This morning after dropping Alex off at school, I received the first dose of the two-dose Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine regime at the building that usually serves as my voting precinct location.
Wake County has done a reasonably decent job of cutting down on some of the more tedious aspects of getting the jab…the registration and appointment were made online, a QR code scan and some girls asking questions armed with the contact-less temperature phaser currently in vogue and I’m into the registration area for a couple more questions in a couple of stations.
I have to say that the staff that were working the Wake County Commons Building clinic today were pretty much top-shelf for the lot of them. I was especially impressed by the nurse actually giving the jab who truly listened and understood the reasons why I don’t need (nor really want!) the play-by-play or the NASA-style countdown.
I just need a minute to find a place of calmness and Zen to counteract an intense discomfort with some who is unfamiliar well within the distance I find tolerable. Once I’m there and it rarely takes long if I’ve got a song I can play over and over in my head to focus upon (today’s was ironically “Feels So Good” by Chuck Mangione which was suggested by the Traverse!), she’s got a free-fire zone to shoot at her discretion and we both walk away none the worse for wear!
She was absolutely perfect. 🙂
Once you’ve gotten the jab and your fabulous parting gifts which includes the CDC vaccination card, it’s off to the corridor for a bit of observation (and in my case, the SMS message to schedule the second appointment had already arrived so that was sorted straightaway).
Monitoring this area was a delightful older African-American lady with quite the ready wit and genuine sense of humour that made passing the time truly enjoyable. She was every bit the mama we all love but know we aren’t going to pull one over on her! And it was clear that she truly loved her role interacting with those of us in observation that said as much that it was far more favourable than the training she’d just gotten to do the registration bit.
Seeing as she was playing along and hanging tough with some of us crazies waiting to be released and I’m probably barking mad anyway, I had to ask her if anyone had tried messing with her by pretending like they were having a bad reaction. I was thinking of Security Chief Garibaldi in the episode “Divided Loyalties” where Lyta is trying to telepathically trigger a sleeper traitor in their midst and when she got to Garibaldi, he acts like he’s possessed until he finally says “gotcha!”
I thought she was going to bust a gut laughing and then she followed it up with the person seated next to me “he so crazy!”
Got it in one!
When it was time to head away, she told me it was time to take my crazy butt on out of there but the broad smile and twinkle in her eye said she really appreciated having people out there who could have some fun with the process.
All and all, I was done and on my way in about 40 minutes with most of that a bit of “hurry up and wait” before and after the actual jab itself which took only about 15 minutes from queue outside the door to the observation area.
Second shot has ironically landed on Grandma’s birthday so maybe there was some cosmic influence to North Carolina being a bit laggard in getting the jabs in the arms that I was in the right place at the right time. 🙂