Of #Covid Jabs And Broken Fingers

 We've all now had our first Covid vaccinations.  By 'we' I mean Mam, Dad, and my brother,Wayne, as well as both Kelly and myself.

Kelly got a letter inviting him to book to have his - addressed to the new address in Wales, but inviting him to book it for England, with only the number to call about it in England included in the letter.  When I got that straightened out, we ended up both booked for March 24th.  So, Mam had hers on March 13th, Dad on March 20th, Kelly and me on March 24th, and Wayne on March 30th.

 

They spoke to the medical advisor they have, and decided I should be OK to have mine, but they'd keep me a bit longer for observation afterwards than they normally do for people.  I wasn't feeling entirely reassured, but I know of people with issues with flu jabs who did do fine, so I agreed to have my jab.

Mostly everyone was fine.  Kelly was just tired with a sore arm for about 24 hours and then fine.  Dad and Wayne have had sore arms for a bit, but are otherwise fine.  Mam got a headache to go with her sore arm, and both those things lingered a while, but she's otherwise fine.  As for me...

 

You'll know about this if you've been following my posts on Twitter and Facebook, but... Yeah, I'm having a bad time with it.  I seemed to be doing OK at first; we thought I was just going the same way as Mam, with a sore arm and headache, and the only difference between how we were reacting being that my arm got badly bruised in the jab area.

 

But my symptoms got worse several days in.

 

To cut a long story short, I got bad enough we called 111 (the non-life-threatening emergency number for here in the UK... For if you need medical advice but can't get to speak to a doctor) and was advised to go to hospital. 

 

Every muscle hurts, my joints are stiff and achy, my head feels like it's trying to explode (and only gets worse if I concentrate for a long time) and I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest.  Not to mention, my arm is still very bruised, I'm exhausted even though I'm sleeping a LOT, the pain is making me feel sick (and dizzy when it increases) and my temperature keeps dropping and then going back to normal before dropping again (my version of having a fever, since mine runs high normally and drops when I'm not well).

With allergies and existing health issues, there's nothing they can even do to help with the pain, and since so little is still known about this, they don't even know if I'll be better in a few days, a few weeks, or somewhere in between.  They can't even be sure if I'll have lasting issues from this.  All they can tell me for sure is I'd likely react the same - or worse - if I have the second vaccination, so I should probably not have it.  I decided not to mention to them that given how I'm doing right now I'd already decided I'm not having that second jab.

 

In case you're wondering: I had the Pfizer vaccine.  Kelly and I both had that from the same batch on the same day, so we know it's me and not the vaccine itself.  Mam and Dad - and I'm pretty sure Wayne too - had the Oxford, which is actually the one people are more commonly having issues with according to the doctor and nurses at the hospital.  They apparently see a huge percentage less bad reactions with the Pfizer one.  I'm just one of those people who really doesn't do well with these jabs.

Anyway, my time on the computer is seriously limited right now, because I can't tolerate it for too long, but I have some things I want to be posting over the next few Fridays, so I'll be using my computer time to focus on setting those up, especially since it's going to take longer than usual due to having to be done in short stints.  Even this post is having to be done over a couple of days.  This means it's likely going to be a while before I can start tackling the ever-increasing pile of eMails and post notifications waiting for me.  Please bear with me.  I'll do what I can, when I can, but the doctor's advice is to rest, drink plenty of fluids, take whatever pain relief I can tolerate, and ride it out.  It's not the most helpful advice out there, but my body agrees with it, so I'm going to do it.

 

On the bright side: at least my broken finger is healing well, and I can use the hand some now, as long as I'm careful of the middle finger (the damaged one) and don't do it for long, or for anything fiddly or heavy.  Not that I can manage fiddly and heavy right now anyhow.  Still, at least something is improving, which is comforting.

And, despite her best efforts, Mollie has not yet managed to figure out how to steal the bandage from my hand.  She tries every day... She seems to find it fascinating for some reason.  Silly chinchilla!