Covid jab

[ditchdwellers]

Absolutely! Steve, I am in complete agreement with JLR2 and Oldtone. Everyone is entitled to get their jab and their turn will come. I'm having my first jab tomorrow after having had to postpone it from January. 
Of course it's your choice, but I would hate for you to miss out due to some misplaced sense of self sacrifice.

[Fiz]

I'd have the vaccine Steve, you'll be helping to protect your Mum and the soonest done the sooner you can be visiting again and having your takeaway. But you should do it for you too, you're worth it. Our worth is not measurable, it just is.

[KizzyKazaer]

C'mon Steve, you're being a bit daft about this vaccine thing - roll up your sleeve and take it like a man

[Frances]

I am Confused. Ryan had first Jab at Local Dr end Jan, I had to go on a trip in a Taxi 24 miles each way .
We both had different makes. Now I have just had an ap for the next one after only  5 weeks
I rang up and said thats early they said 5 weeks is fine,
Now this apt is in a different town 25 miles away. I explained The trouble I have getting in and out of Cars and walking ,
Then I get told they will do a home visit , Good to know!!!,
Why when I asked last time they said no.
I have 9 steps up to the road and as we are no longer allowed to sit in front of Taxi I had to crawl in the back.
Oh says she  ring this number and your local nurse will do It. (Scream !!)
Oh and Ry had one make and I had the other, By the way except for a sore arm no side efffects.

[KizzyKazaer]

So you should have a home visit, Frances, can't understand either why this wasn't offered first time round!

I suppose what determines which vaccine is given and to whom, is availability and current stock situation at the time - with the Pfizer make, my understanding is that the doses have to be all used up within a given timeframe because of the difficulty in storing it...

At least both you and Ryan have your first doses under your belts (or rather, up your sleeves )

[Sunshine Meadows]

Frances,

 I hope things go much better for your second dose.


I had a very different experience today, the medical centre I went to is nearby but not my GPs so I was worried about getting lost in a bigger building. There was a security guard at the entrance that asked questions like had we had any Covid symptoms then asked us to use hand sanitizer. Mr Sunshine left to go wait in the car and a lovely lady asked if she could help then pushed me to reception, we got the paperwork then lady 2 pushed me down a corridor and into a room and asked the bloke in the room to give her a shout when she could wheel me back. The bloke was lovely and reassuring, asked questions about allergies etc. The injection itself was painless and afterwards he offered to push me to the car park yes please and that is what he did.

Steve,

If you book the appointment anyway and then decide if you are able to go on the day you might surprise yourself. Booking via my GP texted link  gave me the option to go somewhere local whereas booking from the general NHS website link of click here



 for everyone who is struggling with this and also anyone in need of hugs at the moment.

[Fiz]

Glad it all went so well Sunny. 

I shall be glad to get my second one done late April. Shielding ends in 7 days time which feels weird as I will have been shielding a year tomorrow I think. Supermarkets are known to be a source of Covid spread so I will continue to get my shopping online fortnightly but I may try and pick up my own prescriptions onc shielding ends because the super volunteers in my town's Facebook isolation group really do deserve some rest. I would have been lost without them over the last year. There are a lot of good people out there helping people.

[ditchdwellers]

I went to get my second jab and it all became quite interesting! 

My first one, Astra Zeneca,  had me throwing up in the car on the way home. I wasn't asked to wait after the jab and left straight away to come home. Fortunately, I always have sick bags in my bag so I didn't make a mess of my carers car   
It's less than a 10min drive from home to the vaccine point. Excruciating headaches followed for a couple of days. 

So this time around, I mentioned my side effects and all the doctors there went into a huddle. Looked at my med list and list of my conditions and then told me that I was too high risk to have the jab in the Parish Hall! They filled in a form and said that I probably had an allergic reaction to the vaccine so needed to have the second one under controlled conditions in hospital. I'm now waiting for a date. 
Why do I have to make life so complicated for myself? 

[Fiz]

Wowsers! But I am pleased that they're taking good care of you.

[suessad]

I sat on the fence for a while, as both my sons went down with flu for 5 days after.
As I was still trying to make my mind up NHS sent me a letter stating  ''I was Immunosuppressed and the jab would have little effect for me ''
 { Immunosuppression is the state in which your immune system is not functioning as well as it should. Immunosuppression can be caused by certain diseases but can also be induced by medications that suppress the immune system. Some medical procedures can also cause immunosuppression. }
 Was an eye opener, no-one had told me this before. Yes a few tears of self pity. Guess it didn't help being stuck indoors so long.
My weekly joy was granddaughter,  once a week standing in the front garden talking to me while I stood by open window.
So please don't condemn those who don't ...

[Fiz]

I wouldn't condemn anyone for choosing not to have the vaccine let alone someone who can't have it for medical reasons. I do hope that it is never compulsory though I do understand that there may be circumstances when some employers night insist on it for protection of others. Many immunosuppressed people with adrenal insufficiency have chosen to have the vaccine anyway although it's unknown how much protection they'll gain from it. It should be personal choice. 

My son is stalling on booking his because he's terrified of needles! I'm unsure whether he will get past that fear.

[Sunshine Meadows]

I had my second jab last week and was okay until two days later when I felt like carp. It seemed to me it had triggered Menieres symptoms of dizziness, nausea and fatigue. Catching up on replies I noticed how we as long terms sick and disabled people are both well prepared for bad days and at the same time the trauma we had when we cope all this time remains.  

It is so strange to me how anyone who is fit and healthy would think it is okay to say No to the vaccine. We have old wounds of being judged, shouted at or ignored by what seemed like all knowing medical staff having it can feel like saying No because we need to is going to be met with judgement and frowns. Being most at risk in so many ways and having to say No must be awful.

I am kind of rambling there is a point in there somewhere  

[Sunny Clouds]

I'm due to have my second jab tomorrow, Monday 7 June.

I'm grumbly over a fault in the database.  I got a text just over a week ago (on a Friday) inviting me to get an earlier appointment for my jab.  It had the date in the message American-style, saying I was booked in on 06/07/2021.  I checked my original text, and it  had the date British-style 07/06/21.  I phoned to make sure my booking is ok for the 7th and it was confirmed.

My starting supposition would be that texts like that are field-merge not individually typed, and if I'm right, there's a problem there with incompatible systems, and a serious possibility that a proportion of people not turning up for appointments have had what is for them the 'wrong' text message.

Of course, given how rubbish most of the expensively privately purchased schemes have been in the pandemic, that would be no surprise, but nor would it  be much of a surprise if they'd failed even after all this time to automate it , and have people typing dates into texts like that.  

I looked online and found that if I wanted to bring the appointment forward, I'd have to cancel my original appointment first.  That wasn't a risk I was prepared to take for the sake of the possibility of saving less than a week.

[Fiz]

Sounds like it was manually mistyped. Gosh totally assumed it was automated. 

It's unknown yet how long the vaccine protects you for. I'm expecting Covid to be a thing for a minimum of 2-3 years so I can see we'll be going round again with vaccines.

[Sunny Clouds]

Sounds like it was manually mistyped. Gosh totally assumed it was automated.

If it was mistyped, then it was only on a batch of 'come in early' texts, not on the main system because my phone call confirmed the original date (I didn't tell the call handler the correct date before he checked) and the reminder text was a British-style date.

But the book-earlier text, although from NHS booking, had a different style.  For instance, it had my name as well as the booking reference.  I even wonderd for a moment or two whether it could be some sort of scam, but it wasn't an email with a link that could be dodgy and although it mentioned a website, it was the official one.

That being said, as I type this, the fact that it mentioned my name does rather suggest that it was individually typed rather than field merge.  Even so, I still think there's a good chance it was typed by someone looking at a database.  How awful that my default supposition is that there's something wrong with the system when there may not be, just human error.

Normally, this sort of thing just makes me laugh at my own pettiness, it's just the potential for missed appointments that bugged me.  There'd be times (including some very zombied patches over the last few months) when I'd have simply thought "Aargh, I wrote the date wrong on my calendar, it's not next week, it's next month!" but not have got round to booking an 'earlier' appointment until after I'd missed my appointment.