The second Moderna shot gave me a beating as payment for its protection.
It came at me like some sort of neighborhood hoodlum looking for a couple of bucks to help “keep me safe from bad people and things.
When I refused to give it some cash it set upon me for a 12 hour beating. I walked away from it thinking “that was unpleasant” but grateful it had passed.
The achy body wasn’t the big problem, though it was uncomfortable.
It was the exceptional fatigue. It was feeling like someone had wrapped metal chains around me and thrown me over the side of the boat.
I rolled around in bed on and off throughout the day hoping to catch 20 minutes of shuteye that I knew would be restorative but never quite got it.
The chills and fever came back at sundown and I trudged to the bathroom and growled at the reflection.
“Kill me or get the fuck out. Commit or don’t.”
You may think of that has hyperbole but I was tired of the up and down of the day, rolling from feeling alright to feeling like crap.
I blame some of this on pandemic fatigue and the sense that I can almost see the shore line again. The clouds have almost parted…almost.
Rolling Down The Highway
Listening to the lyrics of Take It To The Limit and interchanging them with Castles In The Air and dreaming of a spring that is not quite here but close enough to almost feel.
Ready to stand outside and feel the sun beat down upon my shoulders with regularity and look up at a bright blue sky because I am a t-shirt and shorts guy.
Won’t be long before I reach those crossroads and decide it is time to stop considering what to do and to make some decisions I have put off.
Oldest child asks how I can be so decisive about some things and I tell him it is because I know what I am doing even when I don’t.
“Some people love you forever and some just for a while. Got to go down the dark paths to get to the sunlight and recognize those who are supposed to be there will or they won’t.”
He says it is a contradiction and I say that’s the joy of life, “it is messy, illogical and ridiculous. Sometimes you ask people to jump off a cliff with you and see who does it. Sometimes it is because they are brave. Sometimes it is because they are impulsive and sometimes it is because they just know.
That is how I roll in a few places, I just know.”
Yikes! They lowered the age in Indiana by 15 years so I’m getting my first Moderna on Tuesday. I’ve been told that a reaction is a good, if unpleasant, thing. Who’d have thought this would last so long?
If my first shot wasn’t part of a worldwide event that we’ll all remember I wouldn’t have any recollection of it to share with you. It would be one of a 100 shots I have taken during the last 50 some years.
That second shot was rough though. I have heard rumors that if you have had Covid it is harder.
I don’t know if I had it, but I went to a conference in Nashville last February with 6k other people. A ton of people got sick there so I have my suspicions.
I don’t have any regrets about the vaccine. I would do it again if I needed to.