Many of you knew I got two doses of the Pfizer Covid vaccine in early 2021 and that the second dose kicked my butt. My second dose was about 12:30 pm and by 10:30 I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly, but something felt off. By 3:30 am the body aches and chills and sweats had kept me from sleeping easily, and thus it began. I managed to make it to the couch about 10:30 am, and spent the following 5 hours in and out of sleep, just trying to get comfortable. By 3:30 I was able to stay awake more, by 7:30 I was able to handle standing long enough to shower, and I managed to stay awake until about 10:30, just to try and keep my sleep schedule somewhat on track.
October 29, 2021, I got my flu shot. I knew to expect the sore arm but I wasn’t expecting the extra fatigue and general body aches. I was still totally functional, but definitely moving a lot slower than usual.
So here comes the time that I can get my Covid booster! More long term information is in and shows that my initial vaccine didn’t have as high of a long term protection rate as the other major option, and the CDC ok’d a mix and match approach if you felt comfortable with it and your doctor didn’t advise you not to. Well, since I don’t have a general primary physician (I’m getting there, I just have to sit down and do it), I weighed the options and decided to mix it up and get Moderna for my booster shot. The complicated part was going to be picking a day that had availability when I did, and I wasn’t going to have to be at all responsible for childcare the next day just in case; knowing how my body reacted to Pfizer and how other people in my age bracket reacted to Moderna.
Cue the day of boosting. Got my shot at 11am. By 7pm I’m starting to feel off. The chills and aches started coming very shortly after that. Sometime around 11 hours after the shot, I woke up in pain from the aches and had a hard time feeling my fingertips. That kinda had me worried, but it subsided fairly quickly, along with what seemed like the worst of the aches up to that point. Pretty much all of Thursday was spent either in bed or on the couch. It hurt to move. I couldn’t get warm. It sucked. But I made it through the day, and so did my sick husband (unrelated to Covid). Thursday night was a very similar situation to Wednesday night, only without the finger numbness. By Friday morning, the injection site hurt and I had moments of being lightheaded, similar to standing up too fast, and that was about it.
Did it suck? Yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely yes.
Getting vaccinated is one of the easiest ways to protect myself and the people I care about. Could I possibly still get and pass Covid on? Of course. The purpose of the vaccine was never to be a cure all, it was meant to reduce severity and keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. Protection is a layered approach. The vaccine covers most of the inside, and wearing my mask properly (over the nose and mouth) keeps any germs I might have to myself and away from you. Conversely, you wearing your mask properly keeps your germs to yourself and away from me, regardless of your vaccine status.
Do I feel like everyone who can get vaccinated should? I do. But I also recognize that there is the potential for the vaccine (or lack of) to only affect you. But. The masks will always affect other people, and I won’t bend on that. I will die on that hill.
Stay safe, everyone.