Some of you will have seen my Facebook update about receiving the first dose of the vaccine. If you have - or even if you haven’t - you may be interested in finding out a bit more about the process. It won’t change your mind if you’re an anti-vaxxer. The kind of person who worries about what might be in it while simultaneously gorging on pigs’ dangly bits from Greggs. But if one undecided or apprehensive person reads on and feels a little more comfortable as a result then it will have done some good. I can’t describe how important it is that as many of us as possible go and get vaccinated when the opportunity arises. Ten months of on-off lockdowns do not constitute an exit strategy.
Like many across the city region I had mine at the rugby league ground that dare not speak its absurd vape-shifting name. Saints RLFC in old money. I was met by a car park attendant who instructed me to park up and then go to the entrance five minutes before my appointment time. This isn’t enforced particularly but I don’t see anybody trying to get in early or making any attempt to form or join anything resembling a queue. That’s either because it’s January and consequently absolutely bone-chillingly cold or because everybody is genuinely terrified to get within two metres of another human being from a different address.
At seven minutes before my appointment time I stop listening to Darren Gough warbling on about Frank Lampard’s sacking at Chelsea as if he’s a football expert and not a retired cricketer and pretend ballroom dancer and make my move. I added two minutes on for getting my chair out of the car. That process doesn’t happen as quickly at 45 years of age as it did at 25 touring around the UK masquerading as an athlete. Especially when you have the energy levels that 18% kidney function bestows upon you. Lockdowns reduce opportunities to practice even further. Mercifully, I was not offered any help by any of the octogenarians present. You’d think that kind of offer wouldn’t happen with social distancing in place but somebody did it when I went for my blood tests at the Royal a couple of weeks ago. If we’re looking for reasons why Covid has got out of control then watching these people go about their daily lives might be instructive. If they are willing to offer unnecessary physical contact to a stranger pushing a wheelchair over Prescot Street then what other kinds of contact that is currently frowned upon are they engaged in? Makes you think.
As I approached the large tent-like walkway that has been erected just outside the main entrance I am asked whether I’d booked through my GP or the NHS. This is the first and only real bump in the road throughout the whole experience. The answer is both in a way. I got a text from The Spinney which is my local GP surgery but it was just a link to an NHS booking site. The reason they ask is because there are separate queues to join for either GP or NHS bookings. They then contradict that by telling me it doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m not so sure. I didn’t check but I wouldn’t be surprised if in this tier-loving version of Tory Britain the other queue led straight to a private jet which takes you to a hot, sunny island which has handled Covid a whole lot better than the UK has. There are plenty to choose from. Probably cost you though...
They asked me to sanitise my hands then showed me through to a large room with rows of tables and chairs. My first impression was that it reminded me of the Blue Peter bring and buy sales we used to have in the school hall at Hamblett. Bring and buy sales were what they did in the 1980s instead of educating the disabled which was considered largely a waste of time. I’ve obviously been to college and university in more enlightened times since then but my knowledge of Shakespeare and the literary classics has never recovered.
The room was on the ground floor, so not the conference rooms they use for the forums I have been to when pretending to be a writer (like now?) and a broadcaster with my mates from the 13 Pro-Am podcast. I was then asked to wait and I made the mistake of taking my coat off. I thought someone was going to come to me but the drill is that you go to them when someone is free to vaccinate you. Coat back on, which takes an embarrassingly longer amount of time than it would under less pressure. There are other people waiting. It’s not a queue exactly. They only let in as many people as they can fit into a line of chairs spaced suspiciously less than two metres apart. So it’s more of a row but with an order, like waiting for a pizza from Geno’s on a Saturday.
At the vaccination table there were two people to assist. An Asian man and a white woman. They asked for personal info - name, date of birth, address and postcode, whether I have any allergies or blood disorders, favourite Shakespeare play (no, not really). I was then asked to take my jumper off (I’ve already removed my coat again at this point) and the man starts wiping my upper arm in preparation. I’m expecting it to feel like a blood test but it’s less than that. It’s less of a scratch than that and it takes less time because they’re not trying to find one of my camouflaged, dried up veins. If the vampires ever capture me in some kind of gothic apocalyptic scenario they’ll throw me aside because I am a bloodless individual.
And just like that it’s done. I asked about side effects and the man was very non-committal. He handed me an information sheet and a card with a number on it. He told me I’ll get another appointment in 12 weeks. I’ve had the Pfizer vaccine and he told me not to worry about side effects. He said the info sheet would tell me what to do if I have any. It kind of does. It tells me the numbers on who gets side effects and what they’re likely to be but it doesn’t tell me whether I’ll get Covid-like symptoms. He doesn’t either. I’m assuming that wouldn’t be a normal reaction.
Being one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone that Green Day used to sing about I have spent large parts of tonight (24 hours on from the jab) wondering if I have a bit of a sore throat coming on. I don’t think I do. I’m not a medical expert but I don’t think that things like that come and go according to how much time you spend thinking about them. The information does mention chills and headaches but I’ve had no hint of anything like that. I thought I might considering the number of nursing students I have spoken to this week at work who have reported feeling unwell after their vaccine. Then I remember my own uni days during which I would have explained that I had malaria, small pox and the plague itself before I’d turn up for a shorthand session. That’s come back to bite me. The only thing I have to report so far is a bit of a sore arm. Like a bruise, nothing drastic. Better than Covid.
The last thing I’m asked to do is go over to another row of chairs and wait 15 minutes before leaving. Again there is a questionable interpretation of two metres between them so if you are having your vaccine at Saints keep your mask on and don’t start any conversations about last night’s telly. Nobody enforces the waiting time. Nobody releases you. You just time yourself and go. In theory you could just get straight off but I didn’t. It was Monday night. There wasn’t much to do and I’d recorded House Of Games so there was no fire.
All in all it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. The people there are doing great work and it is not often you can say that St Helens is involved in something which will genuinely change our lives for the better. I feel privileged and fortunate to have been involved, particularly since the government did not consider me clinically vulnerable until last week. My surgeon disagrees based on our last conversation in November, but I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to get the vaccine once it arrived.
We all need to go and get jabbed the first chance we get. It really is the only way out of Joe Wicks exercise videos and back to the pub.
