Be a hero another day

On Monday, I get my second COVID vaccine. I’m not going to lie – I’m dreading it like I’ve dreaded few things before in my entire life.

Yesterday morning I read a pretty good article about this vaccine, and I should have saved it right away. I naturally thought I would easily find it again to maybe copy and paste (giving the author full credit) so that I wouldn’t have to write this whole explanation here. Alas, here I am, starting from scratch.

In my January 22 post, I already explained how this new vaccine works and how it’s different from the other vaccines we’ve received over the years. With my appointment for my second vaccine coming up so fast, this has all been on my mind. Obsessively so.

Any article you find on the vaccine will tell you that there can be side effects – fever, chills, body aches, fatigue, headaches, nausea, and, naturally, a sore arm. But they tell you that about a lot of things. You know? How when you get a new prescription, the handout says that this medication may cause diarrhea or constipation, fatigue or insomnia, excessive facial hair, baldness, shortness of breath, blindness, death. But everybody knows that those side effects are really rare (except for the patients who immediately call their doctors after reading that and refuse to take the med). Most of us know that the pharmaceutical companies have to print that stuff because one in four million test subjects experienced those reactions. We understand that these drugs are totally safe. And they are. Seriously.

And then, the COVID vaccine came along with its list of adverse reactions. And instead of one in a million people getting them, pretty much everyone I know who has had the vaccine has had some sort of negative response. And when they say fever, chills, body aches, fatigue, they mean those symptoms might knock you clean off your feet and curl you up in your bed under six down comforters for two days.  

Let me back up to explain the technology again.

When the first dose of the COVID vaccine is given, it is like a training dose. It’s training your body to recognize the coronavirus as an invader. If that first dose does its job, by the time you get your second dose, the body immediately realizes what’s going on and puts the immune system on high alert. When the immune system is high alert, it can trigger all those side effects listed as a way to fight this invader (or at least I assume that’s how it works; I’ve been searching the internet for twenty minutes now and couldn’t find any clarification on that).

But whatever happens, or why or how it happens, those fevers, chills, body aches, and fatigue – they could well take you out for a day or two. I just want to warn everyone. Especially when the younger population starts getting their vaccines. As we age, our immune systems slow down, which is why the elderly are more prone to illness. The good thing for us older folks with this vaccine is that our slower immune systems mean that this high alert response won’t be so pronounced, so we shouldn’t have such severe side effects. Or that’s sure what I’m hoping.

Bottom line – get the vaccine, both the first and second dose, when it's available to you. Have some Tylenol or ibuprofen on hand and take them as you need to. Make arrangements to take a day or two off of work after you get the second shot if you need to. Drink plenty of water. Don’t be a hero. Stay in bed if you need to. Or maybe just if you want to. You can be a hero another day.

Chris  

Oh, one more thing I just read. If you are due for your mammogram, you might want to wait until four weeks after your vaccine. All this immune response can show up as an immune response in your breasts, which could show up as something which happens when your breasts are defending themselves against cancer. You could get an alarming abnormal mammogram and need to have it repeated.