Shot

The ugly words of recent months such as "unprecedented", "mandate", "quarantine", "community spread", "asymptomatic" and the creepiest one of all "C-19" (I refuse to use its full name) are ever so slowly being eclipsed by the phrase "light at the end of the tunnel." That light is none other than a stick in the arm, a.k.a. vaccination. There is much ado concerning the process of dispensing the vaccine but I suspect that will work itself out as time marches along. Our community is currently working through level 1C. The really good news is that willing participants in senior centers have received their first round of the vaccine. My mother with dementia has been on lockdown in an assisted living facility since last March. A blessing of her dementia riddled mind is that she doesn't fully comprehend the gravity of the pandemic but she knows she is unable to see her children and grandchildren as freely as before. 

When I talked with her about receiving the new vaccine, she said, "I will give them my arm or my butt or whatever they want if it means I can get vaccinated." She didn't need to read the literature provided or watch the videos from health officials to understand the power of vaccines. In her 92 years she has seen enough death and suffering from diseases such as polio and tuberculosis to know that vaccines change lives.

My childhood included its share of diseases no longer prevalent at this time. Measles and mumps were still common and unpleasant, not to mention potentially deadly. We all experienced chicken pox and many of us had it at the same time due to its contagious nature. My mother told us not to scratch so much or we could develop long-term scarring. Easier said than done! We slathered ourselves full of calamine lotion in an attempt to mitigate the situation. I think we only succeeded in making ourselves look like a pack of pink panthers. My mother was a saint to deal with all our whining and discomfort. 

My parents never questioned vaccines even when many of them were in nascent stages of development. I remember an incident where I was told to eat a sugar cube laced with a pinkish liquid, no questions asked. It was the first oral polio vaccine being made available en masse. As kids, we were aware of the horror of "iron lungs" and children crippled for life. We gobbled down the sugar cube with all its fringe benefits. We were also on the tail end of the need for a smallpox vaccine. The nasty scab it produced left a scar many of us still sport today. 

The day my mother received her first C-19 vaccine was a day of rejoicing for me. When I asked her if she remembered getting her shot she quite naturally did not remember but she said, "Let me check for a band-aid on my arm. Yep, I've got a band-aid." Bingo! Round one in the books.

My subgroup for receiving the vaccine is last on the list so I will be queuing up with college kids when the time comes. I will be there with rings on my fingers and bells on my toes. And I won't even ask for a sugar cube chaser.