Marie called last night to catch up and see if my pencils are sharpened and my Trapper Keeper is shiny. I reported positively on the one school event I have yet attended (orientation), and then we covered the Health Report. Marie, for reasons unknown (and surprisingly not traceable to her husband or two children – I kid, people, I kid) has a mysterious pain in her… bottom.
Me? On top of unwisely playing soccer last night and feeling a dreaded "pop" and then pain in my calf (if I were a racehorse, I would have been shot long ago) I visited the doctor last week. The University of Maryland has deemed that any potential disease vectors – um, students – need to produce their childhood vaccination records. Since I am well beyond my teen years and the doctor who kept his hand loosely on the tiller of my youthful health retired about a decade ago, neither my mother nor I had any notion as to whether or not these documents even exist any more. I was instructed by the Health Center at UMD to visit my doc.
I like my doctor. Dr. Y is very no-nonsense with a droll sense of humor: my kind of medical professional. She is vaguely tut-tuttish that I don’t have the documents necessary, but tells me that there is no problem – I just need an MMR vaccine booster, then she’s free to sign the paperwork. And since we’re at it, when was the last time you had a painful tetanus booster, anyway? Um.
Then she squints at my electronic chart and notes that I’m going to be 40 next year and it’s been a while since I’ve had a blood panel done. Tippity-tap, she orders that up on her computer screen like a waiter at a chain restaurant.
Result: I get an MMR booster and a cholestorol check. Will someone tell me whether I’m entering kindergarten or early middle age, please?
LOL You’ll probably find you’re not the only older person back in college! And just in case your cholesterol is high, when mine was just barely above normal with the statin, my primary told me to take fish oil capsules and my lipid panels have been really great since.
Oooh, did iddums get a lollipop?
Iddums prefers a stiff drink and a sticker that reads, “I was a big girl.”
*laughs*
Well, that’s better than things were at the student health office when I was in grad school. You’d go in for something like a scratch on your leg or a flu and they’d ask when your last period was and if you were on the pill!
Your post reminds me that I really ought to get around to tracking down a new doctor and getting my old records forwarded to her. It’s been awhile.
Ranas last blog post..City Trail – 8/28/08
If it makes you feel any better those old vaccination records probably wouldn’t have done you any good anyway. You’re close to the age group (mine) for which the mumps vaccine (the second M in MMR) didn’t exist yet and sometime in the 60s we were treated to ineffective rubella vaccines.
I’m speaking as someone who just had to get a tons of vaccines over the course of 2007 for a hospital internship. The good news about the tetanus shot is that you can now get one that includes a vaccine against pertussis (whooping cough) it’s called the TDAP (tetanus, diptheria and pertussis).
A college environment is a great place to pick up viruses, probably even better than a hospital. I know there are people out there who are anti-vaccine, but I’d no sooner go to work unvaccinated than I’d go without my pants.