I got vaccinated and I didn't wake up with three eyes! Testimonial
Published on 4 May 2021
Last weekend, the government announced the opening of Covid-19 vaccination to a much wider public than up to now, allowing obese people or those with comorbidities to book an appointment. So I tried it out, it was wonderful!
Booking the appointment Right after the announcements I checked on the "Vite ma dose" app whether there were any appointments not too far from my home. Let me point out that I live smack in the center of a big city, namely Montpellier. At the time of the announcements, no appointment was available, apart from a few slots in far-off villages, and mostly in pharmacies. I still tried calling a few pharmacies near me just in case, which told me they were refusing appointments for people under 55, since they only have the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is for the moment not recommended for younger people. In practice, some pharmacists do carry out AstraZeneca injections for younger people, so if you want to try asking your pharmacist, it's not at all far-fetched.
Anyway, as for me I kind of gave up, until my sister asked me if I was going to get vaccinated. As I was answering her that I couldn't find an appointment, I took a distracted glance at Doctolib, and there, incredible, there were loads of appointments available at the big vaccination center opened at the Montpellier city hall! So I immediately booked an appointment for the first available date. When booking the appointment on Doctolib, the app was up to date, and let me tick the reason for my registration, namely my age and the reason (comorbidity). And there you go! Right after, you also automatically book an appointment for the second dose, in my case six weeks later.
If I had one piece of advice for those looking for an appointment, it's to check regularly on Doctolib or Vitemadose whether new slots open up; apparently that can happen several times and at any time of day, and in that case you have to be quick.
The vaccination center Lucky for me, the vaccination center where I managed to book an appointment is located in the magnificent "new city hall" of Montpellier, an impressive building designed by the architect Jean Nouvel. Access is from outside the city hall; you go around the building to enter it through a passage on the side, not far from the city hall gardens. A few hundred people are present and queuing outside.
How the vaccination unfolds First step, getting past the security guards. City hall obliges, you're searched, run through metal detectors, and you have to wait while people move up in the line.
Next step, "regulators" give us a form to fill out, a few medical questions to know which box you fall into, your social security number, and that's it.
Once this document is filled out, you move to the next checkpoint, namely other regulators who seem to verify that you do have an appointment booked on Doctolib. This step takes three seconds.
We move on to the crucial moment, the pre-vaccination appointment with a doctor. This appointment lasts a few seconds, and lets them verify that you're indeed eligible for vaccination. In my case absolutely no verification is done, no document or prescription is requested. So everything is based on trust. I simply answered that I was diabetic, and I moved straight to the next step.
The fact that there's no verification of any kind is surprising, because it means everyone can get vaccinated without difficulty, but this situation must really depend on the centers. This center is very big, we were told that many appointments were being cancelled, and so quite a few doses can potentially be wasted; as a result it's probably preferable to vaccinate as many people as possible, rather than being left with "empty" appointments. It's possible that in smaller towns, or smaller vaccination centers, where not all the priority groups have been vaccinated yet, the checks or the questionnaires about your state of health and your eligibility are more thorough, and that potentially, if you fall outside the criteria, you get turned away. Even if honestly I haven't seen any testimony of that sort so far.
Past this pre-vaccination appointment, you have to wait on a chair for one of the volunteer firefighters vaccinating to be available. You take a ticket like at the butcher's, and when it's your turn off you go! For the anecdote, during this wait, you can take the opportunity to admire a few paintings by the artist Di Rosa that are exhibited in the vaccination room.
The jab! The firefighter has you enter their little box, checks your pre-filled form, writes 2-3 bits of nonsense on it, like the arm you chose, and reminds you of the brand of vaccine you're going to receive (in my case: Pfizer). Then it's time for the jab! Honestly, it's an unpleasant sensation, but it really doesn't hurt. You definitely feel the needle wandering deep into your shoulder, but without any particular pain. There, it's done!
And afterwards? Once the jab is done, you queue again so that the vaccination gets recorded and declared to the health insurance. It's after this step that you'll be handed a document making your vaccination official. This document serves as a certificate and includes a QR Code, which lets you integrate it into the "Tous anticovid" app. All this done, you have to wait 15 minutes before leaving, just to make sure you don't faint right after the injection.
The side effects of the vaccine As for me, no fever or flu-like symptoms. Just a fairly annoying heaviness in the arm, but which I already know is temporary. Some say it's at the second injection of the Pfizer vaccine that the side effects are felt, we'll see!
While waiting for the second dose Vaccine protection is only complete 15 days after the second injection. Partial protection still kicks in a few days after the first injection. I'll still be careful until then, it would be dumb to catch covid in the middle of getting vaccinated!
Photo credit: DR
By Paingout