100 days of hope — 9. Vaccinating hope
Over the last couple of months I have been working as a COVID-19 vaccinator alongside my usual post.
We run a clinic from 8am-6pm and between the team of nurses, administrators and volunteers we are able to vaccinate around 500 people a day. I personally vaccinate between 50 and 80 people a day.
What this means is that I get to talk to 50 to 80 people a day if not more. And at the moment, that feels like a real privilege. In any normal year vaccinating could feel like quite a boring repetitive task but in a year where we’ve all been starved of human contact it’s really uplifting and energising.
Sometimes I’m talking to people who haven’t left their home in nearly a year, and they are so grateful for the vaccination and the possibility they may feel much safer to leave their home in the near future.
For me the two most touching moments have been hearing of a consultant from the intensive care unit at the hospital crying with relief upon being vaccinated, and when an elderly couple in their 90's came in for their second vaccinations one of which I delivered. With younger people — most of them healthcare workers you feel inclined to whizz through the procedure to make sure we vaccinate plenty of people in a day — but with people a little older, more vulnerable, or more nervous you slow right down and make sure they feel safe and comfortable and in these moments I often connect with what we’re doing much more intimately.
When people say how grateful they are, and what a wonderful job we’re doing I always turn it back on them and acknowledge this is a group effort that we’re all contributing to. But my guilty secret is that I let a little of the praise and gratitude through. Just enough to top me up.
I leave at the end of each day vaccinating feeling hopeful. Both that there is an active path we can take out of this crises and that there is still more unity than division between us all. I think it’s worth adding that I respect a diversity of opinions on the vaccinations. Some people are nervous, some are wary, some will refuse it and some are desperate for it. All opinions are valid. Life is complex and how to make sense of COVID-19, lockdown and vaccinations is no simple 2-dimensional task. We are all entitled to make are own assessments of what feels safe and what feels unsafe, but I hope we keep talking about it with each other, because chatting about it helps us make better decisions.
