We plan to visit a semi-exotic country semi-soon, so we presented ourselves at the “Disease Prevention and Control” building near the biggest hospital in Abu Dhabi.

This is where you go to get the mandatory HIV and tuberculosis tests, when you first arrive in the country. Everyone in the city, then, has been there. And it always is crowded.

But it also is your one-stop shop for inoculations — as long as you don’t need/want more than three. And if you are going somewhere considered exotic … may need more than three. (That’s how you know you’re going somewhere exotic.)

I can remember being 5 or 6, and a nurse would come to First Lutheran elementary school, and we all lined up in the gym to get polio shots. The dread was palpable and, of course, silly.

By the time I got my last polio booster, perhaps at age 8, they had been improved massively — you could take them orally, in a lump of sugar. What an concept.

At the time, I thought I was done with polio forever, but the disease has made something of a comeback, especially in this part of the world, and it turns out the polio regime from a half century ago probably does not protect you anymore.

So, that was on the list. (And we learned that polio boosters are given orally only to small children … you sissies.)

Also, tetanus shots (with diphtheria and pertussis thrown in for free, in the basic DPT shot), which I thought also were a thing over and done. No, you need to get them updated. Now they are good for 10 years only. Same as polio.

We avoided the big crowds, for the HIV/TB tests, and went upstairs and into the halls of the immunization area, and after working through a couple of offices, we allowed us how we had four things we wanted: a polio shot, a tetanus shot, Part 1 of the hepatitis B two-dose and a malaria prescription. (These links are creeping me out.)

We didn’t quite get what we wanted.

Turns out, where we are going put us on the required list for yellow fever. Which does not exist in the UAE, but the doctor said it had to be done. Oh, and we could have only three shots in one sitting.

Decisions, decisions. We decided to delay the hepatitis B (“but it is important”, the doc said, and we agreed it was, but if we have to pick three for right this minute …)

So, yellow fever, polio and tetanus it is!

Two shots in one arm, the tetanus in the other, and wasn’t that fun?

One of us has a morbid fear of vaccinations, and could not be distracted from the nurse approaching with a needle — even turning away not to watch.

We also had a chat with the immunization doctor about malaria, and went over the types of drugs available and the potentially unpleasant side-effects of the two most popular, but getting the scrip for the one we wanted would have to come another day.

The whole of it — six shots total, for two — cost 208 dirhams, or about $55. Which doesn’t seem outrageous for heading off three –make that five, with diphtheria and pertussis thrown in) nasty diseases.