Tick Shot and Gloves

Those of you in the States may not be familiar with a tick shot.  I was told before moving to Hungary that I needed to get one, and that was the first time that I had heard of them.  In fact, at that time, the health department in the States didn’t give them, so I had to get one here.  There are lots of ticks in Hungary and several things you can get from them.  Besides limes disease (which you can get from ticks in the States too), one of the things you can get is tick-borne encephalitis.  This can be fatal, but it is rare.  However, it can cause permanent damage to your nervous system.  Russia and Europe have 5,000-7,000 human cases of tick-borne encephalitis per year.  

Since Gary and I enjoy being outdoors and in the woods, etc. we thought it best for Ethan to get these tick shots too (you can begin them after a child is 2 years old).  Ethan got his yearly follow-up tick shot at Sienna’s 15-month check-up.  He is fine knowing that he will get a shot up until a few minutes before it happens, then he says that he doesn’t want it.  Often a child gets a sticker or something after they get a shot.  Well, for Ethan, it’s a pair of doctor’s gloves.  Yes, he doesn’t care about the sticker, but he has a fascination with gloves.  It has been this way for over a year.Here is a picture of Ethan at the pediatrician’s office with his two gloves.    This picture was from about a month ago where Ethan was playing with a glove he had gotten.  Ethan likes the latex gloves like people in the medical profession wear, but he will settle for other ones such as mitts or the plastic kind that some people wear for cleaning.

These two pictures above are actually  unusual because Ethan usually wants someone else to put the glove on and wear it.  I wore the mitts for a while before Ethan actually put them on where I could take this picture.