I had a rather stressful day yesterday (Wednesday March 24) for various reasons, but on the definite plus side, I feel extremely lucky and grateful that I was able to get my first shot of the COVID-19 vaccination Wednesday afternoon!
Last Friday, it became available to my age group (40+) in my state (Ohio) and since I have weird late night hours, I thought that maybe if I started investigating various sources it was available in right after midnight, as soon as Thursday turned into Friday, that I might get lucky. Instead I got stressed out, spending at least 2 hours investigating and encountering nothing in 50 miles from me. Closest I got was putting myself and my boyfriend on a waiting list with one nearby place. In addition to the 50 plus miles away, some of the places I checked out still only listed availability for 50+ years of age.
After that first night of no good luck, I told myself I'd keep on investigating, but would try not to get myself all stressed out and would spend about 45 minutes every night. I wasn't expecting to land a spot my second night, but a little after 2:00 AM that night, I checked out a place that had still said 50+ the night before and now they were listed as 40+ and had various times available Wednesday in a location less than 10 minutes away from me! I couldn't believe my luck and signed up as fast as I could and felt like maybe I was daydreaming.
I had wanted to sign my boyfriend up too, but didn't have all his information in front of me (the numbers on his health insurance/pharmacy insurance etc...), so emailed him to bring those with him the next day. We were going to make one attempt while he was here and if that didn't work, I was going to try it late at night again. But it ended up working, even though we had to sign him up for a slot over an hour away from him. He got his 1st shot Monday; I got my first shot Wednesday.
I was a little nervous (not about the shot itself, but about the unexpected such as side effects that seem to differ from person to person), but I got the shot (Pfizer) at 3:50 PM Wednesday and was fine for about 5 hours. A little after 9:00 PM, my upper arm (right where I got the shot) started feeling sore. It was just a mild to moderate soreness and I could move it around fine. It gradually got a little worse, but already seemed to be getting better by about 3:00 AM. I did lay down for a while, somewhere around 9:30-11:30 PM, because I felt low energy, tired, and drained - but I don't even think that was necessarily because of the vaccine. I think it was because of my stress about the vaccine plus my stress about some other stuff that had effected my sleep schedule the previous night.
I took a few ibuprofens and drank a lot of water (and some orange juice) and my only side effect seemed to be mild to moderately uncomfortable upper arm.
After I had been in bed for a few hours, I woke up and it felt more uncomfortable and closer to high-end moderate.
I got up and took an Ibuprofen then laid back down. It felt pretty bad for an hour or two in bed, almost as if someone had punched me in the arm or something. Before that, the only mildly sore spot was where I had actually gotten the injection, but when I woke up, it was more like the whole top of my arm was sore, almost heading up to my neck. Fortunately that only lasted an hour or two before it started to get better again.
When I got up for the day Thursday, it was somewhat better but still somewhat worse than the night before. In addition to the discomfort, my arm felt kind of stiff and I had trouble extending my arm or holding it up (for example, when applying deodorant). It's better again now though and the arm discomfort was the only side effect I experienced, so all things considered, I think the first shot worked well and pretty easily for me.
Very happy that I have my vaccinating underway.
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