Many of you may have already gone through with your vaccination or chosen not to. That’s a personal decision. I will say that if you had asked me last year whether I would be getting the vaccine I would have said no and with conviction. I felt that the vaccine seemed to be thrown together too quickly and I didn’t trust it. To be completely honest, I still have a tiny voice in my head that holds a little bit of concern.

However, that little bit of concern outweighs the bigger concern of what would happen if I had COVID 19. I don’t want to find out. I know for some it’s minor and similar to a cold. But for others, it’s life threatening or fatal. It’s not a risk I want to take.

I think what changed my decision is seeing how many people have been getting the vaccine and have been okay. Again, that tiny voice in my head is saying “well, they don’t know the long term effects yet”. Sigh. I know. I can only hope for the best with that.

Both of my parents received the Moderna vaccine with no side effects. That was promising to me. My father has an allergy to shellfish. Several years ago, he had a reaction after a CT scan and went into anaphylactic shock and ultimately cardiac arrest. But by the grace of God, he pulled through and is here with us today. I was concerned whether it would be safe for him to get the vaccine but he was the first one to do so. No reactions whatsoever. He’s since had the second one as well with zero reactions. My mother had the same no reactions result. That eased my mind a bit and I felt more confident in getting it.

Once our state opened up the category of “50 and older”, we signed up. A day later, we received an email inviting us to register for the Moderna vaccine. Woohoo! We were both so excited! Literally, five days later we were on our way to get it. Unfortunately, the local grocery stores and drugstores do not have an supplies of the vaccine yet so we had to go to a drive up complex.

Our appt was for 10:30. We arrived much earlier because we had seen some pretty long lines on the news. It was 10:00 a.m. when we pulled in to “check in”. That took about a minute or two and then we were flagged on to the vaccine tent. We pulled up, my husband got his first in the car and then I stepped out (because I wanted mine in my left arm) and received mine. It was amazingly painless. The nurse said if you keep your arm relaxed, you’ll feel it less. All I felt was a small poke and then nothing. Super happy about that. 😉 I’m not a fan of needles at all.

After that, we pulled up in a line of cars and had to wait for 15 minutes in case there was any reaction to the vaccine. If you’ve had any sort of anaphylactic experience in the past, you have to wait 30 minutes. Both of us felt fine and were on our way at the 15 minute mark. We were in and out in under 20 minutes. 🙂

The rest of the day we felt fine. No tiredness, headache, nausea, fever, nothing. It made me wonder if it was even working. (haha) I know a few people that had terrible side effects from it. We are both so grateful for no serious reactions from it. I know they say the second vaccine is worse but I’m hopeful that since we didn’t have any reaction the first time that maybe the second will be the same.

All in all, I feel better having it. At least it makes me feel that if I should catch COVID, it most likely won’t be life threatening. Yes, there is a chance still but that is with everything, right? There are also those other strains out there that it doesn’t protect against so we still need to be cautious and careful but at least we are heading in the right direction.

I don’t know when that time will ever come when we reach herd immunity and can go back to our normal lives but when that day comes, it will seem weird. The mask wearing and social distancing has become the “new” normal.

I just wanted to share my experience in case any of you were on the fence about whether to get it or not. It’s really a personal decision.