Section Hiking and Vaccinating

Two hot topics from vastly different realms, but so much in common.

Now, if you're going to vaccinate you do it a little at a time. There are lots of "schedules" so there's definitely more than one way to skin a cat. Just as there are loads of ways to section hike the JMT, AT, & PCT. Let's take the CDC schedule and the JMT for sake of discussion and we'll start @ Happy Isles.

At birth babies receive the HepB vax, and when starting the JMT you have to get going from one end or the other-this case Yosemite NP. Now at 2 months baby is slated to get 5 different vaccinations. Or the back packers must get up and over the falls, past Half Dome and to Tuolomne Meadows. Now, these schedules leave little room for error, like only having 20 vacation days to section hike the JMT  throughout the year. You have 200+ miles to traverse and you don't want to do any back tracking persay. So you try to get off trail and back on in the same place. But sometimes its not possible, and you may have to (for whatever reason, say meeting up with a friend for that particular section) cover the same ground twice. And that is what we were faced with at our 4 month appointment today.

Who knew that not all vaccines were created equal, or compatible with the same vaccine from another manufacturer? I now know these things as we moved and the little dude (LD) got his 2 month vaccines from his old pediatrician and now his 4 month from his new pediatrician. I know this because the two offices use different brands and they are suggesting that LD receive extra doses of some vaccines so that their records show him fully vaccinated. Well, I want a vaccinated child, not an over vaccinated child. I don't want to go back to Happy Isles just to cover the same ground to get out of YNP, when getting back on trail were I got off will do just fine and cost me less time. So one would think with vaccines. And one might be wrong.

Our new pediatrician doesn't have contracts with the manufacturer of the vaccines LD already received, so they can't even order them. To facilitate vaccinating him he will have to get extra (read: unnecessary) doses of certain vaccines. The question is, how many extra doses? Well as mom and dad that's entirely up to us to decide. The full set, 2/3 of the set, or calling our old pediatrician in hopes of not over vaccinating at all (just the 8he round trip drive to see the old pediatrician). It would be so much easier to meet that friend at the postal service in Tuolomne than to start at Happy Isles again, but permits may not work out that way. What's a back packer to do?