No one ever said getting vaccinated was easy... and of course, there are always speed bumps in the road! I went last week to get my vaccinations for Ghana and knew I was in for trouble when the first thing the travel nurse says to me is "uh oh... Ghana, we're going to need both arms." WHAT?! She said that Ghana and Kenya require the most vaccinations on the whole planet! Luckily, I'd already gotten a lot of the vaccinations for other trips but I still needed a Polio booster, Meningitis and Yellow Fever. She then informs me that they ran out of Yellow Fever yesterday and I will have to return in a few weeks... bummer! The good news though is that Kaiser understands preventative care and the other two vaccines were FREE (would have cost a few hundred at the travel clinic in Long Beach!). I got some anti-malarials (Larium) and came home to research them. Online there are reports of "may cause severe depression, psychotic thoughts, and homicide." Are you kidding me?!?! Can that really be better than malaria?!?! And I have to take them for 7 weeks eventhough I am only in Ghana for 10 days!! I am going to try to negotiate a different anti-malarial when I have to go back for the Yellow Fever... either that or try to keep your distance from me until September 20th!
I've never had a problem with vaccines before... but this time... YIKES! I developed a 101 fever, chills, headache, swollen joints, painful spine, pain where my head meets my spine, headache and a rash/hives all over my torso... good times,good times! I was sick for about a day and a half but I'm still assuming that my reaction to the vaccines were better than getting polio or meningitis so I am going to keep my complaining to a minimum! Can't wait to go back to get the Yellow fever and see what joys that vaccine brings with it!
On the up side, I just found out today some more info about the trip. We will be working in a community called Katakyiekrom which is in the Brong Ahafo region. Here is the website for the Habitat Ghana about this specific affiliate/region in Ghana.
http://www.habitatghana.org/affiliatemore.php?affiliateid=162 Interesting little fact... Nyame-Fie (the name of the region) means "house of God." It looks to be in the middle of the country near the border of Ivory Coast. It is in the middle of a Savannah area with few trees. We will be working on two or three houses during the time that we are there. We will be staying in a community center which says that it has electricity... I'm not holding my breath though! We will have "one barrel of water for showers." I'm not quite sure what that means but we'll see how it goes :)
That's about it for now... keep checking in :)
No comments:
Post a Comment