23 days away... punching holes

So, the great pleasure of travelling is off course all the chemicals you are kindly asked to shoot up, before getting on the plane. Myself, I'm not really that fond of getting my arms punched, but than what can you do... So in random order here's the cocktail I was served over the last weeks, and strange but true, still in one piece (maybe the effect only comes later .... )

• Tetanus
• Difteria
• Polio
• Tyfus
  
• Yellow fever
• Hepatitis A
• Hepatitis B
• Meningokokken
• and a truckload of Malarone (Lariam is way cheaper and you get a free psychedelic trip to Nirvana after three weeks

So, how did I do ? Poorly...
Needlefobia kicked in when I entered the Travel clinic, and I was preparing for the worst. That being said, the warm welcome by the doctor (after 2 hours waiting between payment, filling out papers and watching the hospital trailer in 4 languages for 7 times) felt reassuring... A lady with a vast experience on international travel, and with the sharpness of a razorblade, nicely pointed out that I shouldn't worry about rabies, ebola, and other sorta lethal experiences one can enjoy going there. Malaria of course, but then the only danger is the 24hour contamination to death - morphed stream that is to be found in Nigeria...

So, with renewed courage i continued my journey through the clinic, long corridors and white coates, medication sales men flying in and out, selling the new goodies the industry has in store. Almost at destination, the nurse with the pointy weapons, there is an photo-exhibition ... Somehow, everything seems to come together, in the eyes of children... I sit down and wait for another 30 minutes, and finally the moment is there...

Now, in the last run of injections, the doctor used these tiny little needles, which you hardly saw coming, and which passed by unnoticed. Great was my joy to see that the clinic used the same ones for the first round of shots. But then...
The nurse said: so now we are doing the yellow fever one, and she unfold a needle I would think that would be used to take down an elephant... She looks at me... with what seems to be a motherly smile, and says the famous words: "It'll be over before you know it... You are not going to faint are you ?" Now you have to know that with a low blood pressure it doesn't take all that excitement to doze off for a couple of minutes... So I decide to lay down on the queensize bed (hmm) with accompanying pillow and prepare myself for the worst... 2 seconds later its done, what a joke... its an injection that is inserted under the surface of the skin, as if you never knew it happened... Feeling pretty silly...

Fully chemicalized and with a sense of pride of not fainting I leave the clinic as a real man, a man that can take on the world...and all of its parasites and virusses...
What doesn't kill you make you stronger...