Disclaimer: The comments in this blog are my personal opinion and may or may not reflect an adopted position of the city of Glendale and its city council.
I promised to provide a brief update regarding my journey to become fully vaccinated. My first shot was on January 13th and was the Pfizer vaccine. Registering for my first appointment was relatively simple. I got on the state website, registered, answered their questions and was able to make an appointment at State Farm Stadium. I knew I had a 21 to 28 day window to get my second vaccination.
Not so with an attempt to secure an appointment for my second vaccination. I knew the 28th day was February 8th. So, I started by going to the state website. The first sign that I knew things weren’t going well was that I’d log in and kept getting kicked off the site. When I was finally successful, after many tries, to find a vacant appointment slot between February 2nd and February 8th there were no slots available. Here I was, trying to make an appointment a day or two after my first shot and there were no empty appointment slots available. How could this be? I have no answer.
After trying the online approach for several days with my level of concern rising, I used the hotline number provided on the state website. It took several calls and much dead airtime waiting to talk to someone before I got a live person who promptly told me that there appeared to be no slots available, but she would check and call me back. The following day I received the phone call and the only slot I could get was at 2:45 AM on the last day, the 28th day of my window. I immediately confirmed.
That morning I made my way to State Farm Stadium. I have nothing but praise for the setup used at the Stadium. On both occasions, there was a logical and quick process to confirm my appointment. The longest part of the process is waiting 15 minutes to verify that I had no immediate reaction to the vaccine.
There have been stories of some having had mild flu symptoms, headache, fever, and chills or experiencing tiredness. I am here to tell you that I had no symptoms after my second Pfizer vaccination. Nothing at all.
I had heard that one is more likely to experience side effects after the Moderna vaccination, but I don’t know of anyone personally who received Moderna and experienced symptoms after the second vaccination.
I can report to you that although I had difficulty lining up an appointment for my second vaccination, don’t give up. Be persistent. You can get it done. Your chances of having a reaction are minimal and should not deter you. I urge all those in the 1A and 1B groups to get your vaccination. It’s worth the effort. Even though it offers a certain amount of reassurance and peace of mind, I will continue to mask up and socially distance and you should as well.
© Joyce Clark, 2021
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which is in accordance with Title 17 U.S. C., Section 107. The ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law and who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such material. For more information go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use,’ you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.