Monday, March 1, 5:10 p.m.
I couldn’t believe it last Thursday when I got an email from Kaiser telling me they were now scheduling patients for the COVID vaccine! I could have gone in the next day (Friday) but I decided to wait until Monday and chose the 5:10 p.m. appointment.
I was on live chat with Bluehost (about Jeannie’s credit card) and the first tech dropped my call and another tech took over. But of course I had to go through the same process with him/her and so it took twice as long. When he/she couldn’t figure it out, he/she asked me to go through the process with another browser and it was 4:33, so I told him, “I don’t have time to do that right now. Goodbye!” But I had to do the survey before I could close the chat window, so I gave him/her a “meh” and checked the box, “This is not my first interaction about this issue and it’s still not resolved.”
We left home at 4:45, as planned, and Linda dropped me off at the front entrance at 5 o’clock. They were re-directed COVID vaccine appointees around the building to the West Lobby entrance that has been blocked off for months! And there was a long ass line! About 30 people who were not 6 ft. apart. I asked the woman in front of me and the man behind me what time their appointments were supposed to be. The woman in front of me said 5:05, and I said, “I don’t think we’re going to make it to the front of the line by that time!” She just shrugged and said she didn’t think it would matter.
I started texting Linda about the long line and apologized that she was going to have to wait a long time. “It’s a good thing I left water and snacks for Emily,” I said.
Surprisingly, the line moved reasonably fast. I saw one man who came out and said, “My appointment was for 4:00 p.m. and I’m just now getting out!” I got out my Kaiser card and driver’s license (since the email about the appointment said to have those two IDs ready). A man came down the line and asked people if this was their first or second vaccination. If it was their first, he gave them (including me) a card and a pen. I had to fill in my name, birthdate, and Kaiser ID number.
When I got to the front of the outdoor line, a woman at a desk with a laptop asked me, “What is your last name, and what time was your appointment?” I told her, and she handed me a bright pink half sheet of paper and told me to stand in line between her and the West Lobby entrance. In that area, there was a security guard making people stand on the yellow circles 6 ft. apart. And another man squirting hand sanitizer into people’s hands. After I got inside, there was a wire pencil case labeled “Used Pens” which I didn’t see until a Kaiser employee came down the line collecting pens in a wire pencil case labeled “Used Pens” where I put the pen in.
As I was waiting in the indoor line, a young woman asked if this was my first or second vaccine. I told her first and she took my card and asked if I would be able to come back for the second shot on Monday, March 22, at 6:10 p.m. (I did not remember than that I had a 1:30 p.m. acupuncture with Sophie Tu that day. Poor Linda and all that driving!) In a few moments she came back with my card and it had that date and time written on the back, with the Pfizer vaccine number stamped on it.
It was 5:33 p.m. when I got inside the room where the vaccines were being given. There was 6 stations so things were moving pretty fast by then. A woman at Station #1 motioned for me to sit by her station. She asked me to read the questions that they would normally ask orally before entrance into the Kaiser building. All my answers were “no” so I was cleared. I asked her if she or anyone else needed to see my Kaiser ID and driver’s license and she said “no” so I put them back in my wallet. I gave her the COVID card and the pink paper but she told me to keep the pink paper and give it to the doctor where I was to wait the obligatory 15 minutes.
She was very efficient and very good at giving shots. It felt pretty much like a flu shot, which I told her I had gotten every year for the past 20 years and had never had the flu during that time. After she gave me the shot, she gave me back the card, a round sticker that said “Vaccinated,” and a small piece of paper that said “5:50 p.m.” She told me not to lose it because that would be my ticket to get out! She told me to move my arm around while I was waiting so the vaccine would not all stay in that one spot in my arm.
I sat down in the area (marked with red and green balloons) on the other side of the large room in found an empty chair among the chairs that were all 6 ft. apart. I took that time to check Facebook on my phone. A young female doctor was going around to each patient, asking if they had any questions or any particular concerns they wanted to ask about. When she got to me, I said no, except that someone had asked me if the vaccine had any effect on diabetics for blood sugar. And she said exactly what I had found with a Google search: that the vaccine wouldn’t affect blood sugar but that I should monitor my blood sugar more often for a couple of days.
At 5:52 p.m. I got up to leave and left the room. No one asked to see the little pink paper with “5:50” on it, not even the security guard stationed at the door. The exit door was actually the door on the south side of the building and I knew Linda was parked on the north side, so I just walked around until I found the van. I told Linda I had sent her texts but she said she was not notified of any texts. She checked and she only had the first text I sent.
When we got home, I had a sudden impulse to make a new recipe for lemon-blueberry cupcakes, which I did. Then served a cottage cheese supper to Linda and Emily while the cupcakes were baking. My pre-meal blood glucose was 96 mg/dL.
