Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.
I got the call. It came quite unexpectedly in the afternoon; a pleasant voice drifted out of my phone and into my ear to ask if I was who I was. I was. I was then told that my vaccine appointment was ready to be booked if I was ready to receive it. I was. Was I nervous about it? I was. Was I perhaps a bit over-informed about the vaccines? I was.
This would be the AstraZeneca vaccine, which had been in the news recently. “In the news recently” is a phrase that harkens back to a simpler news media time, though, doesn’t it? It doesn’t quite capture what happens to information these days as it gets churned through the great grist mill of the internet before being packaged to us as online information of various levels of worth.
Worthwhile or not, we take the plunge into this world because we owe it to ourselves and our families to be informed about serious matters such as these and, you know, things pop up. Or we could read a book. But books don’t even pop up on doctors’ shelves these days, eschewed in favour of much more conveniently stored and readily accessed bits and pieces of information from the here, there and everywhere of the internet.
Mostly informed by the latter (but, my sources were all legit), I made my way towards the local pharmacy, slowly, with the same stalling gait as one would take towards a gallows. I reached the door and pulled it open, allowing my wife to enter the inner chambers first.
The door shut with a soft hiss and we stepped inside. We stood there, unsure where to go. There was practically nobody in the place, but for the attendants at the front counter who kindly instructed us, once we told her why we were there, down aisle No. 2 to the back of the store where there awaited, seated at a make-shift table and chair, an equally kind person, though more business-minded, penned and papered as she was, who asked for health cards, then informed the card holder what it was, precisely, they were agreeing to.
Releasing our consent like so many helium balloons up and away into the open sky, we were brought, only a few steps away, to another little make-shift stall, and seated. On the floor beside the chair in each booth sat an egg-shaped timer which, for some reason, seemed auspicious.
There was no time to wonder why as the pharmacist quickly appeared, informed, engaged and willing to listen to any of our concerns and quell them as best he could, the vaccine all the while being readied in his hands. The needle then, and the damage done.
This amounted to feeling a bit chilled the next day with some fatigue, perhaps a hint of a headache. But I also felt, rather palpably, the sense that a certain weight had been lifted.
No more was I turning over in my mind at random times of the day my stance on vaccines. No more would I have to bother with the latest report coming in about this or that anomaly concerning this or that vaccine popping up in this or that global community. No more would I have to deal with the constant chatter/clutter about vaccines that has been on all our minds for over a year now.
It was put in me — the vaccine — and it was a bit unpleasant the next day, but the stronger feeling, and the one I think will be most lasting, is not so much that something unpleasant was put in me, but something unpleasant had been taken out.
D’Arcy Closs lives in Greater Sudbury. A rotating stable of community members share their thoughts on anything and everything, the only criteria being that it be thought-provoking. Got something on your mind to share with readers in Greater Sudbury? Climb aboard our Soapbox and have your say. Send material or pitches to [email protected].
