Fully Vaccinated

It’s been a significant 12 months that will end Friday when I get my second COVID vaccination shot, and hopefully all of this will pass into memory. I received the Moderna version and after the first shot I felt fine despite a sore arm and low grade fever that lasted 24 hours. It was worth it getting a sense of relief, knowing that I am safe. Middle aged big guys like me didn’t fair too well during COVID. Moreover, I feel a sense of humility after the entire ordeal and that celebration is unmerited given how many people suffered during all of it, yet I am hopeful for once.

Having mixed feelings probably isn’t new to anyone now that the pandemic seems to be on the wane. For one, we lost some good people to the disease. Just recently I followed along on social media while a local father of four, with one on the way, passed away from COVID complications just days before his fifth son was born. The disease evidently caused fluid to build around his heart, which caused cardiac arrest, and subsequent brain damage. His family made the difficult decision to remove him from life support. He was my age, a family man, who seemed to have everything going well for him. But that is how COVID worked, some people were fine, some people experienced lingering effects but nothing too bad, whereas others suffered or passed away. You just didn’t know where you’d end up if you got it.

Maybe it would’ve been easier if we knew how and why these complications arise, but we still do not. There was talk that it was related to blood type, but that seems unfounded due to lack of evidence. We just know that certain people are more susceptible to complications, we just don’t know anything more. What’s interesting is what this public health crisis meant for the country. I, for example, quit tobacco use of any sort a year ago now. Although I gave up smoking cigarettes probably ten years ago I still fired up the occasional cigar. I’ve now dropped that and have no plans of picking it up regardless of fishing trip, golf outing, or beers on the back porch. I also got in really great cardio shape too just in case my body needed the boost in case I succumbed to it. I don’t regret doing either of those things now. I really needed to do it and I’m glad I did.

For now, say a prayer for the people who didn’t make it. Let’s hope we can move past it and if not back to normalcy, at least back to something like it.