Immunizations

My arm hurts! I went in today and received the travel immunizations I needed for this trip.

Getting to the point where I could finally do these shots was a ridiculously long process, because I (almost unfortunately) found out that they were covered under my health insurance plan. Apparently, under Arizona state law, medically necessary immunizations are required to be covered, regardless of the reason for needing them. I was told by multiple people at Aetna (my insurance co), that yes, they were indeed covered. Great! Unfortunately, nowhere in my network gives the immunizations required, so I've basically spent a month calling my doctor's office and Aetna trying to get an out-of-network referral so I can have them covered. I won't go into details, but this process has been ridiculously difficult. I've been stubborn and persistent though, because one of the vaccinations I was hoping to have covered was Japanese encephalitis (JE), a series of three shots that costs almost $500. We had to start this series over a month before we leave on our trip, so I finally just made an appointment for today.

Ironically, after all of this hassle, Sarah and I made a last minute decision NOT to get the JE vaccination (literally while in the waiting room). Based on research last night and reading the Center for Disease Control info on this disease, we won't be at as much risk as we thought in many of the areas we are going to. We'll take extra precaution against mosquitoes, but then again, we were going to do that anyway.

So I left the lab this morning with three bandaids on my left upper arm. I got the adult booster for polio (for India), yellow fever (for South America), and typhoid (general). Sarah left with no shots whatsoever, since she's more on top of these things than I and has already finished her immunizations. She'd only gone to the clinic with me because we were going to get the JE shots.

Whew! Another step in the pre-trip process taken care of. And it only cost $250 instead of $800.

-Matt!