We got shot

Yesterday GC and I went for our flu shots* at Tom Brown Arena. I’d never had a flu shot before, but this year I figure I’m more vulnerable and more exposed to sick people. GC has had a couple of flu shots over the years, but he had unpleasant reactions to them (flu symptoms, fainting, etc.). He decided to do it this year, but he was nervous.

We got our wristbands when they opened at 9:00 in the morning. That didn’t take long. We were No. 269 and 270. They told us to come back at 4:00 for the shots.

At 4:00 we returned and waited in one of two outdoor tents with a bunch of other people. Every now and then someone would come in and announce a range of wristband numbers, and those people would go indoors. Eventually it was our turn and we shuffled into the Arena.

My friend John was in there (and, oddly, this was the third time we’d bumped into him in less than 24 hours). He was in the time slot ahead of us, so he was thoroughly familiar with the routine by now. He was like our personal tour guide of the immunization clinic.

The waiting area is an observation room overlooking a skating rink, so some of the little kids were thrilled to sit on their fathers’ shoulders and watch what they thought were the Senators. One of the fathers took all the fun out of it by telling his kid it wasn’t the Senators, it wasn’t anybody important, and get your damned fingers out of my ears, you know I hate that.

We waited. We made sure all our paperwork was in order (you can download the forms from the net or pick them up on site.) Every now and then a female security guard with a booming voice bellowed “CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION. IF YOUR WRISTBAND IS BETWEEN THESE TWO NUMBERS, LINE UP OVER HERE.”

When it was our turn, the security guard snipped off our bracelets and we went upstairs. We were in a huge noisy room where everything was happening: People crying, people getting injections, people waiting, people getting registered, people recovering. We saw John in the recovery area. He was still alive and smiling, and GC, who was getting more and more nervous by the minute, seemed heartened by this.

We lined up to get registered, and then we were seated in a chair lineup, and finally we were directed to one of many nurses seated at long tables. Our nurse did GC first, since he was nervous. There was a girl about 10 on the other side of the table who was much more nervous than GC, and I was fascinated by her hysteria. Her younger brother and sister were absolutely placid, but this girl was freaking out. And she was mad, too. She yelled at her father not to hold her, because “you’re just making it worse!”

I was supposed to be keeping GC calm, but I was so distracted by this kid, just three feet away from us, and how determined she was not to get the shot, and how determined her parents were to make sure she got the shot, and how locked into the whole thing they all were. I watched the nurses trying to calm her, and her father talking to her through gritted teeth, and throughout it all the kid just kept crying and screaming and fighting.

GC was awfully good in comparison. After his shot the nurse had him sit by himself over by the wall. She didn’t want him to watch me getting my shot, in case he fainted in sympathy. After my shot, we waited our mandatory 15 minutes in recovery, lined up for our immunization records, and left.

Total time there, not counting the trip to pick up our wristbands in the morning: exactly two hours. Then we went to the 260 Fingers Pottery Show in the Glebe where GC bought himself a nice big oatmeal bowl as a reward for surviving the Great Pandemic of 2009.

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*The whole flu shot thing is generating a fair amount of controversy. Nik, from Kill Everything, has an interesting piece about it: The Flu Shot That Ate Your Brain.