Shot Records

You are lucky you were able to find your shots. My pediatrician retired several years ago, and the office has since closed. So, my instructor advised me to check with my high school. Since I graduated in 1994, I expected that to be a dead end, but they still had my records! I did need to get a varicella titer, a tdap & something else...but it did save me from having to redo all of them!

Getting my records was half the battle (I was born in 1969! My peditrician has been long since dead..office no longer in existance. Thankfully my high school still had my records. As luck would have it I popped in to get my records at my old high school only to be told had I waited one more day they would have been destroyed. There were in the process of destroying records a certain amount of years old and my file was slated for destruction for the next day.

My school not only required proof of immunizations but also require titers be drawn for several of the things you are immunized against.

I was luckily able to find my shot records as well. However, when I was very young we were low income so I got some of my shots at a low income clinic that is not there anymore and for some reason the hospital I go to didn't have those shot records on their records. Long story short, I had to get a bunch of titers done and I find out on Monday if they are all in the clear or not. I am NOT looking forward to getting more needles poked in me. My program requires that you have a 2 step TB test no later then 3 months before the program starts. I had to get a 2 step in order to volunteer at a hospital, and I just so happened to get it done 4 months before the start of the program... so I have to re-do my 2 step . Good luck to everyone out there!

The process for my college is ridiculous. I have had 5 doctors appointments so far! I had to get a pertussis vaccine, blood work for MMR, hep B, varicella and a 2 step TB test. There is a big form that has to be filled out by my doctor and cleared by the nurse at the college before I can start clinical...and they want documented proof of immunity for all the bloodwork. So Ive had to go 5 times in the last 2 weeks...I think I'm done now!

Most 2-Step TB tests are valid for one year! You may not have to redo it, call the hospital and see if they still have your TB test on file!!!

Wow! That is a lot to have to do! All I have left to do is my physical, a TB test, which is going to be done by my job since my one yr anniversary has passed, a flu shot, and start my Hep B vaccine series. Easy stuff, but the hardest part of the battle is over.

All the hoops we have to jump through can be a little mind blowing for sure! We were told very sternly that unless youare an out of town student, ALL paperwork items had to be hand delivered to the administrative assistant. No faxing in or emailing! I feel like I should have my very own parking spot with plaque for as many times as I've been into the office at the school to hand in medical forms, insurance forms, nametag order form (seriously? I couldn't email THIS?) facility inprocessing certificates, etc etc etc. And haf the time, I'd get there only to find out that I missed something. Ok...can I get this emailed to you? No...you need to being it in. GAH!!!

But in the end, it does give me satisfaction to check off each thing I get in on time and completed. I worked so very hard on al my prereqs and everything else I did to get accepted into nursing school like we all did, and the sky-high list of forms I need to finally get to that first day of classes is worth it!

Since I was REALLY born in the stone age (1950s), my pediatrician is dead, his office long ago closed, and vaccines for many illnesses weren't even in use yet. We built our antibodies by catching measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc. The process for me was simple but expensive: I had my titers drawn for everything.

I went the titer route as well. My mom had long since lost all my vax records and ha dno earthly idea who my pediatrician was. Thankfully my insurance covered all but about 30 bucks of the cost.

Our school requires titers no matter what, and it must be filled out and stamped by a physician.

So...instead of going twice for all this stuff, I called my family Physician's office and told them my school requirements for immunizations and a physical.

They wrote the orders for the titers I needed in advance of my physical. I stopped in, picked them up, and went to do the bloodwork. A week later I went in for my physical, the doctor filled out that form for me, and at the same time completed my titers and gave me a copy of the labs all in one shot.