Saturday, September 20, 2008

Ouch that hurt!

So reality is starting set in a bit. I guess we experienced our first pain as parents, we had to get our vaccine shots to travel to India. Ouch!! India travel requires immunizations for tetanus (recommended for everyone every 5-10 years anyways), Hepatitis A and B (recommended that you at least get A, and typhoid. We had ours done at the county health center the cost was about $115 each, since we have a PPO this was a cheaper option. It was actually quite an easy and efficient process, I was impressed with our county public health services as a first time user. Who says government provided health care can't work. (no more political statements for the rest of the post, I promise) In addition to the vaccines, you need to take malaria pills. It might be important for you to find out if your insurance covers this medication. Turns out that ours did not, which was a surprise because we have a great plan in many other respects. The retail cost of malaria pills is $20 per pill! We have to take 10 pills each for a 3-4 week trip to India. Luckily the pharmacist at CVS was able to provide me with a discount and we only paid $5.80 per pill. But a normal Co-Pay would have been $20-$40total, so check into your insurance coverage. The cycle is one pill the week before travel and a pill every week while on travel then, 4 more after returning home. Oh yeah, the side effects include auditory hallucinations and night mares. The pharmacist said with a plain face "If you suspect psychosis then you should probably see a doctor. But the alternative, which is contracting malaria, is much worse". We'll be sure to take our pills and hope for sweet dreams!

1 comment:

FarahlivefromKabul said...

I remember this part! The shots and insane amount of blood work were fun before I came to Kabul.