I abhor shots. When we went to South America the first time, the county health service wasn’t accustomed to providing some of exotic inoculations we needed so they misadministered the final two. I think they were typhus and yellow fever.
I was sicker than a dog. I mean really down and out incapacitated. Finishing third grade, I wanted to be outside with the girl across the street rather than moving a continent away anyway. My family’s motto was truly ‘Suck it up, buttercup. We don’t complain.’ The only this discussion involving self pity was between me and my pillow.
Obviously, I survived. But I also found as the years progressed that I have some weird reaction to shots that I have subsequently read is not unknown but relates to low blood pressure in some manner after the injection enters my body. In short, I always have at least lightheadedness if not a lot more from a shot which is a real physical reaction.
If it scared me enough, like shingles, I bit the bullet anyway to get the inoculation when eligible.
I never deprived my kids of their shots. One time, probably preparing for college, my daughter actually called me to ask ‘You did get us inoculated, didn’t you? Please say yes.’ I assured her I had indeed done so.
Unlike me, they had not inherited whatever this blood pressure thing is that I got from my mother. Truthfully, the inoculation-induced reaction infuriated me because I always assumed she was being hysterical as she was rather dramatic. When it happened to me as an adult, I realised it was something physical that I could not control.
I began reconsidering the whole inoculation game in 2017 after hearing about anti-vaxxers. In particular, someone deciding that there was some global conspiracy to undermine people’s health. That had never been my issue but this idea that a segment of the population was substituting their fears for the replicable nature of science pushed me to put my own discomfort lower on the scale than the benefit of any of the inoculations available. I had simply become stubborn but realised i did not want to be part of a community engaging in thinking I did not want to share philosophically.
Then in 2020, about 4 weeks before COVID shut down the world, I got the flu. I mean I…got…the…flu. It started feeling utterly powerless to move my body within a couple of minutes of it hitting me. I tried toast for dinner but that came right back up. I had a commitment at the War College the next morning as an International Fellow I had sponsored from Indonesia twenty years ago was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I knew he would notice I wasn’t there, plus I had just had my winter break so the faculty would notice I had been in only one day in the past two weeks. I went to bed, thinking this couldn’t really be so bad.
I got up at 2.30 am attempting a trip down the hall. I realised there was absolutely no way I had the physically could imagine the power to get to Ft. McNair, much less sit through a ceremony. I could not believe how debilitating it felt. After I got back into bed, I realised I had taken a flu shot in the fall but I still felt horrible. At an MD appointment later, my throat sample confirmed within 5 seconds that I had good old flu variety A. Not COVID which no one really had on the mainland USA, we thought, but I had generic seasonal flu. I did not regret the shot but realised it was not guarantee of prevention, merely an aid.
It took me another week to get back to work. Sure enough, the faculty thought I was on a three week holiday (uh, no), but I finally returned to the office as the magnitude of the COVID challenges began dawning on us.
But that was the point. I did get back to work within a week rather than being out for multiple weeks had I not taken the shot in the fall. And, when they administered it, the medical team acknowledged that it was for a certain flu strain but these wretched viruses are pretty cagy about morphing into a different strain which the particular vaccine did not cover.
When the COVID vaccines appeared in late 2020, my husband and I were ecstatic. I mean over the top excited. I knew I would likely have a hard time when they administered it but perhaps this one would be different from prior injections. I wanted it immediately if it would allow us to travel, socialise, and go back to Roosevelt Hall. We had no trouble being just us and the cats here in our beautiful home but I had a college to run. My considered experience over thirty plus years of teaching was the face-to-face teaching far far triumphs over remote so I wanted us to get back to in person National War College education. Bring on the needle!
I was also ever more troubled by the weird discussions we were having as a nation about motives, causes, and especially cures to COVID. As I have said here many times, federal employees are citizens like residents of idaho Falls, Salem, or Lewes. Feds are not people seeking to mess with others’ minds or to hurt their health or anything else that was being thrown around about the motives of the federal bureaucracy in connection with finding vaccinations and, hopefully, a cure. If we had a vaccine or a couple that were tested rigourously and approved through a replicable process, I was willing to take the innoculation. The tales of people on ventilators had become more terrifying to me than the prospect of passing out from a shot.
I also realised that the number of people dying of COVID around the world either without access to or chosing not to access this amazing option was not a number I sought to join. Turns out you can change an old dog’s thinking if you present the animal with facts on such a grand scale. I have now had all of the COVID boosters available, taking the most recent one yesterday afternoon which was the earliest I could schedule an appointment. The pharmacist was superb—I barely felt anything for the first 60 seconds. I told her how much I appreciated her skill, then shifted chairs so my husband could receive his dose.
Then my usual blotchy vision kicked in. The room started spinning, and I put my head down between my knees. I just sat for 10 minutes, feeling my usual embarrassment this happens but, hey, except for my husband, would these people ever see me again?
And I knew it would pass. You know what? It passed, I got up, came home. And today the sun rose in the east.
I slept really well last night as each of the inoculations has made me sleepy. But, no other effects except an ever so slightly heavy upper arm. I am mean slight.
Actions create consequences is something I believe so firmly in life. Yes, I don’t do well with shots but I am lucky enough to live in a country where we offer them to people as a preventative. A shot prevents a debilitating or deadly disease in most cases. Not taking a shot may lead to a debilitating or deadly disease in many cases. Choice easy for me.
I also firmly believe we do well when we consider short term pain en lieu of long-term illness—or worse. We tend to think of the immediate in this country rather than the long-term. That makes no sense to me as I expect to be part of that long-term.
Today was a spectacularly beautiful day along the Creek. I was a bit sleepier than usual in the afternoon so I lost about an hour on the deck. I knew the effects of the inoculation were likely to tire me as they had done in each of the prior instances but that was ok when I considered the benefits of protection.
It’s a cost-benefit analysis: short term pain over long term gain. A choice is an action with consequences. I am good with that.FIN