Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
I’m off to Peru in a little over a week and along with all the other preparations I’ve been making I took a trip to the local Travel Clinic to make sure I had all of the shots and stuff I needed before traveling to that part of the world. Now if anyone reading this is like me (up until recently) you may have vague memories of getting vaccinated when you were in grade school and the memories bring up horrible images of getting stuck with a needle, but were you asked to produce a certificate documenting what shots you got when it would be quite the stretch to find it…
I know I’ve had shots in the past, but when I looked where I though that information should have been I simply couldn’t find it, so I decided to get the whole shooting match done again just to make sure that things were on the up and up.
Now, given all of the traveling I do working for Cruise Ship Gigs and other clients in foreign locations this is probably something I should have taken care of a LONG time ago, but have been pretty lucky I guess and haven’t picked up anything that’s really been all that bad… So why do it now? Well, I guess in part it’s because this trip to Peru isn’t work related. As a result I’m thinking about it in a totally different way and making lists and checking to make sure I’ve got everything all set the way it should be… It’s weird, but in a way I’m spending more time working towards this vacation than I normally do when I’m going on a job… A bit backwards, but sometimes you need to change the way you look at things to realized that for along time you’ve overlooked something (like these vaccinations) for far too long and it’s the kick in the pants you need to finally do something about it.
Long story short, I got to the clinic, got the shots, and figured that having a scan of this document on-line might be as useful to have as a scan of my passport, so I took care of that too. Some of the shots I got are good for a lifetime, some need a booster in 6 months which I will also go and get. If you’re traveling internationally making sure this sort of stuff is up-to-date is well worth effort as it may prevent you from getting sick while away from home which is always better than the alternatives.
