Consider me fully vaccinated

Hey, between heading up to bed at 8:30 on Friday night and the 10 (yes, count 'em, ten) vaccines I've had in the last 2.5 years, there's not that much difference between me and a baby!

I got a meningitis booster on Friday -- which added to the MMR, tetanus, H1N1, 3 influenza, and 3 rabies vaccines I've had since starting vet school in August 2008.

Some people get all upset about various vaccination guidelines for dogs and cats. The standard used to be, basically, every dog (and every cat that actually went to the vet, which wasn't that many) got all of its vaccines every year. For dogs that would be a distemper-parvo combo, rabies, and maybe something like lepto or bordetella or corona.

Well, nowadays people have done more research and proved that in adult animals, most of those vaccines create solid immunity for at least 3 years -- so current recommendations are generally to vaccinate adult dogs for distemper-parvo every 3 years, and rabies as far apart as legal guidelines will allow (ranges from requiring annual vaccination to every 3 years).

However, even still some pet owners (and some vets) are hugely reluctant to vaccinate their adult animals (or even their puppies and kittens) that much.

To be fair, when selecting a vaccine protocol for an individual animal, you need to take in risk assessment. Maybe that dog that goes to the groomer every month, plays at the dog park every weekend, and hangs out at doggie day care 3 afternoons a week is more at risk for getting contagious diseases like distemper or parvo. Versus "mommy's little lap dog" who is white and fluffy and whose feet never touch the ground, much less actually leave the backyard.

And there are some serious risks to vaccination, don't get me wrong. A prime example would be vaccine-associated fibrosarcoma in cats -- wherein a cat can develop a huge, nasty, aggressive, malignant soft tissue tumor at the site of injection, which has often spread to the body wall by the time the tumor is diagnosed, and then bye bye kitteh.

Now, if you're the owner of the one cat in however many thousand that actually develops FSA after a vaccine, then I don't blame you for being super head-shy about vaccinating other or future animals you have. Or if your pet has anaphylactic reactions to vaccines.

However, for most of those run-of-the-mill cases where people don't have a great reason for not vaccinating (and I've heard some "great" reasons such as "Well, vaccines cause autism in children, so I don't want to hurt Sparky's brain"), I'm all for the vaccines.

And now I can point out my personal experience with getting more vaccines in a 2.5-year timeframe than I would ever intend to give to an adult dog or cat. And look at me, I'm doing fine! (Well, you could argue that point, but please don't.)

Anyhow, I got my meningitis vaccine at a huge vaccine clinic held on my university's campus. There have been 7 cases of meningitis in the county this year, with the most recent case killing an undergrad student who worked evenings and weekends as a receptionist at the VTH. Hence, there was an enormous push by the administration to get as many students vaccinated (or boostered) as possible.

I knew it was going to be a big affair, but I was mildly alarmed when, as I was driving to school on Friday morning, they said on the radio that over 4000 students had pre-registered for the vaccine clinic in the preceding 48 hours. Yikes. And who knows how many people showed up as walk-ins.

So I felt glad I'd planned ahead and brought a book to pass the time until I got my vaccine. After all, even when I'm the only patient in the immunization department at student health, it can sometimes take 10-15 minutes to get a flu shot.

However, I was totally amazed upon arriving at the student rec center about 5 minutes before my 3:10 appointment. There were signs up for blocks around the center, directing foot traffic to the appropriate entrance. Volunteers wearing astonishingly neon yellow vests directed us as we entered the rec center, and herded us into the appropriate lines. I had to wait for about 5 minutes to print out my registration ticket (I didn't have access to a printer when I registered on Wednesday), but after that it was just a short walk down a hallway to a huge gym, which was Vaccine Central.

There were about 10 "screening stations" set up on tables along one wall. As you walked into the gym, you took your registration ticket to whichever screener was open. They asked the requisite questions ("Are you feeling well?" "Have you eaten today?"), then took your ticket and gave you a vaccine form to take to the next station.

Station #2 was the actual vaccinations. There were about 10 groups of tables set up on the other side of the gym. Each group of tables seated 4 nurses, each of whom was administering vaccines, and a fifth person who was helping draw up vaccines and complete paperwork. Yes, that's 40-some nurses doing vaccines at once.

I was pointed almost immediately to an open nurse's station, got stabbed in the arm, and shuffled with the other vaccinated students over to a food-and-water station aimed as prophylaxis to avoid fainting.

It was literally no more than 12 or 13 minutes between the time that I entered the rec center and when I was walking out the door on the other side. I was completely floored by the efficiency and organization of this undertaking, and said so to several of the volunteers -- they must have been having a long day, because they perked up right away and said "Thank you for sharing that! We really appreciate it!"

This wasn't really a vet med story, but in a way it was: with all the bureaucracy, rules, guidelines, and procedures you encounter every day in a great big organization or business (such as a university), it's always refreshing to see that they can sometimes get things right (even if it doesn't really happen in the vet school per se...).

P.S. The vaccinations were FREE! My last vaccine was as a freshman or sophomore undergrad, and it cost $90-something. Heck yes, I'll take a free booster!