The Big Effort. The Long Wait

On paper I should have been able to get my COVID vaccinations early on, but “on paper” bore no resemblance to real life. Every time I heard the clarion call that vaccines were available and coming to a pharmacy, clinic, hospital, or convention hall near me, and that all I needed to do was book an appointment, I felt each new day could by my day. But none of them were.

Friends who had already received their shots took me on as a project. They supplied me phone numbers and website addresses that held the prospect of a vaccination appointment. With each email I fielded from them, my list of resources grew longer. I wish I could say that list grew more promising. It didn’t. It became a source of constant frustration. It made me cranky but I didn’t want to let my friends know that.

Several times every day I made the rounds of checking websites and calling phone numbers in search of an appointment. I tried before the sun rose, while it was high in the sky and after it set, always with the same results. Pharmacies and clinics were fully booked or had used up their vaccine allotments and stopped taking names to add to their waiting lists. Mass vaccination centers had no appointments available. The local hospital sent me to their main hospital in the city who was only vaccinating city residents. That left me out.

I began to feel that my vaccinated friends thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. “Did you try here? Did you try there?” they asked day after day. I imagined them keeping score on me and I cringed when I had to answer, “Yes, but ...” They weren’t. Isolation had warped my perspective. “But I heard that such-and-such a place was giving vaccinations!” I tired of explaining the short vaccine supply and that these places had already run out of it.

The one and only time I found “appointments available” on a pharmacy site, by the time I entered my name and the other information on the eligibility form, all slots had been filled. I felt trapped, more so than I had in this year of pandemic lockdown. Vaccination equals liberation and I’m ready.

Then someone told me about a Twitter feed that consolidated appointments from all over the New York City area and tweeted them as they became available. The day after I started following that feed, I not only found an appointment close by for the next day, within three minutes I had it booked. In less that 24 hours I had my first jab.

Second one comes this week and I am excited!