Ouch

Samantha had to go to the doctor to receive the rest of her shots that would bring her up to date before school starts. I know that immunizations have been successful in preventing thousands of people from needless suffering, but I am starting to get irritated with the fact that at every well-child-check I am informed of two or three more shots that have been added to the repertoire of disease prevention. In order to follow protocol I am inevitably handed a piece of paper where in small print it details the worst case scenarios of death occurring only in very rare instances. Even still, I have agreed to all additional shots up to this point in my children's lives.

Whipping out the chart at the office it is revealed that Samantha will need four shots - two boosters, a tetanus, and a Tdap. "And," the doctor began, "there's a new vaccine that has become available for children of this age that you should be aware of called the HPV vaccine. It stands for human papilloma virus (wait a minute, isn't that...) which is a sexually transmitted disease (holy crap, he's not kidding) which would prevent a sexually active (sexually active? she's wearing a puppy shirt!) girl from getting infected."
"Uh..." I eloquently began, "I'm not too worried about that at this point."

He went on to explain that while abstinence is the advocated form of birth control and disease prevention in their office, confessing that he and his wife were virgins when THEY got married, it was still something I should be aware of. I looked at Samantha sitting wide-eyed on the patient table and turned back to the Doctor, "Uh, no thanks. I think we're good."

More accurately, I think SHE'S good. I might need some valium very soon.