As I type this, my left arm is feeling that awkward sluggitude that I get after immunizations. I had 3 today, plus some blood taken for my PT program physical. Lefty pretty much looks like it was hit by some really inept (and one single-fanged) vampires. (I’d feel kinda bad for a uni-fang. All single-toothed, looking like it had a confused overbite. Bad, you know, before it bit me.) I’m taking my lefty weakness as a chance to level the playing field for poor righty. It seems that after the concussion, the muscles on my right side started some weirdo movement patterns. Thanks to my lovely PT, I’m on a regime of scapular stabilization exercises.

I was all ready for my shots, because one of my favorite podcasts, Sawbones: a Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, just did an episode on vaccines. I super-heart Sawbones. Usually they tackle the more bizarre paths of medicine (corpse theft, self surgery, history of headache treatments), but this one was more of straight-up history. Right after learning how the smallpox vaccine was developed, I read that vials of a smallpox virus were found in an unapproved Maryland lab.  Say WHat?!? Smallpox so deadly that only 2 labs, one in Atlanta and one in Russia, are authorized to have it. These mystery vials have just been hanging out in a cold storage room, likely since the 50’s.

And that, friends, is why you always clean out the refrigerator.