Got Boosted

Me and Lee-Anne got our COVID booster shots today. I got my first two from a pop-up clinic for people who have disabilities and for the people that work with them. Lee-Anne got hers in advance in Brampton because she was on the payroll of her family's optometry practice. For the booster, there's been much less guidance on who can or should be getting it, so we both wound up booking our appointments in the same manner as the general population.

We managed to land an appointment for the same timeslot and location. It was at the Region of Waterloo Headquarters. I wound up getting Moderna for the third time in a row, and Lee-Anne got her third Pfizer, so neither of us have had to mix yet.

At the other place I went to, they asked everybody to wait in their vehicles for 20 minutes after getting their shot and honk their horn if they felt like they were going to pass out. This was upsetting to me because, while I've never personally passed out after a vaccination, I've sat next to people when they have, and I've never known someone to shout or otherwise indicate that they were about to pass out. I didn't have faith in the one person looking over the parking lot to be able to monitor everyone in their vehicles either. Also, I don't have a car and neither do many people with disabilities, who they were specifically serving, and they didn't have a clear alternative or offer any guidance on what to do if you didn't come by vehicle. I followed the arrows on the ground as instructed looking for a waiting room and eventually found myself outside in a rain storm. I wound up wedged against the building under a small overhang in the rain for 20 minutes, hoping that if I were to pass out, I'd be able to shout for help beforehand. When I came back for my second shot, they had a clearly marked waiting room.

At this new place, they had a standard waiting area with a person monitoring, and didn't even give the option to wait in a vehicle. We also only had to wait five minutes, instead of twenty.

So far I've had no side effects, not even a sore arm, which I thought was less about the chemicals and more about getting jabbed in the bicep with a needle. I haven't heard of anybody having difficulty with their booster yet. It seems like everybody gets to have one bad reaction and from thereon out they don't get much in the way of side effects. For most people it's with their second shot, which was my experience. First time around, I just had a sore arm afterward. The second time, I had a low-level fever with aches and pains for about a day. This time around, nothing. But Mom got a week-long fever after her first dose, which gave me a lot of anxiety because I thought that if the first one is usually better than the second, then her second dose could be that much worse. But the medical professionals were just impressed by her symptoms and said it was because she has a great immune system, and she proceeded to have absolutely no symptoms for her second dose.