Moderna Vaccine
First Shot: In New Jersey, where I’m based, appointments for 38-year-olds without pre-existing conditions were all but impossible as recently as early April. By the time my group, 1C, was up for a turn, they were available wide. I gave myself the luxury of going the day after my husband Freddy got his (Pfizer) so I could observe how it hit him before going in for my own, at a local pharmacy. (Spoiler alert: He felt nothing.) I happened to be in store for Moderna instead, which I had heard might hit you harder (or at least hit women harder). One hour in, I had the sensation of a tingliness overtaking my affected arm, kinda like sand going into an hourglass, it got heavier and heavier. That night, sleeping on my side, I felt like my arm was actually broken, it was so sore, but I had no fever, and no other symptoms per se, and it pretty much went right away.
Second Shot: I’d heard this one is the doozy, so I timed this it to make sure my twins’ birthday had passed before I might end up incapacitated-ish. (I also timed it to make sure it was a few days apart from when my babysitter got hers; she actually ended up needing the day off after her second Pfizer shot!) This time, I went in the morning, and by noon, I was really tired and even took a nap in the middle of the day. I got a kind of bizarrely strong second wind around 5pm, decided to take my daughter to ballet, go to the grocery store and cook a complicated middle eastern rice pilaf for dinner. But as I sat down to eat it, I felt ready to crash, and I ended up going to bed before my kids that evening, letting my husband handle bedtime alone. A couple hours later, I realized I had a fever in the 100 degree range which lasted through the night. In the morning, I woke up still feverish, but a second dose of Tylenol knocked it out, and from about 24 hours post-shot, I was symptom free.
