Week 4. IM = intramuscular
So many things are skin deep. Beauty, blemishes, piercings, skin itself. An intradermal injection done correctly: bleb on half a hot dog, tiny yellow bubble on the hefty cake of human flesh or adorable meat cupcake. If you were vaccinated for TB as a child, no more skin tests for life. (It's radiation from chest x-rays for you every two years instead.)
Almost always, the vaccination is worth the risk. Protect your child, protect the immunocompromised, achieve herd immunity.
But we can't vaccinate for everything--not the unexpected, the accidental. Sometimes an old ampule explodes in one's hands, all glass shards and beads of blood, a symbol of something specific in one's life shattering into a hundred pieces, embedding tiny crystals in the skin, the clenched towel insufficient to stop the bleed. Sometimes the hurt is too deep, subcutaneous, intramuscular, all the way to the heart. (The heart's mostly muscle, too.)
But it's no use worrying every time an ambulance sirens by.
Life must go on, sometimes in the form of a single Budweiser on plastic hospital tray, doctor's orders. Not everything is best cold turkey, getting on the wagon and falling off again's hazardous. Sometimes easing in or creeping off in dignified (or undignified) manner proves a far safer approach.
Almost always, the vaccination is worth the risk. Protect your child, protect the immunocompromised, achieve herd immunity.
But we can't vaccinate for everything--not the unexpected, the accidental. Sometimes an old ampule explodes in one's hands, all glass shards and beads of blood, a symbol of something specific in one's life shattering into a hundred pieces, embedding tiny crystals in the skin, the clenched towel insufficient to stop the bleed. Sometimes the hurt is too deep, subcutaneous, intramuscular, all the way to the heart. (The heart's mostly muscle, too.)
But it's no use worrying every time an ambulance sirens by.
Life must go on, sometimes in the form of a single Budweiser on plastic hospital tray, doctor's orders. Not everything is best cold turkey, getting on the wagon and falling off again's hazardous. Sometimes easing in or creeping off in dignified (or undignified) manner proves a far safer approach.
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