I’m not sure what I expected. But I guess I did expect something, I don’t know, More Dramatic. Golden trumpets maybe. The skies parting and the herald angels bursting out in their favorite tunes -- “Hark!” perhaps, or, at the very least, a jubilant round of “Hallelujah!”
My walk today was very short -- about 200 feet in a winding 6-feet-apart-sticker-marked line from the Lobby of Swedish Medical Center to its downstairs auditorium. I stopped mid-way on the journey to proffer my arm to the worldwide medical experiment: Phase 1 of the COVID-19 vaccine program.
Boy did I do a lot of thinking during that short walk. Not the least of which was “Is this it? Is this how the end begins?” and “How am I going to react?” and, ultimately, “What if I die?”
I felt a lot of feelings too. Not the least of which was numbness, a surreal disconnection, despite the ebullient atmosphere of the vaccine hall and the down-right cheery disposition of the nurses and organizers getting the job done.
Given that the vaccine right now feels like liquid gold and the list of recipients is still restricted to essential workers, I thought maybe there would be armed guards, deep scrutinizing of credentials in search of my essential-ness, and a prick of a finger in order to sign a waiver in blood which says I won’t sue the manufacturers if I do have an adverse reaction.
But there was none of that. Just a fast-moving line, a scan code alerting the CDC to my vaccinated status, a cursory glance at my driver’s license, and a prick in my arm so tiny that I actually did not feel it.
“Ok, I’m ready!” I told the nurse after I closed my eyes and took a deep relaxing breath.
I hate shots. I like to be prepared for them. I am one of those people whose arm feels like it was slugged by Jean-Claude Van Damme within seconds of receiving a flu vaccine.
“I already did it,” she informed me. I was incredulous. Maybe she missed.
“Really?!” I cross-examined her. “I mean, that was, really, completely painless.”
“It’ll hurt later,” she promised.
Oh, as far as my being essential: I am a birth worker. That means I’ve been in and out of homes, birth centers, and hospitals not daily, but A LOT, since the advent of the pandemic. Despite taking standard-plus precautions, I admit to feeling a pinch of fear each time I enter a pregnant family’s home or slide through the sliding glass doors of a hospital (I’ve never met a hospital who didn’t have sliding glass doors).
My logical side tells me that a hospital maternity floor is probably one of the safest, most sanitized places to be in America these days. But my far stronger anxious side feels sure the virus will zip its way from the COVID ward at the other end of any given hospital, fly through its notoriously questionable air filtration system, and infiltrate my body -- despite my double mask, googles, eye shields, gloves. I’m hoping, despite all we don’t know about these vaccines, getting the shot brings some relief from that anxiety.
So, it would be an understatement to say that I was thrilled to be in the line. And yet, once there, I felt somehow removed; somehow lost to the moment; somehow surprised by the lack of event feeling during this event. It felt like an ordinary day in an ordinary vaccine clinic, despite the past 10 months being anything but ordinary.
After the poke, I was handed an official CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Record and a sticker to remind me to return in 24-28 days for the booster shot. Apparently I got the Moderna vaccine (as opposed to the one developed by Pfizer). It has been shown to be 94.1 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 and/or reducing the impact on my lungs and other innards if the virus does somehow make it into my vaccine fortified system. Hopefully it will lower my chances of giving the virus to others.
I looked down at the record and back at the long line of people getting ready to roll up their sleeves a sudden respect. We are the second round of guinea pigs. I want to thank and honor the first -- the hundreds of thousands of people who volunteered to participate in trials of these drugs that rushed them through the FDA.
It takes a long time to work out all the quirks of any given vaccine. To say that these two were fast-tracked would be another understatement. Researchers are still watching and learning from those of us standing in these lines -- the first un-trail-vetted takers.
Last night I didn’t get much sleep worrying about the what ifs of taking the vaccine at this early stage. I’ve gone through radiation and taken chemo pills in the not so distant past. What if I have a bad reaction to the shot because of that history? What if I am that one in thousands allergic person that recent news stories were so worried about? The stressing wasn’t enough to keep me away from the line today but it was enough to keep me up most of the night.
Still, as I pulled up the thick sweater on my left arm (reprimanding myself for wearing a thick sweater) I wasn’t feeling any worry or fear. I was profoundly glad to be part of the experiment, even if I felt emotionally numb in the process, even if I dropped writhing on the floor and died in the next half hour.
I didn’t.
I was ushered down the stairs and into the hospital's auditorium. Once there, yet another smiling, kind organizer pointed me to a chair marked with a blue sticker. The stickers were placed on chairs every six to 10 feet apart. She indicated toward a list of possible reactions and said I should sit for 15 minutes and report back if I felt any of them. I settled in and looked around at a room full of my socially distanced co-guinea pigs. I wondered what they were thinking. Did this experience feel as surreal and vague to them as it did to me?
Disney’s Ice Age played on the screen at the front of the auditorium.
Oddly comforting, that. And appropriate, I thought, a film about animals on the brink of extinction; a reminder that nature is its own force, and it will, eventually, take back it’s night. It’s a cute movie, but we all know how that epoch ended.
The mostly medical scrubs-clad folk around me stared at their phones, chatted across the aisle, or took selfies of their BAND-AIDs and big thumbs up. Most looked joyful, hopeful. The end of a pandemic has finally started those smiles seemed to say.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off of Sid and Manfred and the big screen. I felt a strange connection with them, a kinship if you will.
We are not yet on the brink of extinction as a species. And at the point of this writing, despite nearly 2 million people having died as a result of contracting the corona virus, it’s mostly clear that this virus will not deliver us to our extinction. I trust science and feel confident the shot in my arm today, despite needing its kinks worked out, is part the door closing on this particular attempt at humanity’s assassination.
But the key word there is “yet.” Because all this suffering, physical, financial, social, and emotional, and the isolation we’ve endured, it’s all been a wake-up call hasn’t it?
I sat in the auditorium well beyond the CDC-requested self-monitoring 15 minutes. In fact, I stayed for an hour, watching Ice Age end before it looped back to begin again.
Yes, indeed, this pandemic has been a warning call. It’s been a reminder that a new (albeit hotter) Ice Age will spell the end of our species if we don’t pull ourselves -- and the planet -- back from the path of destruction we’ve set upon.
Posie sat up eagerly in her crate when I returned to the car. The look on her face said: “How could you? How could you go on a walk without me?”
“I don’t think you’d have enjoyed it,” I lied to her. Posie loooooves watching cartoons of other animals.
Is it possible to feel relief and fear, both fully, at the exact same time? I’m not sure, biologically speaking. But I think that’s what I felt as I drove out of the garage, a slight ache starting glow in my left arm.
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