Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: quixotic
  • Music: Miranda Lambert, "Little Red Wagon."

Something silly and sort of scary for a Sunday morning.

Tags: making lists, mira grant, pandemic time, silliness
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  • 37 comments

acelightning

November 9 2014, 21:29:40 UTC 2 years ago

I had the original smallpox vaccine, although it's been so long that I can't seem to find the scar. I got a few other shots when I was very small, but the only one I remember is DPT, and a few tetanus boosters. I got both kinds of polio vaccine - first an entire series of the injected form, then another entire series of the drop-of-syrup form, because they changed the age ranges when they changed the vaccine. I did not have the MMR vaccine, or the chicken pox vaccine, because they hadn't been invented yet; instead, I had actual measles and chicken pox (although I managed to escape the mumps). When my son was an infant, they gave me a dose of MMR vaccine at the same time he got his. I haven't had any of the other "basic" ones, because none of them had been invented yet when I was a child either. I've never had a flu shot, but now that Medicare pays for it, I might get one, along with the vaccines for pneumonia and shingles. I don't think I'll need any others; I've lived long enough to have been exposed to all sorts of random pathogens, without catching most of them. And I plan to continue to limit my foreign travels to places where it's safe to drink the water. (Did I mention that I'm terrified of needles?)

seanan_mcguire

November 9 2014, 23:12:12 UTC 2 years ago

Needles are scary, smallpox is scarier.

acelightning

November 10 2014, 09:49:53 UTC 2 years ago Edited:  November 10 2014, 09:52:55 UTC

I had the smallpox vaccination, when I was too young to know what was going on. I had a blister-shaped scar on my upper thigh, because that was how they administered the smallpox vaccine, not through a simple needle. Girls got the vaccination on their thigh so it wouldn't be visible when they wore ordinary clothes of the time. Boys got it on their upper arm because nobody cared if a boy had a scar on his arm.

Frankly, most of the ones I didn't get as a child aren't much of a risk for me now. I don't think I'm going to be exposed to any form of hepatitis, or HPV, or meningitis - at least I'll try my very hardest not to be.