Malaria

The girls and I did some marvelous planning ahead for our trip. We managed to see the travel nurse two days before leaving. This was just in time for her to tell us that we hadn’t left enough time to get typhoid, Japanese encephalitis or malaria immunizations. Yippee! I was a bit worried. If you know me then you realize that I am a bit of a worry wart by nature. But apparently I was the least cautious of the group as I was the only one who believed the travel nurse when she said that where we were going was a low risk area and that it would suffice to just get good bug spray and wear sunscreen. So I applied my bug cream meticulously (are you listening mom?) and I have returned to Hong Kong successfully without contracting any major disease (at least so far, many of the take a week or two to show). I managed to get the stomach flu the last day I was there though and spent my last hours in Vietnam in bed sweating and making frequent restroom trips. It was fun… I don’t know what I would have done if I had been traveling alone. For the parents of Lorna and Erin (who might be reading) know that you raised your daughters to be such kind and thoughtful people. I couldn’t have asked for better pseudo-moms in my time of need. Cruelly, the only bug bites I got from the trip were from that last night when I was sick and too out of it to even consider mosquitoes being inside. I guess considering I was traveling through a developing country a few bug bites and the stomach flu is a minimal amount of discomfort to consider myself lucky.