Routine Vaccinations

One has to ask oneself if childhood trauma really can cause major issues later in life while helping to administer vaccinations for school age children. If so, I am afraid I was unfortunately a willing participant in a necessary activity that will cost parents thousands of pesos in therapy later on in life.

Yesterday, Melissa (our Medical Assistant) and Mari (a nurse from Cielo) vaccinated the children in the public school of Villa Nazareth per the instructions of Public Health and with my assistance in preparing everything. I heard about the successful vaccination of 87 children from ages 5 to 8 and was happy to have checked one school off of the list.

Today, as we do not have regular clinic hours, I told Mari that I would assist her in vaccinating the Mission Emanuel school in Cielo by filling out the paperwork while she administered vaccinations. Well, I had no idea what I was getting myself into...

After preparing the cooler for the vaccines, collecting the paperwork and securing the box of syringes, alcohol and cotton balls we started out in "Maternal" which is like pre-school for 3 year olds. Thats when reality set in... Mari instructed the teachers to handle the paperwork and instead handed me a large syringe and showed me how to prepare 10 doses of the SRP (in Spanish) or MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine for the children. I who am deathly afraid of needles then had to fill syringes with the vaccine and hand them off very shakily to Mari who had the much more difficult job of sticking each child successfully in the arm as they squirmed about instead of in the eye as I was afraid would eventually happen. Fortunately, it did not and we finished out the day of vaccinations after an hour and a half of giving vaccines to children ranging from age 2 to 8.

My abrupt and disturbing introduction to vaccinations was actually a pretty neat experience and I look forward to learning how to actually give the vaccines to the children eventually. And hopefully when I do it won't cause them irreparable emotional damage.