“It was really cool, I just pulled up ordered a double flu shot, hold the Guillain-Barré syndrome, paid for my order then was given the shot as I sat at the next window. Pretty amazing!” said Eugene Feirty, local participant in the program.

The seasonal flu shot is available on the dollar menu at Skaggs Regional Medical Center and a new variety of vaccine is scheduled to make an appearance soon as the H1N1 vaccine. Hospital manager Brian Dumby said, “we sell a lot of the seasonal shots, but once the H1N1 is available we are expecting consumer demand to double or triple. We may even have to add another drive-through lane to accommodate everyone.”

The current menu board shows a variety of other services now available via the drive-through including annual physicals, blood donation, and emergency resuscitation among other things. Dumby says, “we have had some trouble getting the orders right due to the scratchy nature of the two way radio in the menu board. So, Mr. Hekctal if you are reading this story please return so we can reverse the outpatient surgery we performed on you in your car, and give that to the right person who requested it.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about 36,000 people die each year from complications of seasonal flu. Now with drive-through medicine, officials hope that number will be reduced significantly. “Really,” said Dumby, “who has time to sit around in a doctors office when they can roll up to our window, get shot and on their way?”

The two victims have been advised to receive anti-burn treatment needed to prevent scarring, Springfield-Greene County Health Department assistant director Clay Goddard said.

People who find fire on the ground during daylight or evening in particular should leave it alone, Goddard said.

“If it’s on the ground, it might not be raging, but it is hot,” he said.

While the two people currently show no signs of fever, laboratory tests confirmed the fire they handled was hot, he said.

“It was soo purdy, just glistening like an angel, well we just had to try to pick it up and take it with us. But when we tried, it bit us like a snake! Then I cried,” said one of the victims.

Burns are caused by extreme heat from a fire made via a chemical reaction between oxygen in the atmosphere and some sort of fuel (wood or gasoline) that has been heated to its ignition temperature coming into contact with skin.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that tens of thousands of people are successfully treated each year after being burned by a flame that may be hot, and it adds that a few people die every year because they don’t seek treatment. Burns are 100% preventable, especially if you restrain from picking it up and taking it with you.