Vaccine

I have 100% iron clad scientific proof that it is far worse to get the COVID-19 vaccine than to catch COVID-19 …

Months ago I noticed my apartment was overheated, which was a bit annoying. I was sweating a lot. Since it was so hot and I was feeling a bit drained of energy, I didn’t go outside for a couple of days and just spent my time YouTube’ing rabbit videos and working as per normal. Eventually I went for a walk outside though, and realised that it wasn’t hot outside at all, it was only my apartment. Then I realised I was sweating even though it was cold. I seemed to have a mild fever, so I went home. Was I being paranoid? I went to sleep, and when I woke up I felt fine. No problems. I chalked this experience up as COVID-19 paranoia and continued with life. But a month later I was thinking back to this, and decided to order a new antibody testing kit just to confirm (I had already used one which had come back negative). But my experiences with stabbing myself the previous time were … suboptimal, so I procrastinated on using the test kit.

Eventually, my friend Craig, with a smile on his face, offered to stab me. So I held out my thumb and he stabbed my thumb, which hurt like heck but failed to give any more than a single darned drop. My thumb still feels a bit weird to this day; it tingles in the spot where he stabbed me.

Fast forward until a couple of weeks ago, and out of the blue I got my appointment for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine with a cardiologist. For some bizarre reason, vaccinations in Germany are only allowed to be given by medical doctors. So every obscure doctor under the sun is giving vaccines here, hence I ended up at a cardiologist; some middle aged people have been visiting pediatricians lol.

But I of course still had the antibody test kit sitting there, so I looked up advice online on how to bleed enough blood, and they all recommended NEVER using your thumb. I did a bunch of exercises to promote blood flow, then stabbed myself in my ring finger and out flowed blood which I squeezed into a little plastic tube.

I took my little tube along to my vaccination appointment. After many hours of hanging around in the cramped cardiologists office with all the elderly people there for their heart appointments, and filling out the same long winded paper forms multiple times because they kept losing them, I was seen by the doctor who spent about 30 seconds to inject me and sent me on my way 🙂 On my way back from my vaccination appointment, I mailed my blood sample to the antibody testing lab for analysis.

I didn’t notice any significant effects from the vaccine, until waking up in the middle of the night and realising I wasn’t feeling too well. I made it to my daily 8:30am meeting, but decided to have a nap before continuing with work. I didn’t move from my bed until 5:00pm when I really needed to pee. I then took most of the next day off work and tried to work the day after, but I don’t think I got a lot done. That darn vaccine knocked me on my arse for three days. It was even worse than when I had the chickenpox vaccine as an adult, which was pretty bad.

After a couple of weeks, I received an email from the testing lab. They had detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in my blood! They were in low levels, but they were present. I had indeed had COVID-19 and it was recent, because the previous antibody test I’d run showed the presence of no antibodies.

So in conclusion, I barely noticed I had COVID-19, but the damned vaccine knocked me on my arse for three days. The COVID-19 vaccine was even worse than when I had the chickenpox vaccine as an adult.

PS: This post was obviously written in jest. Vaccinations are recommended for a reason and it’s not generally for your benefit, but for society as a whole. And get all your other vaccinations too, not just COVID-19 😉

Happy Birthday Grandma

My dear grandma died almost 21 years ago, but would have made it to the ripe old age of 99 if she was still with us today. She always said she didn’t want to grow too old, because growing old wasn’t much fun. So it’s not sad that she is gone, but I do miss her.

It wasn’t until recent years that I realised how much of a rock she was in my earlier years. Whenever the going got tough, she was always there for me, always supportive, always kind. She was able to provide support to me, that I now realise was absolutely critical for getting me to where I am today.

When I was 5 years old, I was in a very serious car crash, and I went to live with my grandma and pop for many weeks afterwards, while my parents were busy tending to my brother. I couldn’t walk initially, as I apparently had “bruising of the joints” (I had no idea why I couldn’t walk at the time, but my wonderful Auntie Vera was able to fill me in about it many years later). After a few days, my grandma told me that I needed to start moving, but I didn’t want to because it was too difficult. So she got all the adults who had come to visit, to come into the hallway and cheer me on while I tried to navigate my way along the hallway. I felt dejected when I only made it to the first door. But grandma managed to make it feel like I had conquered Everest. She took something which was depressing and turned it into a positive achievement to make me feel better. With my new found zest for regaining the ability to walk, I quickly came back right and was tearing around the house like a 5 year old should.

Of course, she then needed to deal with an over energized five year old who was bored out of their mind, since I wasn’t able to attend school there and I had no friends in the area to play with. So she took me on super long walks in nature. Initially she seemed to be having a lot of fun walking me around, but after a few days I think she started to regret trying to keep up with an energetic five year old. I remember her saying “wouldn’t it be fun if pop drove us to the top of the hill and we just walked down instead of up?”, but I just responded with “no, walking up is more fun”. She then pointed out that she was old and couldn’t keep up, so walked from the top down. I will always cherish those times spent with her. I remember feeling intensely lonely, but she was able to hold the darkness away until I could return to school again.

RIP Marjorie Rose Moody. Born May 23rd 1922, died June 3rd 2000.

There are some kind comments about this post on Facebook.

Raspberry and Coke

I always thought that New Zealands national soft drink was a tie between Coke and Raspberry and L&P. I’ve been sporadically looking for good quality raspberry syrup to add to me Coke since moving to Europe, but always failed until yesterday. But when I proudly posted in the Kiwis in Germany Facebook group that I had found some good quality raspberry syrup to buy in Germany, it turned out that very few people had any idea what I was talking about. My life has been a lie! Apparently Coke and Raspberry is only a thing for a small proportion of Kiwis. My mind has been blown! At any rate, I’m very glad to have found some yummy raspberry syrup to add to my caffeine free Coke (I quit caffeine 170 days ago).

Burger in the park

Part of me is pissed off that I have to eat this burger in the park with snow falling down around me. Part of me is enjoying that I was the only one willing to sit in the park eating my burger with snow falling down around me.