The flu shot

Like any other self-respecting woman, I am not too overtly fond of vaccinations. There is something about the medical syringe that transports me back to my childhood. 

In the remote small coal town where I was raised, every few months my father would summon a compounder to the house. His job was to inoculate us against any new germs that might invade our young bodies. Now, this gentleman would arrive with a heavy leather bag strapped to his shoulder. From which he would unpack the tiny bottles, packets and wads of cotton wool that he needed for the procedure. 

Our cook would be summoned and he would be asked to boil some water in a saucepan, into this would go the syringe and needle, for extra disinfection. It was precisely at this stage that I would start hyperventilating. 

The compounder would pull out the boiled syringe, fit the needle into it and wave it in the air, to sort of, make it dry. I would be hypnotised by the swing like swaying movement of his hand and watch in horrific fascination. He would then uncap the medicine pot, piercing the rubber cap with the pointy needle and draw the liquid into it. A little bit of the medicine would be squirted out to release any trapped air bubbles and then he would turn towards us with firm determination. 

My brothers and I were asked to offer up our arms for the routine jab. I would run away and hide in the most distant corner of the house and pretend to be invisible. Invisible people are also supposed to be deaf I told my mother once when she kept calling out my name and I did not answer from behind the curtain, in front of which she was standing. She of course did not get the joke and discovered my hiding place in a jiffy and marched me to the patio where the man with the needle was ready with the vaccine. 

My brothers would make funny faces to distract me. I was told they did that but I never got to see it because my own eyes would be tear ridden and tightly shut. After the jab we were supposed to rotate our arm clockwise and anticlockwise, which we did obediently. And then a small ball of wool would be placed on the spot, which was held in place by a sticky tape. The only good thing in this entire painful exercise was that we actually did not fall sick with the disease we were immunised against. 

All this came back to me when I went for my flu shot last month. I did not want one but was persuaded to get preventative treatment before I left for a holiday to my home country India. The process did not take more than half a minute; the needles being finer now with each one individually sterilised and packed. 

The first 10 days of my visit was fine. Everybody snivelled and coughed around me but I was beaming with good health. It was on the 11th day that I woke up with a giant sneeze and by the evening was running a high fever. 

“I took the flu vaccine,” I informed my husband. 

“Yes,” he agreed. 

“Why am I sick?” I asked him. 

“This is the Indian flu,” he coughed. 

“How to overcome it?” I sniffed. 

“Let’s call your compounder,” he suggested. 

“I’m invisible now,” I declared solemnly.