I am officially finished with my reaction to the Moderna booster, I think. I received my shot at 4 pm on Friday and it’s 9:42 pm on Sunday. I’m sure that’s long enough to confidently say how it all went.

First, it should be said that the booster was a piece of cake in comparison to my two Moderna vaccines. I had a pretty decent reaction to both with chills, fever, muscle aches, and fatigue. I was fine for the first 6 hours, then bam, I started shivering and it was downhill from there until the next night at 10 pm. At that point, I got up out of bed, sat in a chair across the room, and said, “Ray, I think we need to have a talk.” His response: “Just because you suddenly feel better doesn’t mean I’m ready for “a talk” at 10 o’clock at night.” I had to give him that one.

This booster was a half dose so it was much milder. I was tired yesterday and fell into a dead sleep while visiting out at Sarah’s, which is completely out of character for me. I also went to bed as soon as we got home and fell asleep during an episode of the British detective series, Vera, which I would highly recommend, by the way. During last night, my lower back started aching so much that I had to get up and take Advil. It continued to hurt so much when I got up this morning that I took two more. This was shooting pain that made it hard to bend over. No fun at all. But after those Advils kicked in, my back pain eased, and I suddenly felt fine. The pain has not returned and now I feel completely well.

I am so happy to have gotten that booster. Now I know I’m as protected as I can be. Not that I’m not going to wear my mask in places where there are lots of people or in close quarters, but I am breathing a sigh of relief.

That relief is doubled by the fact that both Ray and Nico are getting vaccines tomorrow. Ray is getting a Pfizer booster and Nico is getting his first Pfizer vaccine. That is great news since we’ve been most worried about Nico since he’s the only unvaccinated person in the family except for Lyla who is getting antibodies by still nursing. We’ve been especially mindful of exposing little Nico to anything since he’s been the most vulnerable.

So, tomorrow is a happy day. And today was a good day too since I have officially moved out of my vaccine reaction and into vaccine relief. Hooray!

Life is shifting and moving in a positive direction. I am very glad. While there were parts of quarantine that were nice, I am happy the world is opening back up. I am also very proud of the City of LA and the State of CA for being so socially responsible during this pandemic. Without that kind of leadership and public cooperation, we could still be hog-tied by this indiscriminate and deadly virus. I hope and pray that our entire nation will soon be on the mend so we can move forward.

As the old saying goes, “You can have all the riches and success in the world, but if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.”