After the First Dose, a long story and in all honesty

I received the first dose of the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine yesterday at my local CVS. I had been really anxious to get the vaccine because lots of reasons. It’s a very new drug. It hasn’t been around long. The side-effects sound scary. I was very scared to get the vaccine. But it’s the common sense thing to do, the smart thing, the responsible citizen thing to do, because getting Covid and transmitting it to our other fellow citizens is worse. There’s that thing in your brain that tells you it’s the moral thing to do.

But for me, there’s also that thing in my brain that is very scared and anxious because I’m the kind of person that doesn’t actively seek out pain. I avoid pain as much as possible. Physical and emotional pain. When WoW and the people in WoW make me feel like shit, I quit. If a psych drug causes side-effects that I can’t stand, I stop taking it. Because it’s not the end of the world if I quit WoW. It’s not the end of the world if I quit a new drug my psychiatrist wants me to try. There are lots of other options, and I’m not a really big danger to myself or others.

I’ve been binge watching Lucifer on Netflix the past couple weeks. It’s so addictive and entertaining. Every episode ends on a cliffhanger. It’s funny af, the main characters are interesting and likeable, but strangely emotionally compelling. But what/who I’m really drawn to is the protagonist/antihero. He’s the Devil with a heart of gold. He is charming, self-absorbed, narcissistic, hedonistic. He was the lord of Hell, but something inside him wasn’t feeling it anymore. So, he left Hell and came to Earth, where he enjoys a very privileged and hedonistic lifestyle, which I don’t see as necessarily a bad thing. He’s not hurting anyone, he’s just a bit shallow.

Or rather, his lifestyle is a bit shallow. He, the Devil, Lucifer is more complicated than that. He’s going through some kind of transformation and doesn’t know who he is anymore and who he wants to be. Enter the love interest, Detective Chloe Decker, who makes him vulnerable, physically and emotionally. When he’s around her, he is no longer immortal and all to human. Every time he gets close to her, he pulls away or pushes her away. Because he’s afraid of his feelings, he’s afraid of getting hurt, he’s afraid of the pain. And he really, really doesn’t like the person he thinks he is. Chloe of course is his foil, his kryptonite; I love how romance tropes (love changes you, love saves the world, soul mates, love at first sight, fated mates, found family, reforming the rake, etc.) work in the series.

Anyway, so, I feel like I can relate to Lucifer’s fears of being vulnerable and getting hurt and how he tries so hard to avoid any kind of emotional distress.

I wasn’t eligible for the vaccine until mid-April, but I put it off for a month. There were reasons excuses reasons. I didn’t want to take the vaccine before my mammogram, because I didn’t want to mess up the mammogram results (no cancer btw). My local pharmacy was fully booked, and I didn’t want to go out of the way to get the vaccine. I have anxiety about going out. So, it had to be easy and close to home. Also, no waiting in lines. But even though I was scared of the side-effects and I didn’t want to get the vaccine, I felt that I had to take it. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. A coward. People would get mad at me. People wouldn’t like me. I wouldn’t be a real progressive. I wouldn’t be on the right side.

So, when my local pharmacy where I get all my drugs, finally had availability for the Pfizer vaccine (because I didn’t want J&J after the stories of the side-effects and because Pfizer is supposedly the most effective and safest), I made an appointment and got the first dose of the vaccine yesterday. I was really, really, really scared, and very, very anxious. The shot didn’t hurt. It was just a prick. I waited for fifteen minutes. I wanted to wait a little more but my dad was getting impatient. When I got in the car, I started feeling like the right side of my face was puffy and kind of numb. I kept asking my dad if my face looked swollen. He told me not to worry about it, it would go away. It went away the next day, this morning around 5am, so it wasn’t that bad.

My mom also checked in on me last night before I went to sleep. She told me it was kinda puffy, but it was okay. Then, today, she said she had only told me that it wasn’t that bad because she didn’t want me to worry. She thought my face had looked swollen. This morning, when I woke up, my back felt really itchy and I had a rash/hives on my stomach. I kept napping during the day, the itchiness and stomach rash went away. My arm feels sore but it’s not like the horror stories I’ve heard where it’s so painful you can’t sleep. It doesn’t feel like I got punched in the arm. I mean, compared to my neck and shoulder pain, it’s much bearable. With the shoulder and neck pain, it’s sometimes so bad that I dread getting on the computer, playing WoW or whatever else interests me.

Anyway, I was a little paranoid today because of the itchiness and rash this morning and the face swelling yesterday. I called my doctor’s office and they said they would ask the doctor and call me back. While waiting, I did some research on the CDC website. It said:

If You Have a Non-severe Allergic Reaction to a COVID-19 Vaccine

If you had an immediate allergic reaction after getting a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, you should not get a second shot of that vaccine, even if your allergic reaction was not severe enough to require emergency care. If the reaction was after an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), you should not get a second shot of either of these vaccines. An immediate allergic reaction happens within 4 hours of getting vaccinated and may include symptoms such as hives, swelling, and wheezing (respiratory distress). Your doctor may refer you to a specialist in allergies and immunology to provide more care or advice.

Reading that, I felt I would be validated if I didn’t take or want to take the 2nd dose. (Here is a good place to insert therapist, who says my feelings are valid and there’s nothing wrong with the way I feel.) The doctor’s office called me back, they said if the allergies got worse I should call them back and I can take an antihistamine or the doctor could prescribe something that I can’t remember the name of. But the itchiness, swelling, and rash are all gone, so I told them I didn’t the meds anymore and I didn’t need to see the doctor. I just wanted to know if I should take the 2nd shot because I had face swelling within 4 hours of getting vaccinated. They said I could still get the shot but it was my choice.

So, here I am, again, faced with moral dilemma. If this is my body, if this is my choice, is it anyone’s business but mine? Am I accountable to the government, my neighbors, friends and family? Should I be shamed, feel shame and embarrassment, if I don’t take the 2nd shot? Right now, I feel really tired and overwhelmed. I’ve been sleeping a lot but not feeling rested when I wake up. I totally feel overmedicated. And I’ve been on a lot of different meds in my life so I know what overmedicated feels like. It will probably be okay if I take the 2nd shot, if I have an allergic reaction I could take some antihistamine or I will wait longer at the pharmacy and talk to someone there if I feel the swelling again.

But I just don’t want to go through all that. I freaking hate this pandemic, how trapped it makes me feel. If we had gotten control of Covid from the start, if people had been wearing masks from the start, the pandemic wouldn’t have gotten so out of control. I really, really don’t wanna get another shot in the arm that makes me feel like this. Not to mention, I have been moody af all day. Feel like crying, feel really irritable. Idk if the vaccine is messing with my mood, hormones, or psych meds. Some people in a romance community discord I joined have reported getting their periods early, and there is actually a research study being conducted to look into how Covid affects people’s menstruation cycle.

So, what I am going to do about the 2nd shot? Right now, I don’t feel that bad. The side-effects haven’t been that bad either. I’m not at a high risk of getting Covid or transmitting Covid, because I hardly go out. I literally only go out to doctor’s appointments. My dad picks up my medications, or I have them delivered. If I’m fully vaccinated, I can go out, be less afraid of getting Covid, not have to wear a mask. But to me, wearing a mask is not a hardship. And even if I were fully vaccinated, I’d still wear a mask.

There’s a lot of pressure to get vaccinated, from the government, from friends and family. But I think it really is a personal decision, because it is a medication, and it is your body. To me, a moral dilemma. It reminds me of the time I had gotten an abortion. I was 19, in college. It was an unplanned pregnancy and a very tough choice. Maybe… Maybe, that’s why I’ve been crying a lot today.

Because there’s no shame in being mentally ill

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, #2016 yet again snuffed out another bright star in the galaxy, but for many fans Carrie Fisher will live on in their own light. I will remember Carrie Fisher not only as the fierce, heroic Princess Leia in Star Wars, but also as a mental health advocate who spoke about her battle with Bipolar Disorder. I can tell you many of my mentally ill friends looked up to her and admired her, because she was one of us.

Fisher has been unusually outspoken for years about her mental health battles, something many fans mourned when Fisher died at age 60 on Tuesday after suffering a heart attack several days earlier on an airplane. The actress talked candidly about bipolar disorder and her treatments and how they affected her life. She acknowledged there was still a stigma when talking about mental health, but she wanted to help fight it.

“I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I’m still surviving it, but bring it on,” Fisher told ABC News.

Source: Carrie Fisher, the inspiring mental health advocate: ‘I am mentally ill. . . . I am not ashamed of that’

My story is a little different. Though I am no longer ashamed about being diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder and having been hospitalized multiple times, I have felt shame and embarrassment about being so ill and disabled. I dislike feeling vulnerable and weak, and I also felt guilty and unworthy of sympathy. I was living in the Bay Area when I was first hospitalized, I was no longer able to work, and I soon ran out of money to pay for my health insurance and treatment. I didn’t want to go home so I borrowed money from my parents.