When the needle goes prick, lancing flesh and entering my vein, I reflexively turn away to avoid the carnage. I instead picture the syringe slurping up my blood into those glass vials containing the violent harvest, which I also won’t look at, lest I get lightheaded and require smelling salts to keep me from passing out.
That’s what happened to me as a 12-year-old sick with mono. (The kissing disease. I rule.) I had to get regular bloodwork, but my body and mind weren’t having it. Even lying down so I wouldn’t topple over, I got woozy when the nurse drew blood. More than once she had to fetch smelling salts to prevent a fainting spell. It was a spectacle, drama, like a scene out of “ER,” pediatric unit.
I’ve gotten much better about being pricked. Getting bloodwork, as I did yesterday, is child’s play of the more mature sort. Pivoting my head from the procedure is merely habit, and if I happen to catch a glance of the needle and the blood, I’m sturdy, acting my age. I even thank the blood-tapping technician when it’s over, like he’s some kind of hero.
I’m also rather effusive to those who jab my arm with flu and Covid vaccines. It’s a thankless job, poking the skin of a nervous needle-phobe who tries to crack jokes to lower the pressure. All business, they rarely laugh. I recently got both vaccinations and thanked them like a madman, even though my jokes tanked.
Incidentally, if you ever need smelling salts, they are amazing. Perk you right up, like a cartoon character.
So today I went to the nearby CVS to get my annual flu shot and my sixth Covid vaccine since the great outbreak of 2020. I try to avoid this CVS and its florescent scuzziness if I can, but this errand had to be done sooner or later, and this store is the most convenient option.
Like most chain drug stores, CVS dizzies with its heaving array of stuff. I waded through a chaos of clamoring consumerism, everything jostling everything else: sacks of Halloween candy, weepy Hallmark cards, laxatives, reading glasses, and, perplexingly, a tall inspirational/Christian book rack abutting, with nary a blasphemous blush, the celebrity-exploitation magazines, those tawdry journals blaring rehab stints, venomous divorces and flashing the spray-tan décolletages of washed-up starlets. The men in these screeching glossies, lizardy leches all, fare no better.
Cutting through the garish gauntlet toward the pharmacy, I notice that the store is in critical need of fresh carpet — its ratty blue pelt looks like it belongs in a beer-soaked basement with a cracked pool table and a Doritos-dusted Xbox — and that most of the products on sale plunk me into a sad funk. (50% off gargantuan bags of Funyuns? Pass the strychnine.)
Why, I wonder, does everything in this store look worn and near its expiration date? Shelves gape with spaces where products are long sold out. And much of the inventory appears coated in dust and/or placed in the wrong department. (Flintstones vitamins next to the Trojans? Huh-hum.)
After my journey down miles of aisles, I make it to the vaccination check-in counter and the store’s overall complexion magically changes. At first it’s a little hectic and scarily unprofessional. The guy assigned to administer the vaccines looks about 19, and he’s distracted and aflutter.
“Ah, let me sneeze,” he says, turning his head. I allow him to sneeze. He sneezes.
But when it comes down to business — i.e., when he walks me over to the vaccine area and jabs both arms with needles I’d rather not be jabbed with — he proves a steady-handed pro. And affable, to boot.
Somehow it comes up that he is from Syria, and I tell him I’ve been there briefly (though he’s from Damascus and I went to Aleppo). We share a chuckle at the expense of the mountains of Halloween candy spilling onto the floor — so soon, more than a month away! You buy some of that, no way it’s going to last! If the kids don’t eat it, you will! Ha! I realize this is third-rate banter.
Anyway, things go as good if not better than they could, even in this semi-wretched drug store, where I bet their discount passport photos are disastrous, unusable. My guy is swift and smooth and painless with the syringes, and he neatly bandages up the holes. I thank him, he thanks me.
And, after a few mandated minutes sitting down post-shots, I’m back in the Aisles of Death. It’s not that bad, of course. I notice that, hey, some of these prices actually are good deals. CVS stands for Consumer Value Stores (for real), and as far as what I came there for — which wasn’t for the greasy carpet or the dirty Advil boxes — this consumer got his value.
Today I got my second Covid vaccine. I’m bracing for a world of agony.
This I know: My sister-in-law got both shots. The first was fine. The second flung her into a tailspin of flu-like symptoms — chills and aches, fever and mild nausea. She wished she had taken the next day off from work. Suddenly a knitted blankie was her BFF. It made a sweet, snuggly tableau.
Her first shot yielded the same aftershocks as my first shot: a wrathfully sore upper arm, like you were punched good and hard where the needle jabbed in. And then someone pinched the spot, with evil passion.
It’s the second shot, my in-law warns, that will “knock you on your ass.” Cute. Can’t wait.
All this is expected. Docs and the CDC have sternly cautioned that these side effects are common. So this isn’t one of those cockamamie anti-vax screeds. I want the vaccine. I know it works. I think everyone should get it. I’m just a little whiny poo-poo baby.
In Vietnam, I was practically asking for some florid flu-like side effects. Take me to a good cobra restaurant, I hounded my hustler guide, who zipped me around Hanoi on a rust bucket moto-bike to see all, from Soviet-style architecture to a dirty dog-meat market.
He delivered me to a roadside snake farm/restaurant, where slithering caged cobras and other “wild animals” awaited the plate. After cutting out the snake’s still-beating heart and drizzling its bile into a glass of rice whisky — which I was expected to guzzle, and did — the servers dished up a 15-course cobra lunch dazzling in its breadth. The feast is not for the faint of heart. I barely finished my portions. A forkful of exoticism goes a long way.
That night, as a reprisal for my snake-killing gluttony, I was hit with unmistakable flu-y symptoms, including fatigue, body aches and a swimming head. I was told later this was likely from trace amounts of snake venom I ingested at lunchtime. So this, sorta, is what being bitten by a snake feels like? I wondered with weird relish. (What’s worse, swallowing a whole cobra heart or being bitten by said snake? Chat among yourselves.)
Cobra feast
Afternoon report: Four hours after today’s vaccine and I have zero symptoms, not even a sore arm. My sister-in-law strongly suggests I take three preemptive Advils and I do just that. I sit down, crack a book, and await the plague.
The needle wasn’t bad today, though it stung more than my first shot a month ago. Was the first needle smaller? The nurse today told me to take a deep breath when she pricked me, which wasn’t the case last time. On that occasion the needle lanced a stick of butter; today it jabbed raw chicken breast. Now that I’ve wrecked your dinner plans, let’s see if the vaccine is wrecking my evening plans.
Evening report: It’s now eight hours since the shot. No chills, aches, stomach turmoil or brain tumors. And my arm is miraculously not sore. Am I getting off easy? Will I bolt up in bed at 3 a.m., drenched in sweat, racked with medieval pain? Oh, I did forget to mention this small side effect: My post-shot pee smells like a raging tire fire.
In about two weeks, after the vaccine has sluiced through my veins and cells, I will be immunized against the coronavirus. That’s the plan. If it works, and it will, it’s a miracle of science. Lab coats are sexy.
Late evening report: It’s now 10 hours since today’s needle. My upper arm is pretty sore, right where I was stabbed. This incurable hypochondriac will have none of it. I can see it now: every noxious flu symptom crashing down on me in the next 24 hours. Here’s what I need: fistfuls of Advil, heaps of pity, and a plush knitted blankie.
I’ll update things if developments warrant it. Just know, if I’m in the ICU, I probably won’t be able to type.
GNASHING. 