Your Money For Your Life

VACCINATIONS, THE WEB, AND THE PRICE TO PAY FOR STAYING ALIVE

I am by nature a cautious human and I do tend to worry about my health. As a result and as a rule, I generally go as far as possible to avoid getting stabbed.

This is by no means a hard and fast rule you understand, but I've been living by it for 20 years and everything seems to be going just fine so far. Yet, despite the years of healthy life, and although I continue to suffer no ill effects from my reckless avoidance of pointy things and sharp whatsits, last Tuesday I somehow found myself being repeatedly knifed in the arm by someone I'm paying £300 for the privilege. The appointment was the first of three. All to preserve my health. The mind boggles.

Now I'm not one to criticize the NHS, they do a wonderful job despite an increasing lack of money, equipment, staff and general knowledge, but a £300 vaccination bill does start one wondering what's so very wrong with the likes of Venice and Madrid that requires me to go all the way to India to get my kicks. Why on earth should I fly half way around the world just to get eaten when I know for a fact that there are very few, if any, rabid zombie-dogs in Venice. I could spend that £300 on an ice-cream in the Piazza San Marco. Very nice.

But unfortunately no. For better or worse I'm afraid a very large part of me is very intent on going to India for my travels. But whatever part of travelling it is that I enjoy, it's clearly not the flurry of appointments and official looking paperwork that clouds life for the months before I leave. And yet, inevitably, I will spend more time thinking about this sort of stuff than I strictly should, because, in the back of my mind, I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be the one to catch that rare strain of encephalitis and die before I get out of the airport. That is, in fact, a concern I voiced to the nurse at the appointment. But she just informed me gently that such a thing is, strictly speaking, impossible and waved the whole issue away. Just like that. And then she started stabbing me again.

So maybe I am a little over cautious, but if there is one thing that most definitely doesn't help, it's the travel websites. I wish I hadn't looked at them. Honestly. All I read now is post after post detailing a number of spectacular and varied ways in which my life can be ripped clean away from my body. And I can't stop! It's like a disease all of it's own, a sort of morbid fascination with everything that could ever possibly go wrong with my body. Brain swellings, madness, boils, sores, peeling skin, lung damage. The list goes on and on. Where are the posts from people who went on holiday and survived? There don't appear to be any! No. Instead there is a capitalized post entitled "HELP - I'VE BEEN LICKED BY A BAT - DO I HAVE RABIES?" followed by three comments saying "quick get to a hospital!" and then no new posts since 2008. Brilliant.

On top of that the websites don't seem to be able to offer any advice that might actually be useful. Take for example something that you might expect to be fairly obvious; prices. Well you can search all day and not even find an approximation. It's like trying to find, and I apologise in advance, a needle in a haystack. It's as if the NHS is to embarrassed to admit that it's charging people. The website will freely admit that some vaccinations aren't free, but the actual cost, it seems, is only divulged on a need to know basis. After a while it can really start to get under you skin.

So what to do? Well obviously the answer is that I should get every single vaccination known to man, take five anti-malarials at a time, live in a space suit and don't drink any food or water. But as it turns out I don't have the money for any more than two vaccinations, don't have the stomach to take any more than one antimalarial at a time, and don't have a spacesuit. Damn. So instead I've had to settle for vaccinating myself against the two diseases that scare me most. No idea if I picked the right ones, but I suppose I'll find out soon enough. The cruel irony is of course that the £150 Rabies vaccine isn't even a vaccine at all really. No 100%, iron clad, insurmountable, unbreakable, super certain protection. Just a week longer to get to a hospital after I get bitten, which, having read all the relevant websites, it appears is a near certainty. I'm beginning to think I'm lucky enough not to have caught it already.

But there we go, too late to be worrying about it now. I've already had the first batch of injections so I can't change my mind. My arm is sore, my wallet is light, and I still have the prospect of several stabbings to come. But at least now I have a thin veil of protection to appease my worrying mind. Except that that's exactly the problem with being stabbed by the NHS, there is always something else to worry about. It's now Thursday, and although I have nothing to complain about besides a couple of puncture wounds, I'm still sitting at home wondering which side effect is going to hit me first. Most likely nothing. So the nurse said. But in the back of my mind I know I'm going to be the one to get that rare complication that results in liver and kidney failure. And I know how badly that can turn out. I've read a website about it.