1/1/24 Mass attendance lifted

I'm going to go tomorrow night if I can --- my mother had a very rough time yesterday and still hasn't nearly gotten her strength back, her caregiver was limited in what she could do for her today while my son and I went to see Aquaman --- and in my circumstances, whether it "counts" for Sunday or not (it does, even though it's technically a Solemnity of MMOG vigil Mass) is beside the point, I get to Mass as I can regardless of the day.  Right now the TLM is impossible for me due to distance.

The first two Moderna shots made me deathly ill. I rarely have anything but a one-day sore arm from a shot and sometimes not even that. With the first two Moderna, I had to go to bed for a day, I had fever and chills, and various bodily functions were malfunctioning right and left. The shots after that became progressively less dramatic, and the most recent one was again just a lump on the arm and metal taste in the mouth. I kept it all Moderna because I didn't want mix-n-match side effects and also if anything went really wrong, the blame would be squarely placed on one manufacturer. Fortunately nothing went seriously wrong.

The weird metal taste in the mouth. One of the nastiest side effects of Corona. This took ages to wear off when I had it the third time. I kept having sensory malfunctions and smelling stuff that wasn't there as well. I also ended up with endless bunged-up ears and noses which I always get with colds. This is definitely a product of my mother's genetics as my father never gets this even with a cold but my mother always did and I always have Olbas or something like that handy to unblock my sinuses.

I was dealing with the public endlessly when I got it. I also had to test every couple of days due to that. I haven't had it this year because for the last twelve months or so I have been acting more or less as a carer at home and as a researcher I tend to come into contact with people via TEAMS or Zoom more than real-life meetings. My last meeting for example was with someone from disability support organizing specialist software for people like myself who are quite short-sighted. I am amazed how much stuff these people will pay for. Someone agreed to cough up £2,000 for a new PC and software simply because I noted when started on a PhD program that I am disabled. I don't generally think about it that much and I only put it down just in cause I had a seizure in a lecture or seminar. Suddenly I found the disability advisor offering me all this stuff. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I got a letter the other day notifying me I can pick a desktop or laptop up to the value of £600 for free and I can pay the difference if I want a slightly better one. I will say the editing software someone agreed to buy is a big improvement over Word.

I took the Pfizer shots (this because they were the ones I could find out the most about, WRT not using fetal tissue), four of them, and they didn't really make me "feel bad", just a little puny and sleepy the next day.  Sometimes I tend towards mild narcolepsy anyway, and I frequently take an early-evening nap in addition to my night's sleep.  I had COVID earlier in 2023, this even with the shots, but it was a very light case, I started getting cold and couldn't maintain my body temperature while my son and I were at a strongly-chilled McDonald's, this with my wearing only a short-sleeved shirt.  I went to the doctor, tested positive, and got five days' worth of Paxlovid, and early on I slept 14 hours one day, was a bit congested, but that was about it.  After the five days, I was fine, as though nothing had ever happened.

As an RN I am well aware of the body's immunization response and it's immune memory. And because I am a nurse trained to document on a patient's symptoms that is what I did following my Moderna vaccinations. My signs and symptoms ran the whole gambit of the expected side effects that was mentioned on the VIS (vaccine information statement). However they lasted more than just a day or two and started 8 hours after my initial jab. The severity of both subjective and objective symptoms and the duration of them is what I did not expect. In addition, I had an unusual side effect that wasn't listed on the VIS which didn't resolve entirely for several weeks. It was some kind of peripheral vasculitis similar to Raynauds phenomenon. My fingers were effected and intermittently became flattened, blanched, numb and tingly then red, swollen, and painfully throbbed as it would start to go away. This was much before the term Covid toes was used to describe what some people who had Covid 19 infection experienced. My own Dr. hadn't heard of anyone who experienced this symptom following a Covid injection.

8 hours after getting vaccinated, I developed chills and rigors that preceded a spike in my temperature up to 101.6° F. I couldn't stop shaking. The fever lasted for 3 days before it went below 100° F. For 48 hours I was pretty much bed bound with very bad myalgias, arthralgias and a throbbing headache besides the usual cough, chest/head congestion. Because of my asthma, I also had wheezing and dyspnea. My O2 saturation dropped but not into a critical range. I kept myself hydrated but had no appetite due to nausea and the sore throat. Most of the worse symptoms subsided in a week but the peripheral vasculitis and Covid arm stuck around for a few weeks. With the 2nd injection I had similar reactions. The booster dose which was half of the initial injections didn't cause side effects or duration of symptoms as severe. Granted that when I got Covid two months after the booster dose, it didn't land me in the hospital so the vaccine did what it was supposed to do. Having Covid wasn't a very pleasant experience either but I recovered quicker from that than from the Covid vaccinations.

When the Novavax vaccine was approved by the FDA in 2022, I went to a local public health department to get that as my next Covid booster but was told that I couldn't. Protocol stated that if you were initially vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine and the subsequent booster shot, you weren't eligible to take the Novavax. Recently the FDA has approved an updated Novavax for 2023-2024 which is effective against the current strains of Covid. I've heard that those previously vaccinated with mRNA vaccines could take this Novavax. In the coming weeks I am going to find out if I'm now eligible. Novavax isn't an mRNA vaccine and it uses the traditional virus blocking technology instead to develop antibodies against Covid. Hopefully my side effects won't be as bad before.