About a week and a half ago, I got my fourth COVID shot. Since we got actual COVID back in June, I figured I was probably about due. Man, is it ever hard to get a straight answer on when you should get your next shot if you’ve had COVID. Wait 6 months, but don’t wait that long, but 3 is too short, but no it isn’t. You know it’s bad when you ask the pharmacist and she just googles it and reads the page from the CDC. But I figured five months would be a good compromise, it would allow it to kick in a bit before pre-Christmas and Christmas craziness, plus I wanted to get my flu shot at the same time. That way, if they ever decide it’s an annual thing, I can remember when I need them both again.
I called the drug store that gave me my last COVID booster, assuming that they would have these ones. Nope, darn it all, they didn’t have it. So I asked if they had flu shots and they did, so I asked them if they could book me an appointment and they did.
Next, I called Shoppers to see what they had. Of course, the automated thinggy told me to consult their website. Does anybody have any tips on navigating the Shoppers Drug Mart vaccination booking page? It’s a right royal pain in the hoop. It takes longer to figure out where you should go and try and book than it does to walk down there and get the damn shot! If I hear the words “map marker” one more time…
So I called back and asked if they could just book it in for me because their website was giving me trouble. The person who answered did not want to do it at all. She said “Just close the browser and try again.” I then had to break down and say “I’m blind, so I don’t think closing the browser is going to help.” Then she said “Well…just come in and try and get it as a walk-in. I was planning to take the day off the day Tansy switched homes, so I decided what the heck, I should go and get my shots too.
I thought about cancelling my appointment at the other place and just doing both of them at Shoppers, but I just figured that was tempting fate. With my luck, they would only do one by walk-in, or they wouldn’t have the other one, or something dumb. I should have tempted fate.
So, because of stupid booking systems, I had to go to two different stores to get both my shots. It’s a good thing they’re close, but still.
I was kicking myself, though, because someone else walked in while I was chilling out for those few minutes after getting the shot and just asked if they could get both shots at the same time, and they said they could. Arg. I should have made things easier on myself.
As usual, it went fine. Steve jokes that they’re not vaccinating me for real and I’m just one of those schmucks that keeps getting saline, because I’m not having all the misery that he goes through. I don’t know why. You’d think it would flatten me. The only thing that sucked was because I got two shots, I got one in each arm, so both arms were sore, so sleeping kind of sucked. I had hoped that getting the flu shot in the right arm would make it hurt less because my COVID shot sites always got really mad. But noooo! My flu shot spot was the one that was super sore. Craaap!
Even weirder, I suddenly noticed a lump under my left arm. It’s a good thing I know about lymph nodes, otherwise I might have been panicking. But Mr. Lump went away, and I really didn’t have any other nasty surprises.
So I’ve had my flu shot and my COVID shot. Hopefully I’m good for a while.