Emma's getting a stabbing (the good kind)

Hello lovely blog readers. This post is a mini-announcement: There's a donation feature over on my twitch now, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/emmalittleduck/about via the "Donate" button below the stream, or by typing !donate in Twitch chat if you're around in a stream.

For the next couple of months, anything that gets donated on twitch will help me fund my long overdue HPV vaccine. TLDR (which I will extrapolate on in video form at some point soon); thanks to Conspiracies™ I never had the vaccine in school. If you're unfamiliar, the vaccine protects against 9 types of HPV, most importantly types 16 and 18 that cause the greatest risk of cervical cancer. It's only clinically tested on people 26 and under so it's more or less my birthday treat to myself to finally get (wahoo) while it's still known to be relatively effective.

Since I'm getting it as an adult, I have to get 3 stabs instead of 2, and I have to pay for it privately. All together it's £400 (including a nice 10% discount the pharmacy gave me, thanks lads). This is something that is important to me in a lot of ways. Not only is there the potential health risk that's been in the back of my mind for a long time, but there's a personal element of taking back control of something conspiracy theories took away from me as a kid, and the pleasure of finally being a self sufficient adult who can afford to do this.

On that note, I want to be clear that I'm not relying on or asking for any donations in order to have the vaccine: I'm getting it no matter what, and as I have the money saved I don't need or want to crowd-fund anything here. It's more that, if anyone wanted to donate anyway and/or is enjoying the streams and wanted to say thanks- I thought it would be nice to know what that money is going on. Any contributions in this time are guaranteed to fund getting me getting stabbed :) And in case anyone is concerned, I'm specifically using a service that doesn't take any cut from donations, as many of them unfortunately do.

I'm very excited to be getting this done. I'm sure that seems quite strange, people don't tend to be jazzed about getting vaccines... but I'm pleased about what it says about my current stage of life, and to finally stop the thought about getting this vaccine pinging around the back of my mind. Peace at last!