There are several "Travel Clinics" in the Boston area and as you can image this time of year their schedules are pretty tight. Having never been to the continent, its important to have your inoculations up to date, and in the case of Rwanda, you can't get in without having a certificate of inoculation for Yellow Fever.
So I made an appointment at one clinic with the understanding that they might not have the serum, then connected with the Boston Medical Center's travel clinic who seemed to have plenty on hand (naturally, I canceled the former before going.)
BMC's travel clinic l is located right next to the on/off ramp for Rte. 93, corner of Mass Ave and Melina Caas. After winding your way through and past some construction plastic you find the clinic. I was early because I knew I had to complete their registration forms and the woman at the window (I'll call her "Janice") was very straight forward and professional about the whole thing when I arrived. I sat down with my number and my slip of paper and darned if one of my students wasn't sitting there as well. He works for one of the airlines and was planning a swing through India and SE Asia and of course was getting his shots. He'd been there a while and there was some snafu so he was patiently waiting for the next available provider. Apparently he travels abroad quite frequently and we sat back and chatted for a while until his number came up. (Very interesting young man--nice to have him as a student!--even if he was carrying all his belongings in a paper bag instead of a backpack....)
I turned in my clipboard and Janice and I had a few moments to talk. At some point she told me her son had died of AIDS (blood transfusion) and how she spent his last months/days giving him care at home. The loss was very plain but its also plain that she's a spirited person. There was a lot about the experience that had strengthened her--and she still found a way to keep a sense of humor.
Finally, I got to see the doctor. I brought my list of medications and we examined my medical history in depth--or as best I could manage. Talk about living a sheltered life! I've never had mumps, measles, chicken pox--nor any of the other so-called childhood diseases or infections--so I was prepared to become a pin-cushion for the next hour or so if necessary. Turns out it was--Hep A & B, typhoid, YF, Polio, Meningitis--eight shots in all!--and a bunch of pills to take with me. (And this was all out of pocket!)
While I was getting the shots, I was signed up for a post-travel survey. The young woman who signed me up kept me busy talking while the male nurse gave me the shots.
This was something of a flashback to the days when I was trotted around from one clinic to another when I was a kid. There's always a dingy quality to those places--chairs arranged to accommodate the space and not the sitter, institutional green or beige-painted walls, with the ubiquitous out-of-place prints of sunsets and close-ups of flora; a TV set blaring in the corner (at least this one was HD!), and a lot of people getting familiar with each other at volumes that always challenge the receptionist's ability to hear the phone complete the picture.
Before it seemingly took years to find out what was wrong but it was interesting to see that the quality of care wasn't affected by the drap surroundings.
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