I stood in line for 6 hours
Posted by Nathaniel.
I’ve never stood in a line for so long before in my life. I haven’t been to concerts with lines for tickets that were that long. When the Star Wars and the Matrix sequels came out, I had friends who wanted to stand in line and got tickets for me.
But today I stood in line for 6 hours, behind about 5,000 other people, to get a shot. It’s a very anticlimactic thing too. Jab, squeeze, done. 6 hours of waiting for a 2 second thing.
The good news though is that in another week or so once the immunity fully develops, my students can sneeze on me all they want and I don’t have to worry about getting Sarah sick. Kirsten can let coworkers sneeze on her. Sarah can let other kids sneeze on her. Gabriella can let other au pairs sneeze on her. So basically if H1N1 turns into a really big thing, we’ll be amazingly happy we stood in line for six hours. If it fizzles out, it’ll be the worst use of a weekend ever.
(Of course, one of the best ways to help it fizzle out is to get vaccinated, so get the shots once you have the chance. That might not be until December, but get it in December then.)
November 1st, 2009 at 5:15 pm Using
I think I would die of anticipation if I waited in line that long for a shot – I’m terrible with needles. The longer I sit and stew knowing the shot is coming, the more likely I am to completely lose it when I finally get it. I’m vaguely woozy just thinking about it.
November 1st, 2009 at 11:39 pm Using
You can’t psych yourself out about shots. You’ve got to treat them like you’re a machine. Don’t think about the shot, just walk in, bare your arm, turn your head the other direction and read wall posters, only pay attention to the nurse one she says a sentence including the word “done.” Thinking about it or watching it only leads to terribleness.
So, two stories…
1. New parents are strongly recommended to get a whooping cough vaccination just to make sure they don’t pass it on and my doctor was in the same building as Sarah was born in, so while naps were happening, I went upstairs and asked about it. The people at the doctor’s office said, “sure, we can give you that right now and it’s free.” Giving vaccinations is a nurse level thing, not a doctor level thing so the nurse came in and then said “we have a girl here who’s in training, could she give you the shot?” I’m all for training so I said sure, why not. Everything went fine until the last moment. This girl had been told to sort of use the syring like a dart to put it in really fast (this is the right way to do it), but she didn’t have the confidence to actually do it, so she took a dozen or to test cocks of her wrist before actually putting the needle in me. It was fine, but I was following my “read the posters” method and was starting to run out of posters. The nurse told her, “yeah, that was ok, but a normal patient is going to get really antsy if you don’t do it on the first try next time.”
2. I had some blood drawn for a study a couple of years ago and the woman in charge of the study drew my blood. There’s a lesson here, being good in the lab does not mean you’re necessarily good with patients or have the sorts of skills required to work with patients. I should say here too that I have good veins and normally getting a blood sample is a simple simple thing with basically no pain. Anyway, she stuck the needle in my arm, got about three drops of blood, and then started talking about how odd it was that the blood wasn’t just gushing out. This was accompanied by actually wiggling the needle back and forth. In hindsight, what she did was actually stick the needle all the way through the vein, but she didn’t have enough experience to realize that. As a result, she sat there for 15 whole minutes with the needle in my arm, starting at it, wondering why blood wouldn’t come out. She finally had a nurse come in to draw blood from my other arm (which took about 10 seconds). I have never had such a big bruise though. The arm that she messed up on was a bruise basically all the way around my elbow.
Anyway, those are my horror stories. Oh, there’s one more too, the time I was at Hopkins Hospital and they wanted me to wait in line for 2 hours to have a simple blood draw done. I just walked out. Also, in my experience the person you want giving the shot is typically a 45 year-old white woman with ~25 years experience as a nurse. For blood draws, you want the short Filipino/Vietnamese/South Pacific Islander guy. It’s always unclear how old he is, he might be 35, he might be 60, but he’s seen every possible vein and knows how to deal with them without a second glance.
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 am Using
I just had blood drawn over the summer (a sore throat as a precursor to the damned sinus infection from hell), and was treated to a half hour+ wait behind 3 female athletes all getting blood drawn for a sickle cell anemia test, who insisted on trying to scare each other with stories of how painful the gardasil injections were, and how bad the blood draw was, etc. Add to that that I was already a little tense from having sat in the waiting area for the doctor for way too long (i dislike doctor’s offices too), and the AC was cranking in that building, AND I hadn’t had time to eat yet that day. Naturally, the guy (who was clearly not inexperienced, having no problem with the 3 girls ahead of me) couldn’t get any blood out of the first attempt, couldn’t find a vein visually on either elbow (cuz blood vessels retreat when you’re cold – and anxious), and had to go to the deeper draw down toward my wrist. I was okay until actually when he pulled the needle out. Then I got all woozy and he had to tip the chair back for me for a few minutes.
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:53 pm Using
1. I’m still waiting got get my H1N1 shot, and for the first time, I’m looking forward to it and actually waiting for them to announce the dates. I was out of town on the day that work had the normal flu shots too, so I’d like to get stuck with the piggy stuff.
2. Shots are my nemesis. Or rather, seeing things poke into/out of me are what I can’t handle. When I give blood I have to look away, and same with shots – I just make sure I don’t look and it’s totally fine.
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:24 pm Using
Yeah, you can’t look. Everything is fine as long as you don’t look.