I’m one of the fortunate ones to have a job willing to help out its people. From day one, the managers at my place of work have been fighting to get the COVID vaccine for both their employees and their residents. And once we finally got a clinic set up, nobody missed out on the chance.
Now for some reference. I work in an independent retirement community as a server. All people, minus most employees are fifty-five years of age or older, meaning we have a lot of high-risk people in the building just based on age alone. Now after states went into lockdown for the first time, to minimize risk to our residents, our building went into lockdown. Even so, we still had positive cases, which luckily were contained fairly quick so it wouldn’t spread. Now being that it is a technical retirement home, we were in the top tier/level to be some of the first places to get the vaccine, but as time went on, we ended up getting bumped further and further down the list, until finally we got lucky.
The Moderna vaccine is the version we received. We were handed papers with information about both COVID and the vaccine we were getting and within half an hour I was good to go. My initial reaction to the shot wasn’t anything too great to write about. I know most compared it to a flu shot, but never having one of those before I didn’t really know what to expect. The first day of the shot I didn’t really have anything but a somewhat sore arm. The second day is what knocked me on my ass. I felt as if my arm weighed a hundred pounds. It was sore to move in any direction but particularly upwards was the worst. My shoulder ached along with it and I thought that it would get better throughout the day as I moved around, and boy was I wrong. While I never really got any kind of typically “sick” feeling, I did feel pretty cruddy when the day was coming to an end. My entire body was sore and aching and it felt as if I could just collapse in a chair somewhere and fall right to sleep. I really wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed but as a side sleeper even sleeping was difficult. One shoulder hurt from the shot and the other was sore for having compensated for everything else. While the body aches and tiredness went away within a day, the soreness I had lingering for quite a bit after, sticking around for probably another two or three days before disappearing all together.
Now here comes the best part of all. COVID Arm. It is a thing, I swear. COVID Arm is a latent reaction that can come with the Moderna Vaccine. Pretty much what happens is anywhere from five to nine days after receiving your first shot, you start to get a harmless red, sometimes itchy, and slightly painful rash on the arm you got the shot in, it typically disappears within a few days. Now mine didn’t show up around the injection site but just a bit lower on my arm. It was red and hot to the touch but harmless otherwise and went away within a few days. The symptom, though, was not listed on the paper provided, not that it probably should’ve been seen as there were only fifteen reported cases of this happening at the time. The same redness did flare up a bit in the same spot when I received my second shot but went away even quicker that time, lasting maybe two days max.
The second shot I received was not as painstaking as the first. My arm was immediately sore after the shot but that went away after about a day as well. I did feel tired the day after but that didn’t linger. I do know some people have had a more adverse reaction to the second shot but luckily, I was not one of them.
There isn’t too much more to tell from my end. All I can say is that I am grateful to work in a place that fought to help its residents and workers safe and that I have no second thoughts about getting the vaccine. I know it does seem a bit daunting to receive this vaccine, especially with all the differing news going on about it, but I wouldn’t pass up a chance to keep not only myself safe, but my family and friends too.
For more information on COVID and Vaccinations please visit: COVID INFO