It was the night of March 22, and I was anxious about getting up on time to be able to schedule an appointment. As a university student employee who worked with other students I was eligible slightly earlier than others, but appointments offered at locations near me were being filled up fast. I wanted more than anything to be vaccinated before I returned home for summer break; the rest of my family and friends back in Wisconsin had already had both doses of their vaccines since Wisconsin fast-tracked public vaccination efforts.
The next morning I woke up at 6:45a.m. and groggily opened my laptop. I went to Publix’s website and clicked on the link to sign up for a vaccine appointment. Publix refilled their vaccine appointments every Monday morning at precisely 7a.m., but Broward county appointments were some of the first to fill. I hit refresh at 6:59a.m. and was placed into a waiting room for a chance to get an appointment slot. My heart was pounding; a year of my life had been overrun by COVID-19 and its consequences. I couldn’t visit my friends or family from out of town, I couldn’t feel safe traveling and I couldn’t eat at some of my favorite restaurants or attend any events. The chance of getting vaccinated felt like it opened a whole new world of possibilities for me.
Sure enough, I got an appointment, and on March 24 I got my first dose of the Moderna vaccine. It felt a little strange, almost too non-monumental, when I arrived at my appointment. They had a volunteer check me in and a nurse came out of Publix’s pharmacy and sat me down in a sectioned off check-out aisle. I’ve hated needles all my life but was so excited that I didn’t even feel the poke. As I waited during the fifteen minute observation period, grocery shoppers passed me by. Some gave me dirty looks, but others gave me thumbs-ups and smiles. After my observation period was over, I returned to my dorm. I had no side effects from the first dose, besides maybe a little tenderness in my arm.
I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccine on April 21, three days before I got on a plane to go home before summer vacation. At this point, NSU had begun giving students access to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on campus, but I had already gotten the first dose of Moderna and had to stick with it. I returned to Publix and this time they poked me in the entrance of the store behind a curtain.
I had heard from a lot of my friends back home who had gotten the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines that the second dose is what gets you. It was just my body’s way of fighting back to keep me healthy, but by the evening I was running a fever and felt pretty awful.
After a day or so, my side effects subsided and I was fine. I didn’t grow a tail, I didn’t change my DNA and I didn’t develop the many diseases that anti-vaxxers swore that I would. All in all, I just had a fever and a sore arm for a few days. If I had the opportunity to go back and do it again I would, because it meant that I could see my family and friends again without worrying about giving them an illness that might be fatal. Even if in fifty years I learn that this vaccine did nothing and I was just extremely lucky and hadn’t caught COVID-19 yet, I would still do it again, because I was making an effort to protect my community and the people around me.
