I didn't manage to get the jag today - they didn't have any leftovers - and they've changed the 'enrolment' system. I've sent them an e-mail giving my phone extension and the days I work, so if they have any unused doses, I might get a call next week.
In other news, my brother and sister (both mid-60s) got theirs, and are both feeling rather miserable. My brother had a bit of a cold before he got the vaccine, and now has quite a bad one; and my sister woke in the middle of the night pouring with sweat and feeling generally lousy.
My daughter aged 49 had the vaccine when she was volunteering at a vaccination centre the other day. Presumably they had some left over. She experienced pronounced side effects for about 30 hours: fever, sweating, sleeping badly, bad dreams, nausea.
She thinks that being younger, her immune system is stronger so is having to fight harder against the vaccine.
Apart from a sore arm, I felt nothing.
Could be. Could also be partly genetic. I know that severity of COVID symptoms is partly linked to genetics, so it sounds possible that reactions to the vaccine might be the same.
Our son in law (asthmatic) had the Pfizer this week, unexpectedly and at short notice. No after effects as far as I'm aware. Hope yours is done soon @Piglet .
Hope you get yours soon @Piglet. Working for the NHS it seems sensible for you to have it. My husband was being totally Eeyoreish about how he was going to be the last person in the world to be offered the vaccine (he's 62), then he got a text offering him one yesterday. He's off to have it on Tuesday, hurrah!
Meh. I'm 41 and living in one of those European countries that has completely ****ed up its vaccination policy. I reckon I'm getting one sometime round about 2035.
It will be months before I have mine, but I don't think our border will fully open before then. Maybe some Pasifika people and Australians will be allowed in earlier, with some conditions.
Theoretically I should be eligible now, because, much as I hate to admit it, technically I am obese, and that counts as a qualifying condition, but nowhere seems to have appointments.
My cohort are supposed to be being called for vaccine appointments after the third week in March...
MrStE has had his first one, by virtue of working at the local Crem.
St Everild, sounds as if you’re in the same cohort as myself and Mr M. At the rate things are going, we may even get our first jab as a birthday present! My only concern is that we may have to travel some considerable distance to access it; given that currently, places at the local venue are only being offered to those in a particularly vulnerable group. The rest of us are being asked to look further afield. As we have no car at present, this may take some planning, especially as many venues appear to be put of town. Then again, things may change before we’re called. Here’s hoping.
I'm glad to say that my brother's feeling of unwellness was actually just a bit of a cold (which he had pre-vaccination), and he's now feeling much better.
Mr. Image is 80 with multiple medical issues, I am 82 and healthy except for asthma when I get a cold. We signed up on the first of last month. We have heard nothing and are still waiting for the first jab. Several friends who have had their second shot report feeling really bad for about 48 hours afterward. This has me thinking maybe Mr. Image and I should not have our shots on the same day.
Good results coming in for vaccinations https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56153600
"Research led by Public Health Scotland found in the fourth week after the first dose, hospitalisations were reduced by 85% and 94% for the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs respectively."
Presumably these are mainly for older age groups so the most at risk as they are the ones mostly being vaccinated at present (though obvs younger health care workers have also been vaccinated).
I'm guessing the AZ result is higher because the oldest people had Pfizer as it was out first.
Good news indeed, so far as it goes, and a reminder to me to phone for a Jab appointment, as I haven't yet heard from my GP.
The downside ISTM is that our idiot government in England will decide that now is the time for everything to return to *normal* (whatever they think that means), with the inevitable result of a fresh wave etc. etc. etc.
Well, we should know more this afternoon. So far it looks like schools open 8th March and 2 people allowed to socialise together outside, and people in care homes to have one visitor. 29th March 6 people or 2 households meeting outside, and some sports. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56148160
Is anyone else feeling a bit ... stiff? It dawned on me yesterday that I haven't climbed a proper flight of stairs in a year. We have stairs at home, but a single flight, and quite shallow. Plus, I don't go upstairs every day. Then I started to think of other movements which I haven't been doing. I haven't walked along a moving bus, going from pole to pole. I haven't leant my head back over the hairdresser's basin. I haven't held a heavy door open for anyone. I have hardly driven. I haven't bounced around to children's action songs at church. I haven't been swimming.
And I haven't replaced these activities with anything other than walking.
I suspect that if I had a tight train connection now, and had to belt along one platform, up the stairs to the bridge across the tracks, down and along, with a rucksack full of books on my back , and my ticket to swipe at the gates in one hand, I couldn't. Whereas this time last year, that was normal life; not something I did daily, but often enough to be unremarkable.
I am mainly stiff because I fell down a (short) flight of stairs on Saturday (taking rubbish to recycling bag at the top, in the dark, after a few glasses of stotting red - not recommended). Bruises apart, I know what you mean. T'ai Chi and general walking about were my principal exercise, and one is gone and the other much reduced.
Gardening's been the only replacement, but that's a bit irregular and not optimal - though I have a bit of compost forking to come which should provide successor stiffening.
I know I have lost both fitness and flexibility over the past few months. I notice it particularly when I'm putting my socks on, which I do by standing on one leg and lifting the other for the sock. Balance never used to be a problem, and it is more so now. I keep resolving to practise the standing on one leg thing at regular intervals during the day but somehow it never happens.
It is a very good point about little exercises that we do frequently without thinking and have gone with Covid. I did do a lot of walking but am now doing online yoga - I find Yoga With Adriene really good (for the most part) and you get a full body workout along the way.
I remember the great Nancy Banks-Smith saying that she used the ' one leg balance when putting on sock' as a measure of her continuing physical capability. I try - but loose socks help!
I can get into knickers standing up, but socks are strictly a sitting down matter.
Here too.
For a while I was taking a daily walk. I noticed that I didn't feel inclined to (I won't say couldn't) walk as fast and as far as I did, say, two years ago, but I wrote it off to advancing years. I haven't felt like going out for a walk lately.
What is this thing called Walk Ing of which you speak? I'm afraid that for me Totter Ing is the best I can manage, with the aid of my trusty Stick.
Donning and doffing of Sox etc. is done whilst in a seated position. I know very well that I don't do enough exercise, but when there's nowhere to go, and nothing to do when you get there, the incentive is reduced. Even my Pilates torturer says the same.
I'm managing a daily walk, of mostly at least 10,000 steps. Not yesterday because it was raining and my daughter was not well enough to walk her full step count nor well enough for me to go out for extra on my own. Today we made 13,400 steps in spring-like weather and bumped into someone I worked with some years ago, heading off for a walk, and worked out who she is geocaching. But the limited walking opportunities are making it all a bit boring. (I can put on wellies and slip and slide in mud baths, but my daughter can't).
I've been doing some yoga stretches most mornings to try and maintain some flexibility, which is making a difference. Not this morning as we headed out early, because I'm supposed to be online youth working this afternoon. Maybe.
I have had the "Are you willing to have the vaccine?" call from the doctor. I said a resounding "Yes!" and the district nurse will, apparently, be in touch in the next couple of weeks. MrD is a bit miffed that he hasn't been phoned, but I assume my cancer of a few years back may have edged me in front of him a little.
As my brother suggested, we may be the two people in France willing to have the vaccine!! The take up here has been surprisingly low.
Huh. I'm still waiting to hear from my GP about The Jab, so it seems as though I'll be best contacting NHS re visiting a *local* (only they ain't) vaccination centre.
O the excitement, though! Tomorrow I have a telephone appointment with the Neuro-oncology people at King's College Hospital re the state of what's left of my Brain...it's supposed to be the follow-up to the MRI scan they said I would have in January, but which in my case I Did Not Get...
It's no big deal - the said Brain (or remnant thereof) is still functioning on 2 or 3 of the 4 cylinders, and it's not as if King's haven't had any other issues to deal with over the past year...
I still feel gobsmacked, in a funny sort of way, that all this stuff is FREE OF CHARGE (well, sort of - you know what I mean).
I was grounded with a broken toe for the 3 months before lockdown so I’m definitely getting more exercise now. I have a two mile walk every morning so that’s about 5000 steps and I can usually get to 8000 just by walking around the house and garden. When the weather gets warmer I want to get back to 10 000 steps but it is difficult just now with the busy workload, dark evenings and tiredness.
I have to get dressed sitting down because my post-covid fatigue means my heart rate soars if I both stand up and raise my arms!
Heavenly Annie, I hope you don't mind but I have used some of the information you have posted about long COVID to inform my nephew that coronavirus is not just a particularly bad case of the flu - his father is beyond convincing, having fallen down the rabbit hole.
Heavenly Annie, I hope you don't mind but I have used some of the information you have posted about long COVID to inform my nephew that coronavirus is not just a particularly bad case of the flu - his father is beyond convincing, having fallen down the rabbit hole.
Thankyou.
By all means. I do think there should be more clarification as to what long covid means though. It seems to me that the media talks about 2 very different things when they say 'long covid'. On one hand they mean those who were seriously ill and hospitalised, and now need to recover from the devastating effects on their lungs and general deconditioning. On the other hand they mean people like me who were not hospitalised (I never developed pneumonia; my lung xrays were clear and I never had a fever) but clearly have a post-viral syndrome, in my case a common one called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Post-viral syndromes are not new, they are just under-researched. Or at least they were...
Huh. I'm still waiting to hear from my GP about The Jab, so it seems as though I'll be best contacting NHS re visiting a *local* (only they ain't) vaccination centre...
BF, it might be worth calling the NHS line if possible as they sometimes have info on centres closer than listed on the booking website. That was the case with my Mum.
@Heavenlyannie I've done the same if that is ok. It's sometimes better to beat people over the head, not with extensive data but with the personal anecdotes of someone you know.
One very much hopes there will be more research into post-viral syndromes as a result of all this.
A feature on the radio a few days back made me think of you @Heavenlyannie , as they were talking to a young woman (27, if I recall correctly) who became ill last March with Covid. She became gravely ill, is now recovering, but left with "long covid." What brought me up with a round turn was that she said it started with a headache - "The same headache I've got now." She's had a headache for 11 months. I get the occasional three-day headache, nothing to what I used to get a few years back, and they leave me washed out. Having a headache for nearly a year sounds horrendous.
That does indeed sound horrendous. In rather lighter news, but still Not Good, apparently hairdressers in Scotland aren't going to be open until the end of April!!!!
By that time, being dragged through a hedge backwards would probably effect a considerable improvement.
One very much hopes there will be more research into post-viral syndromes as a result of all this.
A feature on the radio a few days back made me think of you @Heavenlyannie , as they were talking to a young woman (27, if I recall correctly) who became ill last March with Covid. She became gravely ill, is now recovering, but left with "long covid." What brought me up with a round turn was that she said it started with a headache - "The same headache I've got now." She's had a headache for 11 months. I get the occasional three-day headache, nothing to what I used to get a few years back, and they leave me washed out. Having a headache for nearly a year sounds horrendous.
If she has the same post-viral syndrome as me the headache is very common and due to poor circulation/low blood volume. I’ve had mild pins and needles in my face for 11 months but I only get the headache when dehydrated (I have a high fluid intake and electrolyte tablets to control my symptoms). This is why it is important that these people get good medical advice.
In rather lighter news, but still Not Good, apparently hairdressers in Scotland aren't going to be open until the end of April!!!!
By that time, being dragged through a hedge backwards would probably effect a considerable improvement.
First world problems, I know ...
Mine will still be couple of months away from really needing a trim by end April
I also have an appointment for my second jab.
Comments
In other news, my brother and sister (both mid-60s) got theirs, and are both feeling rather miserable. My brother had a bit of a cold before he got the vaccine, and now has quite a bad one; and my sister woke in the middle of the night pouring with sweat and feeling generally lousy.
She thinks that being younger, her immune system is stronger so is having to fight harder against the vaccine.
Apart from a sore arm, I felt nothing.
Headaches and fatigue seem common with the AZ in my age cohort.
Last night, slept like a log. Feel fine. I'm 69, btw.
MrStE has had his first one, by virtue of working at the local Crem.
"Research led by Public Health Scotland found in the fourth week after the first dose, hospitalisations were reduced by 85% and 94% for the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs respectively."
Presumably these are mainly for older age groups so the most at risk as they are the ones mostly being vaccinated at present (though obvs younger health care workers have also been vaccinated).
I'm guessing the AZ result is higher because the oldest people had Pfizer as it was out first.
The downside ISTM is that our idiot government in England will decide that now is the time for everything to return to *normal* (whatever they think that means), with the inevitable result of a fresh wave etc. etc. etc.
And I haven't replaced these activities with anything other than walking.
I suspect that if I had a tight train connection now, and had to belt along one platform, up the stairs to the bridge across the tracks, down and along, with a rucksack full of books on my back , and my ticket to swipe at the gates in one hand, I couldn't. Whereas this time last year, that was normal life; not something I did daily, but often enough to be unremarkable.
Gardening's been the only replacement, but that's a bit irregular and not optimal - though I have a bit of compost forking to come which should provide successor stiffening.
I've always been a great one for the loose fit and elastic where possible.
For a while I was taking a daily walk. I noticed that I didn't feel inclined to (I won't say couldn't) walk as fast and as far as I did, say, two years ago, but I wrote it off to advancing years. I haven't felt like going out for a walk lately.
Donning and doffing of Sox etc. is done whilst in a seated position. I know very well that I don't do enough exercise, but when there's nowhere to go, and nothing to do when you get there, the incentive is reduced. Even my Pilates torturer says the same.
I've been doing some yoga stretches most mornings to try and maintain some flexibility, which is making a difference. Not this morning as we headed out early, because I'm supposed to be online youth working this afternoon. Maybe.
Thank gods for technology, but I wonder how many extra hours we're spending online, each day, than we were a year or so ago?
Which tells you how unfit I was before the pandemic...
As my brother suggested, we may be the two people in France willing to have the vaccine!! The take up here has been surprisingly low.
I've certainly put on weight, mostly around my middle, but a lot of that occurred before last March due to Other Elf Issues...
...well, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it.
O the excitement, though! Tomorrow I have a telephone appointment with the Neuro-oncology people at King's College Hospital re the state of what's left of my Brain...it's supposed to be the follow-up to the MRI scan they said I would have in January, but which in my case I Did Not Get...
It's no big deal - the said Brain (or remnant thereof) is still functioning on 2 or 3 of the 4 cylinders, and it's not as if King's haven't had any other issues to deal with over the past year...
I still feel gobsmacked, in a funny sort of way, that all this stuff is FREE OF CHARGE (well, sort of - you know what I mean).
I have to get dressed sitting down because my post-covid fatigue means my heart rate soars if I both stand up and raise my arms!
It was 65 yesterday, it’s 64 today. One more year down and I can book!
Thankyou.
BF, it might be worth calling the NHS line if possible as they sometimes have info on centres closer than listed on the booking website. That was the case with my Mum.
@Heavenlyannie I've done the same if that is ok. It's sometimes better to beat people over the head, not with extensive data but with the personal anecdotes of someone you know.
A feature on the radio a few days back made me think of you @Heavenlyannie , as they were talking to a young woman (27, if I recall correctly) who became ill last March with Covid. She became gravely ill, is now recovering, but left with "long covid." What brought me up with a round turn was that she said it started with a headache - "The same headache I've got now." She's had a headache for 11 months. I get the occasional three-day headache, nothing to what I used to get a few years back, and they leave me washed out. Having a headache for nearly a year sounds horrendous.
By that time, being dragged through a hedge backwards would probably effect a considerable improvement.
First world problems, I know ...
Mine will still be couple of months away from really needing a trim by end April
I also have an appointment for my second jab.