3. dose covid-19 vaccine

A little breathless and a little stressed, I lock the bike in front of the old school which currently functions as a vaccination station. The lady at the front door smiles through her face mask. Strange how the last year and a half has taught us to interpret smiles through face masks, or at least it looks like everyone is walking around smiling. I'm a little embarrassed that I don't have a face mask in my bag and ask if they have any extras. Explaining that I got a short notice. She nods and thinks it's nice that someone can show up at short notice as well. After a bit of fiddling, the mask is in place and I proceed to the check-in. A quick look at the watch shows that I 'm right on time. Still a little hurried, I talk a little too fast and search a little frantic around in my bag to find the box of Imurel. He calmly tells me that he only needs to see some ID and that I can show the box to the person giving the shot. I start searching my bag again  until he reminds me that I have ID hanging around my neck. The feeling of beeing rushed stays with me, and I hurry on to the lady who is going give the shot. The Imurel box reappears from the bag while the lady tries to find me in the system. I barely feel the little sting from the vaccine, and after a 20 minute wait I'm good to go.

A vaccine is something that is used to stimulate the immune system so that it's trained to defend itself against a potential enemy. When you go on immunosuppressive treatment, you can risk that vaccines don't have the same effect. My dear friend who is a bit in the same immune reduced boat as me, was actually recently infected with covid, even after 2 vaccine doses. It was a little surprising to hear, because I thought the chance was very, very small when you were vaccinated. FHI now recommends a 3rd dose of covid-17 vaccine to some patient groups and for my part there was no doubt that I wanted to take this if this also applied to me. So when I found Imurel on the list, I contacted the vaccine office to get an appointment for the 3rd dose. 

So now I've gotten 2 doses of Pfizer and 1 dose of Moderna. On the first 2 I did not notice any side effects, a little stiff arm and tired the next day maybe. The 3rd dose, however, I definitely noticed. The arm became stiffer and worse throughout the day and painful through the night. It became difficult to find a good position to sleep in. It felt a little better when I woke up yesterday, but then came the nausea and headache. They say you shouldn't worry if you don't get any side effects, but in a strange way it feels a little reassuring anyway. After spending the morning in bed, I eventually recovered for lunch and moved from the bed to the couch. Here I spent the rest of the day before crawling back to bed. So now I'm both triple- and cross-vaccinated.