Some people just never seem to think about the proper time to take a live vaccine. It didn’t matter that my cousin’s wedding was this Saturday, and the LIVE vaccine that I started taking the night before my flight to North Carolina must be refrigerated at a comfortable 46˚ the ENTIRE time it is being administered…. Not to mention that I need to take 4 pills, every other day at the same time, without consuming alcohol, drinking lots of water, before washing behind my ears, in between tapping my feet, and 2 hours after I eat…. After realizing this minor error and seeing the rigorous schedule and storage procedures I thought it would be best to take the pills when I got back the following Monday… Well, after a couple of google searches, I’ve come to the conclusion that India happens to be the Typhoid capital of the world. Had I chosen not to start the vaccine before the wedding, the week of my arrival might have been far more exciting than I had imagined…

Prior to making my final decision of popping the first pill, I consulted the Oracle (Cyndi, our Travel Nurse). I decided to take the little ‘typhoid that could’ pill, and carry the rest onto the plane. I mean, something about dying from typhoid within a week’s arrival in India didn’t fit in well with the itinerary. Luckily, she’d had other patients in a similar situation, so I was able to relax a bit. After all, I figured taking the vaccine on the plane ‘shouldn’t be an issue’ so I went along my merry way not thinking anything more of it. At about 2am the night before the departure, it struck me: “Can a live vaccine go through an x-ray machine!?” Oh boy, the one question I didn’t bother to ask. I commenced panicking and forfeited sleep for google searches like “travel with typhoid”, “typhoid through xray”, and my classic “can typhoid vaccine be taken on a plane by someone that didn’t think to start a week prior to departure”….

It wasn’t until 3am that I had the ‘craziest’ (read: “good”) idea of calling a 24 hour pharmacy and asking a rather bored pharmacist for help. I must have called 5 places before I got an actual pharmacy that was open at 3 in the morning (Note, if you ever happen to be in a similar situation, using a google search of ’24 hour pharmacy Phoenix’ isn’t the most accurate).  Of course, talking to the pharmaacist was reassuring. He gave me the manufacturer’s phone number to call (which I promptly did at 5 in the morning). After speaking with a chemist/manufactuer, I was set. The vaccine was okay to go through the x-ray. Now I just need to worry about how to keep it cold…