I was grateful for having received my first dose of the Covid-19 moderna vaccine on Tuesday February 9, 2021 in Durham, NC; though I was anxious with being around so many people in close quarters, Alex on the other hand had a great time at the vaccine clinic and even got on the evening news playing Latin songs on his recorder while he waited outside for me to receive my surprise 1st dose.  For the second dose I was much more apprehensive, but let me start from the beginning.

February was a time where there was a shortage of vaccines for certain clinics and populations and I was on a vaccine wait list at a local hospital with no known date of being able to receive it.  We heard of a pop up Latinx clinic February 7 from Armonia Health’s connections to grassroot organizations and NGOs to which my husband qualified and I went with him in case he needed translation (which I didn’t think he would), but it felt right to accompany him, I mean, it was kinda like a date, we hadn’t been anywhere in public together since March 2020 so might as well go to a Covid-19 vaccine clinic together!  lol!

We arrived to a full Cooperativa Latina credit union parking lot and there was a socially distanced line of to-be-vaccinated people going around the building.  This was more people than I had been around in public and it kinda made me nervous.  It was amusing hearing an elderly woman ask the volunteers if the shot hurt and being told it wasn’t a big deal.  There was an elegant Black woman in her 90s dressed up like going to church, accompanied by a middle aged woman; it was real sweet to see them all dressed up to get their vaccine. I saw a long time Mexican client friend who was working for the NGO that was checking us in and it was such a joy to open our arms in excitement as if to give a distance hug, I hadn’t seen her in about six years.  This was the most social I had been in public, even though I have been seeing 15-20 clients per week at Armonia Health since last August and I go on walks but just with one other person.

I hung around outside waiting for my husband while he went in for his vaccine after having his temperature checked, his hands sanitized, and answered negative to 1) any viral signs and symptoms 2) exposure to covid 3) having received another vaccine.  I was told by my friend that there might be left over vaccines that would need to be thrown away if the people registered didn’t show up and for me to get on the wait list.  Thanks to her insistence, I got my vaccine and have lived to tell about it =)

That same week there was another pop up vaccine clinic for health care providers and our same contact asked if Armonia’s practitioners wanted to get vaccinated, two of them did that Thursday.  We all felt lucky we got our vaccines despite not being in the age bracket to receive and not being affiliated with any qualifying organization since we are all self-employed.

My reaction to this first shot was a rash on my clavicle that got more itchy most nights (I later learned that all vaccines can create a histamine reaction) and a little “out of it”, tired the day after, a right temporal headache that was better with lying down, but by the third day I felt fairly non-influenced. It was similar for my husband and the other practitioners.  Our injection muscle hurt more than we expected though, for three nights I couldn’t lie on my right side. I had heard from clients who had already received their second vaccine dose that the effects were stronger.  So I prepared a month ahead by taking two days away from seeing clients after my vaccine and started making note of what helped me.  With a choice, I would’ve taken the day after my first dose away from seeing clients, but none of us practitioners knew we were getting our vaccine that same week.  I noticed that a chrysanthemum/lemon balm tea felt refreshing to drink the day after my first dose, and doing the Qi Gong I call Rooted to Earth, Swinging with Heaven or Children at the Bus Stop felt really good to move my Qi and lymph on Day 3 and I made a facebook live video of that.  You will find that Youtube link as well as what I did before and after the second dose below.

Like I mentioned, I was apprehensive about the second dose, the anxiety was obvious enough getting closer to the date that I knew that what was arising was more than just about the vaccine itself as this has happened to me before; medical procedures that most people consider no big deal to me can be a trigger, like needing my wisdom tooth pulled in my mid-30s when I thought they weren’t going to come out anymore. It reminds me of Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron’s saying “Practice mindfulness and awareness when things are well, so that when situations are not well, you’ll be able to more easily access the tools you practiced”.  So I dove into what was arising.

Over the two weeks before the second dose I noticed that though my mind felt getting the vaccine was the right thing do to for reasons such as helping decrease the spread of this virus that have killed many, including my father in law, my heart was not excited about it.  I had deliberately not received a flu vaccine in 20 years and if my circumstances were different, I would be less inclined to get this vaccine. I was apprehensive that my histamine response would be worse, and my previous history of skin itching and hives that I worked through for several years still elicits that wired-anxious-my-system-is-moving-too-fast feeling that gets me into shallow breathing when I remember the feeling.  I was resisting this second dose, thinking early on I could postpone the shot to 42 days instead of the 30 days in between to give my system more time.  I realized that though I have accepted and allowed my body to possibly live with this virus in our environment and being ok with the risk of possibly being exposed to it in miniscule amounts and maybe very slowly build resistance that way, I wasn’t ready to let myself be injected by a man-made creation related to this virus.  As I walked with a neighbor and we were talking about our resistance to receiving this vaccine, I vocalized that I felt I was letting myself be injected with a poison.  And after all I’ve done the past 20 years of cleaning my body and mind (well, that’s an ego trip!). There! That was it! I said it and came to terms with why I strongly felt anxious about this second dose!

Still, I was going to move along with it and take the risk of whatever comes.  In meditation closer to the second dose, I also realized that the only way I was going to move through this anxiety was step into whatever was going to arise afterwards, I knew I wasn’t going to die, but it is curious that one waits 15 minutes post injection to make sure one doesn’t have an anaphylactic shock, that’s pretty risky, don’t you think?  But then again, we live with risks every day that our system has to get used to.