the second dose

 Yesterday was the second dose of the (Pfizer) COVID vaccine for me. My university arranged for the sports-bus of the local high school to shuttle people over there (in a couple groups to allow distancing; there were about 45 of us). 

It was well run and once again I'm impressed with our new-ish university president - he went and got his second dose with us, he rode on the same bus run as I did (it was the last run; he saw to it everyone else got shuttled up there first and then went on the last bus).

On the way up he joked about unruly kids on field trips (and said he remembered buying someone a bus ticket home when they acted out on a field trip at the university he was at previously). He strikes me as sort of a jovial person and he also did some things that suggest he's careful - like, he asked before we disembarked "Is there anyone who might need to wait longer than the 15 minutes?" I raised my hand (a couple others did too). I didn't have any problems the first time but the thing with being a generally-allergic person is *you never know for sure.*

He then said: All of you need to get off first and go to the front of the line. So by the time the last people were vaccinated and had waited their 15 minutes, we'd have waited 30.

Again, it was a well-run operation - six or eight long tables set up in the high school gym, a pair of nurses at either end with the sharps containers and a box of hypodermics. There were people at the door to collect our information (we were asked to already have the forms filled out; they were e-mailed to us) and then another person who directed you to either go to one of the vaccine stations or, when they were full, to a chair to wait. In another spot, there were chairs to sit on (all distanced) after the vaccine. 

I got my vaccine at 10:47 and was back on campus by noon.

I didn't have any side effects (other than a sore arm) yesterday but this morning when I got up, I was achy and fatigued and had a headache. I take that though as evidence that the vaccine "took" and my immune system was working. I was mostly better by midafternoon today though I haven't much of an appetite. (A common thing when my immune system is going). 

And now, in three weeks or so, I should be as immune as I ever will be. (Yes, I am hearing a few worrying stories of a few people who contracted the virus even after being vaccinated, but apparently none of them died, so there's that). I'm still hoping maybe case counts will continue to drop and in May or June I'll be able to go visit my mom. 

And maybe, if I get sick of shopping at Pruett's or they don't have the things I need, I could once again consider an early-some-weekend-morning trip to Wal-Mart. I had been avoiding them after a colleague reported how bad the fellow shoppers were at distancing (and most people here, it seems, won't mask) but if I have reasonable immunity maybe it's OK? It'll be nice to get back into the world a bit more again.