Vaccine

(Originally published March 29, 2021 as a Postcard from the Hancock Inn)

Our turn for a first COVID vaccine was yesterday, three days after we became eligible to register for the shot in New Hampshire as members of category 2B.

In our corner of the world, the vaccinating is taking place at the Keene State College Athletic Complex and being administered by Monadnock Public Health officials, escorted by the National Guard.

The process was running like clockwork despite the presence of a few glitches with a new system in use on everyone's Apple iPads, of which there were enough for every volunteer, National Guardsman, and Healthcare worker combing the parking lots.

"The last system had plenty of glitches," noted the volunteer who arrived at my car window, bundled against the cold weather, plugging away on her iPad with fingers temporarily pulled from her wool mittens. "Those were old glitches. These are new glitches. It's all good," she said, smiling broadly.

"Are you ready?" she beamed, which made me suddenly think of closing my eyes and tapping my heels together three times.

Then jab.

"Car flashers on, please. Lean on the horn if you feel faint or are struggling. Wait fifteen minutes and drive home safely." Lastly, she said, "Congratulations, George." (My first name is George, but I am only ever referred to as George by the government.)

When she was forty-three years old my grandmother contracted polio, often called Infantile Paralysis because it mostly attacked children. We suspect she was passed the disease by someone in the acting troupe she was part of that summer, where it was common for the women to share lipstick around the dressing room.

I have heard the story of that fateful day many times, of how my mother stood at the door to my grandmother's room and was told not to come in. Next, the stretcher down the stairs into the back of a waiting ambulance and my grandfather, pacing the front hallway, chain-smoking, no doubt running scenarios in his head. What now?

You may be interested in these facts about polio from the MedLife website:

About twenty-five percent of people infected by the disease suffer minor symptoms such as sore throat and fever, with some pain in the arms and legs, stiffness in the neck, and headaches. Those people typically make a full recovery in a couple of weeks. More interesting is that nearly seventy percent of those infected by polio remain asymptomatic.

My grandmother did not fall within the ninety-five percent of people with no, or minor symptoms. She would spend the next six months in an iron lung in the adult polio ward where she was likely the oldest patient, receiving Last Rites from a Catholic priest along the way. She emerged at the end an invalid, but gallant and full of life, a columnist afterward for the Buffalo Courier-Express, among other things, and we enjoyed happy times with her over the many years that followed.

I have this personal connection to vaccines. When the polio vaccine came out my mother, aunt, and uncles were among the first to receive the shot--among the first, I tell you, after six thousand years of polio's recorded torment. Dr. Jonas Salk was a hero in our family. Sitting in the car yesterday, waiting as the teams moved down the line of vehicles, I thought back to standing in the hallway outside my first or second-grade classroom in Westport, Connecticut, waiting as the nurses moved down the line of children dispensing sugar cubes laced with the polio vaccine. I remember the cube. I remember its slightly pink color. I remember it going into my mouth. I knew it was important. I knew it was important to my mother.

My wife and I took two cars to the vaccination site yesterday needing to divide and conquer afterward. She was ahead of me in line and first to pull away. She stopped alongside to check how I was feeling, which was fine, as was she. We were filled with the anticipation and excitement of hugging grandchildren. Hugging everyone. Beaming. All good.

She drove on. I took up my telephone to text Mother.

One shot down, I typed.

Great! Thank you, was her reply.