On August 3rd, 2021, I finally got my first Covid vaccination. I got it at CVS. Despite the fact that I inject insulin and prick myself every day to test my blood sugar, I still hate needles. When watching people get vaccinated on TV, I was always surprised by how long the vaccine needle looked -- 2" to 3" was my estimate. I couldn't imagine that such a needle going into my muscle wouldn't hurt. Partly because of that, and partly because I don't have a car to get to a vaccination site, I didn't get the vaccine for months after one became available. But the rise of the Delta variant really scared me, and I decided I had to get it done. I am 70 years old and have at least a dozen significant health problems, and that made me vulnerable to dying from the Covid virus.
However, I think it was significant that I survived more than a year without getting Covid -- although it's possible that I got it and wasn't aware I had it. In early to mid-2020, there were two occasions when I felt "under the weather" for about a week, and it could have been Covid. But I couldn't be sure, and the Delta variant sounded really dangerous, so I took concrete steps to get vaccinated.
When I got the vaccine, I barely felt it. In fact, it didn't hurt at all, not even the slightest bit. I had expected it to hurt at least as much as an insulin needle does, but it didn't -- some of my insulin shots are quite painful. I asked the technician after he injected me, and he confirmed that it went into my arm a couple inches at least, right into the muscle.
Not only didn't it hurt, but it was the third vaccine that I have gotten in the last two years, and none of them hurt. For a long time, I believed that insulin needles were cut differently from other needles, and that was the reason they hurt more. But I just searched the internet looking at close-ups of needle points, and all of them seem to be cut the same way, so I have no idea why vaccines hurt less than insulin shots do.
Indeed, in recent years, the two times that I received shots of anesthetics
for minor surgical procedures, those shots were incredibly painful. So why is it that vaccine shots are so painless? I may never know.
In any event, in one month I'll get my second vaccine shot. That doesn't mean that I won't get Covid, but it does mean that if I do, I'm not likely to get seriously ill from it. I can hardly wait for that second shot.
I should add that I had no reaction to the shot -- no dizziness or any other symptom.
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