My Shot

It turns out despite all my fears and anxieties, I actually enjoyed getting my first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.

I had read about how as part of the initiation of the state’s Phase 1b. older people were having multiple difficulties. They had trouble navigating the state’s Vaccine Administration Management System computer site. They had trouble finding a location for vaccination in the city proper.

So I was surprised how easy it all was for me. And the initiative was not even mine.

Full disclosure. and this may well explain the ease of it all: I am enrolled in the Yale Health Plan (through my wife) for retirees. So Yale, through its MyChart system, contacted me Jan. 12 to inform me it was time to sign up for the vaccination. I could pick sites in North Haven or Old Saybrook or, mirabile dictu, at the Lanman Center right behind Yale’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium in New Haven.

I’m not in the priority tranche of those over 75; I’ve missed it by six months or so. I am in good health with no co-morbidities. So I was surprised and pleased to be offered an opportunity. And the Lanman Center is right near the Yale Health Center, where I go for regular care.

I began the appointment sign-up process, with my daughter peering over my shoulder double-checking the not-really-difficult double-clicking required, I, or we, answered background questions about temperature, travel, and possible proximity to Covid-positive folks.

Then it came to booking a day and time for the scheduled 15-minute appointment. The first available date was Jan. 20. Inauguration day. What a nice coincidence, I thought: New president, new hope, new protection from the virus.

I chose 3:30 p.m., the first slot available. That would allow me to watch the historic moments and have plenty of time to drive over.

My mind was full of images of waiting: long lines waiting to vote in Georgia, long lines of seniors in Florida waiting for shots, some even in their wheelchairs and folding chairs. Despite Yale’s vaunted resources and organization, I still feared long lines of cars waiting to get into the designated lot off Ashmun Street. So we arrived early, by 2:50 p.m.

Parking was no problem. While the lot was busy, near its 70-car capacity, there were only two or three cars ahead of us going through a gated entryway. The attendant in charge (masked, it goes without saying) directed us to the available spot.

“That’s the building, straight ahead,” he said. ​“You enter through the door to the right.”

He could probably read the anxiety in my eyes glinting above my double mask; his eyes and practiced nod translated to me as if to say, ​“Yup, it’s going to be easy.”

And it was.

A Yale New Haven Health staffer, N’Kiyah Galberth. greeted me at the bottom of the flight of steps that lead into the brightly lit gymnasium. Between the polished floor below and the cranked-up basketball hoops and ellipse-shaped running track above, 15 stations for vaccination were set up. 

Galberth said things have been going smoothly, with fine-tuning occurring during the three weeks the facility has been open.

According to Yale New Haven Hospital Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak, the hospital system during that time has administered Covid-19 vaccines to over 22,000 of YNHH’s medical staff and frontline employees at Lanman and its seven campuses from New Haven to Bridgeport to Greenwich to Westerly, R.I.

That’s since the start of Phase 1a, at the end of 2020. Some 3,000 of those medical staff and employees have gotten their second doses as well, meaning that they have ​“completed their course” of the two-dose treatment. That 22,000 number represents roughly 65 to 70 percent of YNHH’s medical staff and employees who have received at least one vaccine dose so far.

Now Lanman is open as part of Phase 1b, a ​“through-site” for those 75 and older and also, it appears, to the likes of some of us in the 65 to 74 category.

Galberth asked if I had done the online registration and answered the questions. Pleasant and reassuring as can be, like a greeter in a restaurant, she said I could jump right in, even though my scheduled appointment was not for a half hour yet.

The next greeter was a young man who gave me a six-page sheet titled ​“Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers: Emergency Use Authorization (EAU) of the Pfizer-Biontech Covid-19 Vaccine to Prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) in Individuals 16 Years of Age and Older.”

It was extensive and, IMHO, far more than you need to know, Still, it was interesting to learn the full ingredients in the vaccine, a description that goes on for six lines beginning with ​“mRNA, lipids (4‑hydroxybutyl)bis(hexane‑6,1‑diyl)” and ends with ​“sodium chloride, dibasic sodium phosphate dihydrate, and sucrose.”

This young man asked me for a photo ID. Then he sent me to one of the 15 stations arrayed in the first third of the gymnasium. The other two-thirds was blocked by green curtains on racks, likely the area still with equipment that might be turned either into more stations for vaccination, or, cross your fingers, a reemergence of a field hospital.

All the stations featured, below their number stanchions, white tables and white chairs, one for the recipient and one for the shot-administering person.

That individual is known as ​“the vaccinator.” I can’t be the only one for whom the term evokes ​“terminator” in the great James Cameron movie franchise.

Wouldn’t You Know It …

I sat down at station eight beside Zoe Feinstein (pictured). Just my luck: This first-year student in the Yale School of Nursing’s special program for family nurse practitioners has a mom who was a reporter. She was happy to answer a few questions of mine as I answered her questions (name and birth date again, if I’ve ever had an anaphylactic response). Afterwards, she even took a picture of my post-vaccination arm.

Almost all the vaccinators are nurses or nursing students. They take turns administering the vaccine. While some prepare the syringes with the vaccine — one task — others do the actual shooting the vaccine in your arm, as Feinstein was about to do with me.

My first question was where the vaccine was being stored. She pointed to a grey-flapped tent behind her. The freezer set-up is in there, she said. One group of nurses draws the vaccine into the syringes and walks a few of the prepared-to-shoot needles over to vaccinators like Feinstein.

While we were speaking, a young woman did precisely that, placing on a table beside where I was sitting a rectangular plastic box. The box reminded me of Tupperware; in it were several longish syringes. They weren’t mine, however.

Mine was already in Zoe’s hand.

How quickly, I then asked, must the vaccine be administered once it leaves the little freezing complex?

I had an image of the vaccine losing its configuration or its potency. Or beginning to turn into smoky salad dressing.

Not to worry, my nurse said, with a hint of a smile (always hard to tell for sure behind the mask). The vaccine is kept at such a low temperature, it actually has to thaw considerably before use. If a dose in a syringe is not used within a certain amount of time, it must return to the vial it came from. That time consists of a matter of hours, not minutes or crazy seconds before the material self-destructs.

Once the vaccine is drawn from the vials, the preference of the nurses is, of course, that it be used. When there is a mismatch between the number of 15-minute appointments made and the number of drawn syringes ready to be administered, what can be done to avoid putting the vaccine back? Or, worse yet, not being able use it?

She pointed to the east end of the gymnasium, to a section with two long rows of chairs with walk-ins. People without an appointment were waiting and reading and passing the time until the end of the day in the hope a dose would be available to them.

The overall problem, the nurse said, is that the operation is just not sure how many doses it will receive week to week out of the total number requested.

We chatted some more. If she thought all my chatter was a way to put off the insertion of the needle — she may not have been wrong.

She checked one more time whether I’d ever had an allergic reaction to a vaccine.

I told her about the time, way back in the last century, when I received the polio vaccine and I fainted. It was in L.A., on a blistering hot day. The sky turned yellow on me. My mother, I told Nurse Feinstein, took inside the nearest store, where they let me sit beside the stamps and coins display until I came to.

“But you’ve never had a reaction where you had trouble breathing, for example?” she said.

I answered in the negative.

“And you don’t carry an epipen, do you?”

Negative again.

“OK,” she said, ​“let’s do it.”

And she did. The prick was modest. Then I asked my last question: If there had been anyone in her tenure at the center thus far who had had an allergic reaction.

Just one in the three weeks she’s been working there, she replied. The staff dealt with it quickly, and the person walked out …

.… as I was about to do.

There’s Hope

But first she directed me to the third area that had been sectioned off in the gym, the 15-minute waiting area directly beneath tipped-up basketball backboards, their hoops with their orange rims and springy nets beckoning to me below.

Here. while I waited yet, another staffer came by with another sheet. This one was entitled, ​“What to Expect After Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine.” It mentioned potential side effects we know about (sore arm, chills, fever, aches) along with tips to reduce those effects, including to drink lots of liquids.

Solicitous in the end as in the beginning, the staffers came to ask if I was feeling and to make sure I booked my appointment for a second dose three weeks hence.

In the post-vaccination area, as throughout the process, there were people of all ages (the continuing vaccination of Yale employees and the tranche of older folks, like myself, in the Yale Health system). The atmosphere was not quite collegial, but close to it.

I noted when the clock, high up near the hoops, told me 15 minutes had passed. I was still fine, although I definitely did not feel like shooting hoops.

Just to be sure, I gave it five more minutes and then stood up. Immediately I keeled over … .no, no, that’s the bad short-story version of my experience.

I didn’t keel over. I felt fine, relieved, as I walked to the back of the gym as I’d been instructed. I stood in front of the final station of the vaccination procedure as a young man booked my second dose. A real person, not a computer. It was all set up, in seconds, on his laptop, and in the Yale system, for Feb. 10, Same place, slightly different time, at 2:15.

I left, with my arm growing just a little logy but otherwise feeling fine. I ascended stairs that mirrored the steps I’d entered on the opposite side of the gymnasium. Then it was up into the crowded parking lot to join my wife, who was waiting in the car and to go home.

I left feeling that parking, location, staff and know-how are not a larger problem, at least here. The problem is the limited supply of the vaccine and the reliability of getting the right amount to the right settings.

Most of all, I left feeling privileged and even blessed to have had this kind of treatment — and hoping hope others have it as well wherever they go.