Moderna #2: Bradburyesque nightmare

Taking the Plunge part deux

Unrelated but happy: Ali was selected out of hundreds of kids to be a Big Life Leader for the Big Life Journal.

It reads like a plot from some dystopian Ray Bradbury novel:
 
People wait months for their chance to get injected with poison so they can safely re-enter society. 
 
And, as in all good novels, there’s a twist: like an inverse lottery, some select few will become fiercely afflicted over the next 48 hours, suffering the very illness they are trying to avoid. 
 
28 hours after my second Moderna vaccination, I actually feel well enough to take a hot bath (because I could not, even under my mountain of blankets, get warm).  It is at this point that my fever has gone down to 102.3. Such relief!!  The hot bath helps, but of course, once out of the bath, chills ravage me.
 
Hours before I had actually wondered, as one does in the depth of night, if I would be the first person to die from the vaccine. At its worst, everything ached except my stomach (I had not eaten much because I did not want energy to go to heavy digestion). My back, all muscles, head, arm - oh my poor arm!! -  all ached and ached (arm was throbbing). The worst part is that every time I moved, even an inch in bed, chills would overtake me. My body was under siege, and I felt (viscerally felt) an understanding of what it must be like to die from COVID: to feel so wasted, so helpless. My sympathy about COVID morphed into empathy. I could not fall into a deep sleep (too uncomfortable) and had no energy to do anything but lie there, drifting in and out of consciousness.  COVID is real, I grasp in a new way, from my no-man’s land of malaise. Once it gets into your lungs, your body is too utterly wasted to fight. Having no energy like this frightens me.  I can’t even get warm.  

Yet if this vaccine will keep me from getting the real thing, I am forever grateful.  I like to think I’d be one to survive COVID, but I also liked to think I’d feel fine after the vaccine. I feel renewed sympathy for those who contract COVID.
 
“Are you still sick, Mama?” four-year old Tyler asks 30 hours after the injection, his head pressed close to mine. I grunt affirmatively. “Drink this, you’ll feel better,” he assures me, handing me water from the pitcher I had filled on death’s door at 3AM the night before.  After the water, I have to promise him that we will play catch tomorrow because I simply cannot today…tomorrow being code for when I can.
 
My husband Jory has done an amazing job of feeding, occupying and getting safely to school all three kids (the oldest still in elementary school). He gets his shot on Saturday, and I will be on high alert. (He felt effects after his first shot!!).  So I pray my energy is back 75 hours post-vaccine.
 
And it is slowly coming back. Last night I felt well enough to read to my Ali.  She launched, with the support and guidance of her amazing school librarian Annie Huggins, a Newbery Award book group for third-graders. They are reading The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth.  It is the simple story of a Japanese artist who, commissioned to create a death scene of the Buddha, reflects on the character of the Buddha in each animal he paints. As we are reading it together, it gives me insight in to the beauty and wisdom of Buddhism. 
 
In synchronicity, I find that Buddha is quoted as saying, “To keep the body in good health is a duty…otherwise we shall not be able to keep the mind strong and clear.” A duty. Bang.  The older I get, the more I understand what a DUTY exercise, good diet, and proper supplements are.  From there, emerges good sleep, good focus, good mood, and, as the Buddha says, good mind. 
 
As for the author who inspired this post, I respect Ray Bradbury enormously. However, I find him depressing, so have only read him when tutoring (yup, someone actually had to pay me to read Bradbury).  Still, his insight is tremendous.  
 
48 hours post-vaccination, my fever is down to 99.7, my arm still in anguish, and my energy fragile at best.  There are those who would say (despite my asthmatic lungs) that I was foolish to subject myself to the vaccine.  To them, I quote Bradbury:

​“Jump! You will learn how to unfold your wings as you fall.”