juice" (a knock off, imitation Capri-Sun...come on, it was the county health department, what do you expect?) and waited until she was fully aware and had some blood back in her face before she administered the final immunization. At this point Cece was sweating profusely so I opened an exterior door to try and get some air into the room. Mary was nice enough to explain that Cece had suffered from a vaso-vegal (or vasal vegal) episode. Apparently it is a rapid drop in blood pressure which leads to a fainting spell. I definitely have to say that my unbelievably loving and sweet wife had a good attitude about the whole thing. She was able to laugh about it while we were still at the clinic and she even thought the picture was kind of funny.

Hopefully our next trip to visit Nurse Ratchett will be less exciting. We go back January 23rd for our second round of hepatitis shots.