I Get My Second Pfizer Vaccination

I Get My Second Pfizer Vaccination

With everything that had been going on with a) the operation, b) atrial fibrillation problem, and c) the pleural effusion, I began to worry that my second vaccination would take place outside the recommended timescale, and therefore too late to be effective; I might have to start all over again. 

I'd had the first dose in January, with the second one scheduled for 10 April, but then I received an e-mail saying the date was being brought forward, by a couple of weeks or so. Normally, I would have jumped at the chance to get it all sorted out earlier, but as I was feeling quite unwell, I wrote to ask if it could be postponed until after I had been in hospital and the pleural effusion had been drained? I said I hoped to be back up and running again by 15 April, thus giving me 48 hours' recovery time. I could not fault the swift response I received from the vaccination team; there was a named person sending me the information, and my appointment had been rearranged for 15 April instead. 

Unfortunately, as I've written in an earlier post, the procedure far more stressful than I had ever expected, so back I went to the vaccination team to tell them how I was, and it was heart-warming to get a very sympathetic, personal response. Again, it was from a named member of the team; he said he was so sorry to hear I was still not well, and if I could let him have some dates when I could return for dose Number 2, he would fit in with me!

I was really impressed by this attitude. After discussing good dates with Wendy, and when she would be able to drive me up to the hospital, I wrote again with the list and, within 24 hours, I had a reply booking me in at a very convenient time on 1 May. I was also assured I was still well within the time limit for the second dose, so it was all systems go!

After this, everything went beautifully. I began to feel very much better, and by 1 May, was more than ready for an outing to London.

The traffic was reasonably light, we got brilliant parking in the underground car park at the hospital; I was hale and hearty climbing up the stairs to ground level, and then walking "round the houses" to the large marquee where they were using the Pfizer vaccine. It really was that simple; I walked in, the nurse on the desk had my details and said, "Please go to booth 4," and two minutes later I was sitting down, taking off my jacket! 

Wendy and I are both quite needle-phobic, and I had slathered on plenty of Emla cream before leaving home; I removed the plastic cover from the cream on my arm, and a minute or so later, I was all done and protected, not having felt a thing. 

We still had to sit in the waiting area by the exit for 15 minutes, to make sure I had no adverse reactions; chatting to Wendy meant 20 minutes passed in a flash! and then it was back to the car and we drove home. Even allowing time to find a ladies' loo to spend a penny before we set off, we took less than an hour for the whole thing - and on our way back to the car park, we also took the opportunity to look at a couple of dresses in one of the shops in the hospital concourse. There was hardly anyone else about, and we were fully masked and, as Wendy said, it was the first time we had looked at a dress shop in over a year!

Back home, I suffered very little reaction; my arm was a bit sore, and I didn't do any arm-flinging exercises for 48 hours - but what a relief to have joined the ranks of the fully vaccinated. 

Roll on the booster, later in the year!