We've spent the last couple months in south Texas, where many winter Texans from all over the country seemed to be fighting over too few vaccine opportunities. We saw long lines of cars waiting for reservations to get vaccines, and heard stories of people standing in line for hours, only to be turned away when supplies ran out. While the process at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley's medical school was very good, it took months to get an appointment, and the computer system crashed when it was opened only to the 65+ population. Recently, Texas had a couple weeks when the vaccination process was opened to people age 50+, and now it has opened to anyone 16 years and older. Now that newer vaccines don't have the stringent storage requirements, the vaccine seems to be getting to more rural areas easier.
Because we travel and don't stay in one place long enough to get a second shot, we decided that we wanted the one-and-done Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Mark started watching the Texas state vaccine web site as we headed away from the more populated Rio Grande Valley. We found that sometimes their information was not accurate. Then Mark found the web site vaccinefinder.org. That's how we found Yorktown, Texas.
The mural pictured above was the most striking thing we saw in this little town. With a population of 1,916, Yorktown is a tiny dot on the Texas map. In fact, the drug store was one of the few buildings on Main street that was still occupied.
But today they had 200 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, and we could get two of those doses at 4:30 this afternoon. From our camp site in Goliad, we drove the 30 miles to the Kraege Drug Store in Yorktown.
This was their third day of giving shots, and today was the first day that they had gone public on that web site Mark was using. The receptionist said they had been busy, with people driving all the way from Austin and Houston, and even Edinburg. Edinburg is interesting to us. That's where Denisa's Mother got her shots, and that's a 3.5-hour drive from here. We filled out an easy two-page form, and it only took a few minutes to meet the local pharmacist behind the screen in the back corner of the drug store to get our shots. We think he was good at giving shots. But as the medicine entered our arms we both thought this was the most painful shot we could remember. Ouch!
The pharmacist recommended not taking anything for discomfort, as it wasn't clear if that would lessen the effectiveness of the vaccine. We also knew to keep moving our arms around, as that helps with the soreness of the shot site. After waiting our 15 minutes, we were on our way out of Yorktown, happy to have that over with it . . . or was it?
In the middle of the night, Mark started running a fever that left him with chills and shakes. When we took his temperature later, it registered at 102.4. He would continue that fever and feeling miserable for the next day and a half. We both had head aches and fatigue, like a lighter version of the symptoms when we had the Covid virus back in October. We had read that side-effects from the vaccine might be more severe for people that had already had the virus.
We stayed close to the motor home until our symptoms got better, and we never took anything for the discomfort. We want this shot to be as effective as possible! We still felt a little weak, but we were fever- and symptom-free within 48 hours after our shots. Now we are very glad that we opted for the one-time Johnson and Johnson vaccine, as we would really dread having to go back and take another shot. Now we have survived the virus, survived the vaccine--and we survived the 48 hours after!
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