Stabbed (113/365)

[white_hart]

I was quite anxious about going for my first COVID jab today; less about the jab as about going inside a building other than my house for the first time this year, and driving somewhere new, and whether I needed to get there extra early to allow for walking from the car to the vaccine centre, and what I should do about lunch if I had a meeting until 12, my appointment was at 12:45 and then I was going to go for a swim. In fact, it was all very efficient, with plenty of signage and volunteers directing people. There was a steady stream of people coming in but it didn't feel particularly busy, and I was in and out in not much more than five minutes, with instructions to wait in my car for fifteen minutes before driving.

So, now I've had my first dose of the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine. I was quite glad it was that one; given where I work it would have felt a bit disloyal to have one of the others (although obviously I would have taken whatever was on offer). No side effects so far (unless a greater-than-usual tendency to fail to hit the space bar when typing is a vaccine side-effect, which seems unlikely), but I guess I need to wait and see how I feel tomorrow.

I'd timed my appointment to fit in with my usual Friday-lunchtime swim, which turned out to be a particularly good thing as it was one friend's last swim for a while as she has to isolate over the weekend before an operation next week. It was gloriously sunny, with the water in double figures by all of our thermometers. I picked up a bit of plastic floating in the river, intending just to be tidy, and discovered it was a small sparkly tube of bubble mixture, so I sat on the bank afterwards blowing bubbles and decided that nearly 47 is probably too old to be a manic pixie dream girl, so I must be a manic pixie dream crone instead.

Comments

[oursin]

Yay vaccine!

[white_hart]

I'm not planning to rush out and do anything different, but it's still good to have had it.

[hilarita]

Yay vaccine! And bubbles!

[white_hart]

The wand is very small so it's quite hard to get it to produce bubbles, but I managed some at least.

[cmcmck]

Huzzah!

Glad you got your first jab! :o)

[white_hart]

I'm not rushing out and changing what I do, but I am glad to have had it!

[cmcmck]

We've now had both and have taken pretty much the same view for now.

[mountainkiss]

I am a bit baffled by this because everyone I know was in and out in five minutes and mine took an hour, during the course of which I talked to about fifteen different people. These conversations were all variants on "what is your NHS number?" or "please follow the orange arrows", but it seemed highly engineered.

[white_hart]

I talked to quite a lot of people - there was one guy outside the building, another one checking booking numbers just inside the building and issuing the cards, a row of people checking people in upstairs and writing more things on the cards, the people doing the jabs and lots of others just directing people, but it was all incredibly quick and efficient. (T's was, too - I'd taken my kindle but I'd barely switched it on before he came our again.)

[mountainkiss]

I think we should write to KCL and tell them to do a study to explore correlation between vaccine and failure to hit the space bar.

[white_hart]

:-)

[qatsi]

There's an Ig Nobel prize waiting to be won!

[alithea]

Yay for getting jabbed! Hope you are still feeling fine today.

That swim looked absolutely glorious, I am very envious now the weather is better. The local pool is opening next week so I shall have to investigate because I'm really missing swimming now. I'd rather swim outdoors but the loch is no swimming and the closest place to swim is the North Sea, which I am not venturing without a wetsuit! Also, I'm not actually a huge fan of sea swimming, waves are fine for splashing about in on a hot day but for actual swimming, I much prefer a lake.

[white_hart]

My arm is very sore and I have a pounding headache, and I felt a bit achy when I first woke up, but paracetamol seems to have fixed that.

I love the sea but definitely prefer inland swimming to having to deal with waves. What a shame you can't swim in the loch!

[alithea]

Ah, hope you feel better tomorrow.

Yes, I was kinda hoping people swam in the loch anyway but there's a blue green algae warning and no-one in the local wild swimming group swims there, and everywhere inland to swim requires a car journey.

[white_hart]

Ah, yes. You don't want to swim there if there's blue-green algae. Nasty stuff.

(I don't think I'd be able to swim easily without a car. One of my friends' car has been out of action for some time and that's definitely been problematic, and is more so now the other friend, who was giving her lifts, won't be swimming for a while.)

[alithea]

The loch is only about 10 mins walk so would have been perfect but hey ho, as you say, nasty stuff.

The pool is a bit of a trek, I suspect I'll be getting a bus back even if I walk there. Hopefully it isn't too hideously chlorinated.

[nineveh_uk]

Congratulations on being vaccinated! I hope you're feeling ok this morning and can enjoy the weather, and not to bothered by side-effects.

[white_hart]

Thank you! I have a sore arm and a thumping headache and definitely feel less than 100%, but nothing like as bad as some people seem to have been.

[antisoppist]

Hooray for vaccine. I had a couple of days of feeling yuck and a sore arm and then it stopped and I felt great for a week or so and then in week 4-5 I felt awful again with headaches and the whole of my arm aching. I don't know if it was vaccine-related that late on or if I got ill with something else and that re-triggered it all but seeing as it was my vaccinated arm, I reported it on the website. I hope this is useful to science.

[muninnhuginn]

Interesting. My arm's stayed sore, but is significantly worse after 6 weeks. Have also reported it. (Oddly my spouse felt absolutely rotten about a week ago--abot 4-5 weeks after his first dose).

I'm still glad to have had the jab.

[muninnhuginn]

Hooray for vaccines!

And bubbles!

[white_hart]

Indeed!