My week of horror and joy after receiving my second dose.

Vaccination diaries is a series of shipments investigating the deployment of COVID-19 vaccinations.

“Is that it?” “That’s it.” The woman who injected my second dose of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine quickly bound my arm when the shot started wiring my immune system. I was sent to the 30-minute observation area – the one for people with allergies – and I waited.

At first I sat there full of vague sense of accomplishment. I was finally vaccinated – it felt good. Then I started feeling bad because of all the people who need the vaccine but still can’t get it. (I am a private tutor during the day and have been teaching personally since August, without the option of not doing so. That is why I qualified early.) Soon, however, irrational anxiety began to build in me: I wondered if my throat was on the somehow could have collapsed if anaphylaxis had suddenly choked me on the floor. I have not had a severe allergic reaction to my main attacker, tree nuts, before, but that’s where you think.

Yet the waiting period came and went, and I was still breathing. I drove home, ate dinner and felt normal. Just like after my first dose. I felt a little perky about it, and I took my immune response.

Then I woke up feverish in the middle of the night with pain and chills. When the morning dawned, I was still feeling sick, now with a fever north of 100. I sat down on the bathroom floor just in case I had to retire. The side effects rage.

Around noon, with a little ibuprofen, they were just gone. Poo! I felt good again. Maybe too good. And also really weird. I had an eruption of energy, and I decided to go for a walk and have a coffee. I tried to internalize that I have been vaccinated now, and soon I have the best coronavirus protection. I felt confident again.

Then, three days later, I was gesturing about something in the book that my class and I were reading, when I saw that my arms were covered with a raised, expanding rash. My right forearm looked like a pink island group, and more islands popped up quickly. They even looked like they were pulse. There was also a red ring around the bottom of my neck. And my face under my mask is also starting to swell. When I took off the mask in the bathroom, I was horrified to see my face swollen and sideways, as if someone had just gotten the best of me in a fist fight.

I told my principal I should take a breather for that. I left for an immediate care clinic during my students’ recess. Because they did not know what was going on, the students waved to me as I drove away, like a gesture of solidarity with their swelling teacher.

When they got to the clinic, they injected me with Benadryl, gave me a COVID test in case I contracted the virus, and held me for observation. I got rough, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my arms as the rash groups pulled up all over me like little volcanoes.

Eventually the clinic let me go, and I went home to sleep. For a few more days I will flare up more, with rashes all over my body going up and down.

By day two of this, I started thinking (and fighting against) more irrational thoughts about what had happened to me. Maybe it was not so crazy to fear the shot. But it’s part of the bargain, I told myself. “But … but …” my flag body protests and always lives in the moment. I could not even say with certainty that my haste was the result of the vaccine. But even if it was good, because it was definitely worth it. I will do it again if I have to. And then one more time.

However, I was still worried, so I decided to go to an allergist to ask about what might have happened. The doctor said that at this stage she could not be sure what caused my rash exactly. Some reported rash or so-called COVID arm after receiving the vaccine, but I can not be sure that this happened to me, as most of the rash occurs on or around the injection site, and mine does not. I do have a dermatography, or ‘skin writing’, where even fairly light scratches on my skin will grow up like a bug, as someone wrote on me with a red marker. Maybe it had something to do with it? (According to my doctor, I have my volcanic eruption to thank for one thing: on my test it appears that I am not allergic to everyone tree nuts, and I enjoy a pistachio while we talk.)

Anyway, so much of my emotional roller coaster ride this week was because I know that vaccines are safe, and that the side effects are mild for the vast majority of people. I may never know what really caused my reaction. But now I have been vaccinated, and I allow myself to admit how scary and wonderful it felt. At school, I continue my role as a polite but zealous maintainer of social distance, often reduced to one pleading phrase: ‘six feet!’ I also mastered the art of not breathing while reading aloud in a KN95 mask. If the effect of the vaccine continues quickly, I will not need it anymore.