My First Big Boo-Boo

This afternoon, an eight-year-old girl needed stitches in her knee, and I had to exercise all my considerable powers of distraction and storytelling (as well as my arm muscles) to let that happen successfully. Twenty minutes later, shaking and covered in sweat, I met two siblings coming in for shots -- a 15-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. The girl was getting Gardasil, the new vaccine against genital warts (HPV) and cervical cancer, and the boy was getting his tetanus booster and a meningitis vaccine. He volunteered to go first, so I gave him his tetanus vaccine in his left arm -- the one he doesn't use as much, since we all remember how much tetanus shots hurt the next day -- and then grabbed for the second syringe. As I depressed the plunger into his other arm, I caught a glimpse of my scrawled Magic Marker letters on the plastic: 'HPV'.

Holy fuck. I just gave this boy a shot of Gardasil.

For an instant, I panicked, and my mind spun with a half-second of options: could I get away with this? Maybe just not give him the Menactra? No, he has to have his meningitis shot, and anyway, what am I going to give his sister? No, I realized immediately that there was no way to cover it up and still do everything necessary for both kids. I was going to have to confess, come what may.

I turned to face the mother, who was congratulating her son on being brave and encouraging her daughter to get up onto the table for her turn. "Um, one second." She stopped and looked at me expectantly.

"This will not hurt him," I stressed, "it won't do anything to him, but -- I have three shots here..."

"Yes..."

"...and he just got the Gardasil," I finished with a rueful smile, pointing to her son.

To my relief, she laughed out loud. Oh, thank God!

"They're already using it on boys in Europe," I hastened to explain, "and doing all sorts of trials here, and boys will probably be getting it regularly in the U.S. too, in another year or two."

The mom was nodding. "Yeah, I've been reading about that, actually." Hurrah, an educated parent!

"It absolutely won't hurt him, and actually gives him extra protection." I finally felt reassured enough to grin. "Hey, he's safe from genital warts!"

She laughed again, and as I left the room to draw up a second Gardasil for the originally intended (FEMALE) recipient, I saw her poke her son and heard her say, "Hey, you'll never get cervical cancer!" She and her daughter cracked up.

My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly draw up the second shot. That was unbelievably stupid, and could have been very, very bad.

However, in hindsight, if I had to make that mistake, I think I definitely dodged a bullet -- it happened under the best possible circumstances. The mistake was with a shot that would do no harm (and probably provide some benefit), the mom was educated about the vaccine and took my flub with grace and a laugh, and the boy was of the proper age to receive the shot, even if he wasn't a girl. And the physician who signed off on my incident report, one of my favorites, absolutely died laughing when I told him. ("I made my first big boo-boo today, and am hoping you'll sign off on my idiocy." "You know I will." "Well, let's just say there's a 12-year-old boy walking around town who will never get genital warts.")

My true boss, who can be temperamental, doesn't know about this yet, but apart from making the mistake in the first place, I did everything absolutely right, so I don't see where she'd have any cause to take any sort of action... so in many ways, I got very lucky.

Just another Friday afternoon...