Friday, April 30, 2010

Red flagged on immunizations

You would think that with all the shots my kids get, all the med units who check and recheck their yellow cards, all the schools we submit vaccination records for, that they'd all have far more shots on record than any child ever needs and all plenty within the right time frame.

Prince William County disagreed. According to their regulations, two shots - DTaP and Polio - have to be given on or after the 4th birthday. Jonathon's 4th dose in July 2005 before we left to Togo didn't cut it. A month before his birthday. Seriously. And it got flagged now. I got a happy little note saying if he didn't get the boosters (again) then he'd be prevented from attending school after May 1st. Seriously.

Jump to yesterday, I pulled him from school early to go to the Kaiser Perm building, called in on time, waited for 45 minutes in the room while the doc had an emergency elsewhere, waited more after I explained what PW County wanted and she was baffled, doc checked the ages DTaP is given (before 6 years or after 11 years, not helpful for an 8yo), decided to give the Polio and a plain Tetanus, neither of which he needed but because a piece of paper said so.

Ah well, it's good to have insurance and it's good that the process was painless. Just a little annoying that PW county school policies trump common sense, you know?

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