The last mile (part three of only three, I hope)

Thorin always wants my sticker! He wanted the vaccine, too, but I reassured him that beings made of vinyl can’t get COVID. Those are dad’s Red Wing boots, incidentally. (I have Timberland.)

Continued from here.

about two weeks after the huge snafu, dad’s health system emailed me to say an appointment was available. (To my mind this is absolutely connected to the fact that the Biden administration immediately got on the job with this task and released its entire supply of vaccines, come what may. It’s going to be one of the many huge debits on the historical balance of the Trump administration that they never took dealing with the pandemic seriously.)

I scheduled him, we went in to one of the local medical centers (not his GP), and he got Pfizer #1. It was a fairly small room — like a conference room for 40 — but everyone was physically distanced and we sat around and chatted. We sat for an extra thirty minutes as he is allergic to bee sting, but there were no problems and he had no reactions other than a sore arm. Meanwhile, the health system kept emailing us to get him to come in, as did two other health networks where he’d seen providers over the years. This was less aggravating on the level of continued reminders that there was no way to turn off than on the level of the fact that the health systems missed a lot of people. Obscura actually had to call in and intervene after her mom’s provider scheduled her 80-year-old mom for mid-April. Last week dad had Pfizer #2; again no reaction. We got a “bill” for the first vaccine: $116.00 covered by Medicare (of which $48 for administering the vaccine).

 

It was at that county’s fairgrounds / expo center.

This week Monday, my employer emailed me to ask me if I wanted an appointment. This is a little weird — the state did open up vaccinations for educators a week earlier, but it was supposed to be limited to front-facing workers and I haven’t seen a student F2F in a year. Other people I know who work there full time but are not teachers did not get the invitation. This is a low-level structural ethical dilemma. However, they put me on the list (maybe because the last time they saw me, I was front-facing) and the Servetuses have some big stuff coming up, so it didn’t make sense to delay and I made the 50 mile drive. This was parallel to the kind of setting where dad was supposed to get his vax: county public health / immunization site.

Extremely well organized: I walked in, identified myself, filled out a form, and after a conversation about bee sting allergies, walked into an area with about twenty cubicles. A woman with a flag waved me into one of them, I sat down, was asked which arm I preferred, and got the shot. I got up and walked into the waiting area where I had to spend an extra thirty minutes due to bee sting allergies. I spent all of the time thinking about how grateful and relieved I am. I got an appointment for the final shot in four weeks (I got Moderna). I was told “no bill” as my employer was covering it (they did not ask for my insurance information).

I’m not sure what the flag has to do with it.

On the way out they gave me a sticker and a Tootsie roll from an industrial size container. Wry smile as childhood vaccinations were usually accompanied by a piece of candy or some kind of sweet.

Then I had to drive back. By the time I made it home, I had a low grade fever and some kind of wooziness (although there are other things I could attribute both of those things to, including the fact that I was wildly overdressed for what turned out to be mild weather, my huge sense of relief, and menstruation). I went to bed early last night as I could not concentrate. This morning I’m feeling pretty normal, except that my left deltoid hurts like hell (think: can’t move my left arm above my shoulder without severe pain).

~ by Servetus on March 11, 2021.