I had an interesting experience the other day that gave me a new perspective on inoculation. Up until this point, I have always trusted our medical services. I monitor the information given out, and if I find it plausible, I follow the advice. If they give me a choice, I look into it more carefully and act according to what I find out.
But at the end of the story, I always get the shot, and I never worry about it.
So, it’s difficult for me to empathize with the worriers. It doesn’t bother me, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it to bother them. But it does, and that’s a fact of life we have to deal with.
On with my story. Linda and I are going on a holiday in a less advanced area of the world, where various diseases run rampant in the population. Before such a trip, we always visit our local travel medicine clinic for an appointment with one of the nurses who specializes in medical preparation for travellers to foreign countries. We take in our itinerary, and she looks up our records and gives us her opinion on what we need to do. Sometimes it’s inoculation, sometimes oral meds, sometimes supplements and probiotics, etc. It sounds simple, but when you’re visiting 9 tropical countries, it gets complicated.
Anyway, we finished the consultation and decided on what meds we needed, and she went out of the room to get them.
And while I was sitting there waiting, I wondered why I felt so comfortable. This lady had just been telling us about dengue fever (for which there is no cure), and yellow fever (for which, if you’re over 65, the danger from the vaccine outweighs your chances of getting the disease), and various other nasty things to worry about.
But I was feeling happy. And, being the cynical sort, that immediately made me suspicious. So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.
We had just had a face-to-face talk with a trusted professional specialist. She had explained everything clearly and given us choices and her opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of each. Based on her expertise and our own knowledge, we had made reasonable decisions. We had done the best we could, and if anything were to go wrong, we would have no reason to blame ourselves.
As we have all been reminded over the past two years, this is a dangerous life, and we need to take what precautions we can, with the assistance of professionals if we can access them. Once we’ve done that, we can move ahead, confident that we have done our best.
And that’s a real comfort.