COVID-19 vaccination brings relief
The best part of my COVID-19 vaccination was the personalized adhesive bandage.
On Sunday afternoon, I received my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine at St. John Arena. I thought I’d share the experience, which was quick and quite literally painless.
If, like me, needles make you queasy, I can report that I didn’t notice either prick of the needle. Routine blood draws sometimes feel like someone is jamming a sharpened, rusty gutter in my arm. On that scale, the COVID-19 shots did not even register.
Scheduling the vaccine didn’t take nearly as long as I had expected, and my appointment for the second shot was scheduled when I received the first. No need for a second round of calls or hunting for another slot online.
The day of my first shot, the line of patients snaked through the arena but moved steadily forward. The operation was efficient, with stations to gather personal information, administer the vaccine, and observe patients for 15 minutes to safeguard against any immediate ill effects. I saw no one with any such reactions. People scrolled on their phones and yawned. It might have been the lobby of the BMV.
From start to finish, which included the full wait period, my wife and I were there about 35 minutes.
Both of us weathered nasty bouts of COVID-19 in late January, and we experienced the same side effects after the first shot. We left St. John Arena with no more than an achy arm and felt fine the rest of the day.
On the second day, both of us awoke to body aches and fatigue. Simply put, we felt lousy, but nothing close to the degree of misery that the actual disease had inflicted upon us a few months earlier.
The next day, all the symptoms were gone. We both felt fine.
The Pfizer vaccine called for a threeweek wait, so our return to St. John Arena came on Sunday.
There was no line at all. With our information in the system and our vaccination cards in hand, we breezed in, confirmed our identities and rolled up our sleeves.
This time I asked to go to a particular table. Pharmacist Paul Tanenbaum waited for me there.
Tanenbaum is a regular reader of my column, and we've exchanged emails — at least the few times when I have my act together and answer all my emails — for years now. When my wife was hospitalized in 2018 with unexplained swelling around her brain, Tanenbaum was among the Dispatch readers who kindly offered health care insights.
Sunday was the first time I'd met him in person.
Tanenbaum retired from Kroger over five years ago. When he heard his old employer was doing some clinics, including the one at St. John Arena, he offered to lend a hand.
“I had to be a part of this to help save lives right here in Columbus,” he told me in a follow-up email.
“Almost every person thanked me and/or our team for being there to give the shots,” he wrote.
“This was a group effort starting with the people directing traffic, the Red Coats helping to direct people to the right place, data entry, those loading the syringes as fast as possible, the people observing patients after, the people who organized the entire thing, the lady who brought around snacks and cold water — everyone helped make it run smoothly and efficiently so we could immunize as many people as possible with the least amount of waiting time.
“I went home tired each night, but so proud of what we accomplished.”
It was from Tanenbaum that I received my personalized bandage. On it he drew a ballpoint pen writing a story on a reporter's notebook.
I made my wife take a picture. Our reactions the second time around were identical to the first. Sore arm on Day 1, followed by body aches and fatigue on Day 2, all symptoms gone on Day 3.
Correction: one symptom has lingered. I have noticed a lightening of the mental load I have carried since the pandemic's onset. With vaccination I may not avoid COVID-19 a second time, but all indications are that I now have a great chance of avoiding severe infection and hospitalization if re-infected.
If you're unsure about being vaccinated or adamantly opposed, I urge you to keep thinking about it. Follow the latest news, talk to your doctors and to those who have been vaccinated, and keep in perspective any setbacks like the pausing of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. For me, the few cons were inconsequential when weighed against the many pros.
No, I can't promise that you'll receive a personalized bandage. I can almost guarantee, though, that you'll walk away with a greater peace of mind. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker