Well – it is official! I have been certified “as fit as a flea” by my Doctor’s Practice! i didn’t know that was an official category, but that’s what the practice nurse said to me when I went for another vaccination, in readiness for Kilimanjaro. She remarked that I looked rather sun tanned, and I said that was because I was out walking much of the time. I told her I had walked from Seasalter (where our caravan is) to keep my appointment – probably about eight miles or so – and she was clearly quite gobsmacked by that. I suppose many of the people approaching seventy coming into the surgery are not striding in, in quite the same way!
I have now had injections for polio, diphtheria, typhoid, tetanus and hepatitis A, all free of charge on the National Health Service. I did say to the nurse that it seems to me that people needing jabs for exotic holidays should pay for them – it seems wrong that they are subsidised by the cash strapped state. So between us, she and I managed to come up with two more, which I would have to pay for, which seems to me only right.
She was very keen for me to have a series of hepatitis B injections. That is the one that is conveyed by bodily fluids, so at first I was quite indignant – there is no way I have any plans at all to be exchanging bodily fluids with anyone on Kilimanjaro! However, when she flagged up the possibility of someone cutting them self and other potential accidents, I could see the sense of that. So I have now had two hep B jags – it is a course of three. When I mentioned this to Jae, she remembered that she had had hepatitis as a child and wondered whether she was now immune to it. We had no idea what sort of hepatitis she had had – A,B or C – so I asked the nurse. I told her that there had been an outbreak of hepatitis at Jae’s primary school in the early 1980s. Children and parents were turning yellow and collapsing like flies and Jae was one of the unlucky ones. I remember her taking to her bed in a very weak condition, and I expended a lot of effort in persuading her to drink liquids. She couldn’t eat solids at all, save, if I remember right, for peeled grapes. It is the only time in my life I have peeled grapes. At some point we were told by the primary school that the outbreak had been spread by the use of the cardboard insides of toilet rolls in craft activities. Blue Peter has a lot to answer for. When I told this to the practice nurse, she was fairly certain that Jae must have had hepatitis A. She was clearly quite appalled to hear that there had been such an outbreak at all in a nice place like Canterbury. Unfortunately, having the illness once does not mean that you are immune, so Jae will still have to have the injections.
I was keen to have a yellow fever vaccination. At first the nurse was very against it, telling me of the increased risk to the over sixties and the possible side effects. I know that strictly speaking, the injection is not necessary for people travelling from Europe. However, I have read a lot on line about jobsworth officials at Tanzanian airports insisting on seeing yellow fever certificates – and if you can’t produce one, they insist on you going into a room in the airport and paying to have an injection there and then. There is no way I am going to risk some dodgy guy in an airport sticking a needle into me! Then when I heard that we will be changing planes in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, I was absolutely determined I was having the jab in advance. Yellow fever is endemic there, and although if you are there for under twelve hours, it is not strictly speaking needed for Tanzania, it seems to me to be common sense just to sort it before we go. I just hope that the nurse is right and I am as fit as a flea, and don’t get any of the possible complications she insisted on telling me about.
She says next time I go for another injection, we will talk about malaria. I am not too keen on taking malaria tablets, because I remember daughter Gwen phoning me from some exotic Asian location about twenty years ago telling me that her hair was falling out. She wondered if it was a possible side effect of the malaria tablets she was taking. I did the research, and yes, it was indeed possible. I seem to remember Gwen saying she just stopped taking the tablets, despite the risk, and her hair stopped falling out. Happily, she didn’t come back with malaria, though she did come back with giardia – for which there is no vaccination. Giardia is a parasite, which lives in your intestine, and Gwen even gave her parasite a name: he was called Jeremy. At first we thought the symptoms were just Gwen being Gwen! The main symptom is excessive gas. Gwen specialises in flatulence – see the blog of 25th February. However, she really did have the infection, and it took quite some time to clear, much to the detriment of the atmosphere in our home. I hope to retain both my hair and my dignity on this trip!
