Oh well.
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My wife and I got our second vaccine Monday morning. As expected, today there was a bit of achey soreness and a bit of fatigue, brief bit of feeling feverish and nausea. But Iām over 40, so thatās just a typical Tuesday.
A couple of other people from work also got it at the same time and called out today, due to bad reactions. Both are people that are the type to just be a little late because they broke their arm on the way in and had to get it put in a cast or something.
Not sure whether Iām lucky to have dodged a bad reaction, or whether other people really donāt normally feel like this.
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My wife had much the same reactions. The nausea lasted the whole day after the shot. Much better now.
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2d pfizer shot this morning and Iāve had no side effects either time.
And just in time as I think Iāll be flying in the near future.
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Fast forward to now, four months after I had corona. Sure, my taste and smell came back within the week of testing positive. But they came back wrong.
Itās hard to explain, but basically thereās a lot of foods that I loved that now all taste the same as each other. And that taste is awful .
Interestingly enough, itās the same with smell. And the smell of these things that no longer smell good to me smell exactly the same as the things that taste bad. Like, thereās no difference between the smell of the bad stuff and the taste of the bad food. It all basically smells completely rotten.
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To not be able to eat peanut butter anymore? That sounds like one of the worst lingering effects I could have.
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Having Reeses PB cups and mint both suddenly become inedible sounds like an absolute nightmare. (one of my favorite ice cream flavors is mint chocolate chip)
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my taste and smell took about 6-7 months to come back, but they are both back now. it was such a slow thingā¦ for a long time there was nothing, then i could only taste base notes (spicy, sour, sweet, etc.), then some flavors started to come back, but not others. weirdly, coffee was the last to come back. i could smell it for a month or two before i could taste it, which was super frustrating. luckily, i donāt have any weird off or bad flavors ā maybe because it took so long to come back? i donāt know. i know someone who now thinks that cooking onions smell like rotting garbage, and he canāt stand them anymore. i donāt know if that extends to all alliums or not, though. he says heās going to let me know.
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Thatās wonderful. That sure took a long time, though. Iām glad you donāt have any of the taste/smell changes.
Sounds like some people have had vision changes, including nodules on the macula. OMG.
Iām glad I didnāt know this when I first had the blurry spot in my vision. Fortunately I tested negative for COVID, and the retina specialist could find nothing wrong with my eye.
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yeah, me too. thanks! sometimes coffee seems odd to me, but itās not bad. my only lingering symptom (that i can tell, anyway) is tinnitus. i am still holding out hope that my second shot will rid me of it, but i would think the first shot would at least have changed it, and honestly i donāt notice anything different.
omg, i didnāt know about this! iāve noticed my eyesight changing in the past year, but i figured it was just age-related (and it might be). i go in for my annual checkup in Juneā¦ now iām wondering what that will yield.
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I hope I didnāt scare you unnecessarily! What kind of changes? Since I got cataract surgery & lens implants my eyes have been amazingly stable ā except for that recent annoyance.
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oh, you didnāt, iām fine ā itās just another chit in the āomg what if!ā pile ā you know how it is. i suspect itās just normal vision loss that comes with hitting my mid-50s, sigh.
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A fifth-grade math and science teacher peddled a bogus conspiracy theory on Wednesday to students at Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, warning them that they should not hug parents who had been vaccinated against the coronavirus for more than five seconds because they might be exposed to harmful vaccine shedding.
āHola Mami,ā one student wrote in an email to her parents from school, saying that the teacher was ātelling us to stay away from you guys.ā
Once Florida began administering coronavirus vaccines, Ms. Centner invited members of the school community to a virtual talk with an anti-vaccination pediatrician to discuss potential dangers of the vaccines. Mr. Kennedy visited the school and met with teachers. So did another anti-vaccination activist, who also met with students.
Then came the announcement that vaccinated teachers would have to stay away from students, or would not be allowed to return for now if they get the vaccine over the summer. āIf you want to get it, this is not going to be the right school for you,ā Ms. Centner told teachers about the vaccine on a virtual call.
On Thursday, Mr. Pizzo introduced a legislative amendment that he hoped would prevent schools and businesses from prohibiting people from getting vaccinated, calling such a policy āquackery.ā
He had some bipartisan support. āLetās show that the Senate is not insane,ā said State Senator Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, a Republican.
It failed on a tied vote.
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And here I thought SpongeBob SquarePants jumped the shark!
Seriously, when the going gets absurd, the absurd gets absurder.
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While it is fun to hear Molly Jong-Fast read an advertisement for cyber things, the real highlight of the show is an interview with science historian Steven Johnson on lessons learned from the pandemic
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Journal of the Corona Year
04/26, Monday
Trying to get an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month brought back unpleasant memories of trying to register for college classes, and always being a few credits short. It seemed like everyone around me was getting vaccinated. On the Brian Lehrer show I would hear people telling about the inventive on-line tricks they used to get an appointment. I started getting a little obsessed with my failure. Itās a connected world, and I was not connecting.
But then I remembered that I had other things to worry about. And whatever I was doing to avoid the disease was working so far. I never shop on Black Friday, so I decided to wait a few weeks before trying again.
Today is Monday the 26th. I decided this would be the week I would resume trying.
First I tried Walgreens. They are a 10-minute walk away. To search for an appointment they wanted me to register on their website. The last thing I need is my personal information somewhere out on the internet protected by a forgotten username and password.
So I went back to the Cityās website to search for an appointment at the Army Terminal. Including walking, the Brooklyn Army Terminal is about half an hour away. I quickly secured their first available appointment at 12:15 on the next day, Tuesday. This is the first time I have ever used employer-provided health insurance.
After scheduling the appointment I had phantom pains in my neck and shoulders, so I knew I was mentally prepared.
4/27, Tuesday
Iām still working remotely, but I took a long lunch and got to the facility just before 12:15. Registration was carried out under a roof suspended over a sidewalk. The tape on the floor indicating 6-foot spacing was almost totally worn away. Four tables were set up, with two staff members at each table. They were all efficient and bored ā what you should expect from a City-run facility in Brooklyn. I did not have to wait in line.
Although I had email confirmation and a QR code, there was some trouble finding my name in the system. Eventually the supervisor found it. She was also bored but efficient, and kept things moving. She was polite, but I imagine she would not take ānoā for an answer.
I was finally signed into the system. Them I was asked the same set of questions about my medical history I had answered online the night before. He eventually came to āare you currently pregnant?ā then quickly followed it up with āoh, wait, never mind.ā His delivery was flat. You could tell he had said this joke many times before. It must have been his reliable, go-to joke that put people at ease. I was too nervous to laugh.
The shots were administered in a small community of grey metal huts. The kind of temporary offices that would be transported on the back of truck ā probably used at construction sites. They were neatly arranged. It looked like the temporary holiday shops around Bryant Park, but more industrial.
Two people would go in at a time. There was a nurse on each side of the hut and two sliding curtains for privacy. Everything inside and out was either grey or white. The nurse I was assigned to was reassuringly nice, and asked me the same medical history questions a third time. She, too, had an iPad. She did not make the pregnancy joke.
She pointed out why my reservation was so hard to find. I had registered for 12:15 AM, not PM. The facility is open 24-hours but I had forgotten that.
I received the dose and did not feel a thing. I can feel mosquitoes when they sting, but I did not feel this needle at all. Needles must have advanced quite a bit.
After the shot I was directed to an open-sided temporary hall. The kind of place where they keep chickens at a state fair. This is where the newly-vaccinated were to wait 15-minutes and wait for any bad side affects.
I was checked-in by a set of nurses at a table. 15 minutes later, at 12:45, I would be checked-out by another set of nurses at another table. They all had iPads. These must be he same iPads used by all the pollworkers during the last election.
Having lived with the idea of a vaccine for the past year ā Hearing about all the research, all the planning, all the waiting ā it doesnāt seem real. Did this finally happen?
The Side Effects
Throughout the afternoon I felt bit odd. I wasnāt exactly sick, but I wasnāt well either. I had no appetite. Periodically I would get a headache that would leave me feeling dizzy. By about 6:00 these sensations had passed.
Over the course of the afternoon the point of injection became incredibly sore. I mainly noticed it when I had to raise my arm. A sharp pain that would stay for the next two days.
The Heart Issue
While I was waiting the 15 minutes to leave, I went to find a seat. As I was standing there, checking my phone, I felt a tightness behind my sternum for the first time. It was an anxious sensation. Like hearing your named called at a dentist office.
I assumed it was nerves. Thinking of all the potential side effects and being surrounded by needles can do that to me.
This sensation however persisted all afternoon. Sometimes becoming distractingly heavy.
By the time I went to bed it had gone, but was replaced by a dull pinching on the left side of my heart. It felt like someone had stuck a pin in my heart and left it there.
There is nothing on any reputable website that mentions this as a side effect. In fact the CDC website encourages people with heart conditions to get vaccinated. Well I didnāt have a heart condition until now.
05/01, Saturday
On Saturday morning I woke up and noticed immediately that my heart was feeling better. I knew this because I couldnāt feel it at all, which is how it should be. Generally, if you donāt notice your internal organs they are doing fine.
There would be momentary relapses occasionally throughout the day.
5/02, Sunday
It is Sunday. This is the first day I have felt back to normal. No pain in my arm or my pericardial region. I feel so good I might even peel the Band-Aid off.
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