SubscribeI went today to knock out as much of my pre-deployment checklist as I could. My first stop was deployment health in the basement of the hospital. There they looked up my records to figure out what medical processing needed to be done before I left. With that list in hand I headed upstairs to see what I could get done today.
My first stop was the lab: I needed an HIV test and some kind of titer done. The tech was really nervous, his hands were shaking, he kept dropping things, and he rubbed my arm forever to make sure the vein was where he thought it was. He opened up an alcohol pad and was about to clean my arm with it when another tech told him it was the wrong kind. I don’t know what was on the first one… When he actually got down to sticking me he did fine, didn’t hurt any more than usual and he got the vein the first try. He forgot to put a gauze pad on the spot before he pulled out the needle thing so blood went running down my arm… I told him he was more nervous than I was, but that he did fine. He seemed a little relieved then.
Next I went to immunizations. I got a Hep b shot, a typhoid shot, and my first anthrax shot. The anthrax and typhoid went in my right arm since as the tech said, “The anthrax is going to hurt now and the typhoid is going to hurt later” and I still needed to get my smallpox vaccine on my left arm. The anthrax shot did hurt then, just felt like somebody was pinching the crap out of me. And the typhoid definitely hurts now, it feels like I got punched in the arm. A lot.
The smallpox vaccine I had to come back for at 1pm. It wasn’t bad at all, 15 sticks with a bifurcated needle. I have to try not to touch the area and keep it covered for the next 30 days, so it’s going to be a pain in the ass. I have to go back in a week to make sure it took.
The last thing I did today was take a hearing test. The airman put me in a little sound- and air conditioning-proof booth. I sat there with the headphones on and the button in my hand for about 5 minutes and the test never started… I was getting pretty warm so I took my top off. A couple minutes later and still no test, so I pushed the door open to get some air. The airman was there at the computer and I told her the test hadn’t started. She said it’s starting now and pushed the door back shut. It was funnier in person… I passed the hearing test and called it a day.
Now I have to go back in a week to get the smallpox checked, then go back the week after that to get my 2nd anthrax shot. Two weeks after that there’s another anthrax shot, then I think six months after that is the last one…
