I Got the Moderna Vaccine

My “reaction” so far.

Two days before Christmas, I got a phone call: “Can you be here at 2:00?” asked Rebekah, our small county’s (only) Public Health nurse. Yes, I said, and by 2:30 Rebekah had injected my wife and me with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.

Ouray County Public Health nurse Rebekah Stewart gives me the Moderna vaccine (in the agency’s parking lot!) from the first vial opened as full-time paramedic Ruth Stewart, no relation to Rebekah, looks on. (Photo: Kit Cassingham)

Getting the Covid vaccine on Wednesday was quite a surprise. Public Health nurse Rebekah Stewart had given Ouray County Emergency Medical Services personnel a briefing on Zoom Tuesday evening. My wife and I are volunteer medics in our rural Colorado county. Our first Covid death was April 8, pretty early in the pandemic for such a rural county.

Rebekah didn’t even have an estimate of when their vaccine supply was arriving, but she wanted us to know the science behind the vaccine’s development. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid vaccines are extremely similar, but as a small county that didn’t have a freezer cold enough to keep Pfizer’s vaccine, we would be getting Moderna’s.

She also went over the expected side effects so, when it was offered to us, we’d have enough information to make an informed decision as to whether we would want it. I had decided long ago that I would take it as soon as it was offered.

So it was quite the surprise to get Rebekah’s call the next morning asking if we could be there at 2:00: our county’s initial supply…