Shots and Life

I finally got up my nerve and went to Walgreens this morning for a flu shot.  What spurred me on was a commercial I saw on the telly over the weekend: If you get your flu injection at Walgreens, they donate a vaccination, through the United Nations, for a child in an underdeveloped country to get immunized against diseases, like measles and polio.  It's called Shot@Life and it gave me the incentive I needed to stop being a big baby, go get my shot, and help out a kid.

I ended up getting the mega-dose flu shot, which covers more germs, bugs and/or insidious little nano bots, and then I thought if I was going to pass out anyway, I might as well get the pneumonia vaccine, too.  Why not, right?  You only need to get this shot twice in your life--once if you're over 65--and it's amazingly effective against a multitude of sins.

In retrospect, it's a good thing I didn't realize it was going to hurt like hell, or I'm pretty sure I would have passed on the fun.  I got complacent, of course, because last year (my first flu shot ever) the shot was a mere pin prick, so like a dope, I figured two little pin pricks and I'm good to go.

Can I just say, that was stupid reasoning?  The bloody shot burned like molten lava into my left arm, and even now, three hours later, I feel like I've been injected with plutonium.  And I have a weird taste in the back of my throat that I didn't have with last year's flu shot.  I can only conclude this is what plutonium tastes like: gnarly and bitter and chemical.  Fortunately, my right arm is fine--same as before it was just a momentary pinch, even with the quadruple dose. 

So, regardless of being a wuss, when all is said and done, I got my shots, I didn't swoon, and my contribution to a vaccination program just might give a child somewhere in the world a better start in life.  That's surely worth my fleeting discomfort...