26 Days Remaining

Well after long deliberation, yesterday I walked down to the travel clinic in Russell Square. As it turns out my jabs for Rabies, Typhoid, Tick Encephalitis and Hepatitis B amount to the grand old bill of £414.00 not a small amount to stomach when in perspective your car only cost £500!

As I entered the clinic (which anyone who's been there will know, it's conjoined with an STA travel) I am told to sit down and fill out a couple of forms. So I take a seat and start writing down my travel history and other interesting family illnesses in boxes that are always designed to be too small for anyone's comments. Then through the plasterboard wall behind me I hear what can only be described as a loud thump, the kind of dull but resonating thump that you associate with either someone hitting the floor in dead weight or something similar, then to follow up the thump is a bloodcurdling scream. However, it didn’t stop there this was then followed by screaming and pleading all mixed with in the cries of a young child. As the noise reaches its peak the 12 year old girl comes bolting out of the nurse’s office, quickly followed by her father who's obviously limping from multiple kicks to his legs. He then tries to calm her down, but she had the level of fear where no amount of reasoning could calm her down, she was in a total state of panic. As the father tries to drag her back into the chamber of horrors she digs her heels in and somehow manages to drag herself as well as him away from the nurse’s office, it's at this point that the nurse steps out and says she can't possibly give the jabs as the child was so panicked. This left the father in a situation where his child needs jabs to go around South America, but now the professional refuses to give them, this left one last option take the kid outside to calm her down, then like any good parent would do, you bride the hell out of them to go and get it done, needless to say 5 minutes later the deed was done and this time without screams and a look of surprise as the girl realises it doesn’t hurt at all, and her public display of distress has actually landed her with presents of some kind at the end of the line. Win win you could argue for the girl. I could only watch as the mayhem unfolded in from of my eyes, and even though I'm fine with needles and jabs, it probably wasn’t the best confidence builder just before you head in yourself.

The tiny nurse was happy to give me the jabs, but before she'd even gotten the needles out of the fridge she obviously thought that she probably wouldn’t survive should I faint onto her, so she gave me two sugar cubes and a glass of water, and we were hot to trot!

On that note my jabs went surprisingly easily, I was a brave boy, I didn’t scream or cry and 3 jabs later I'm walking out of the clinic a lot lighter on my wallet and all for what can only be physically seen as 3 little plasters on my arms. I've got to go back next weekend, as well as a couple of days before I set off on the rally for the second & third round of jabs.

So all in all the fun of repetitively getting stabbed in the arms is costing me a small fortune, my only conciliation is that I should be immune to all but a handful of diseases during my trip! So here's fingers crossed I don't have to put any of these jabs to the test!