All Good. A veteran gets his COVID shots

Everyone my age--71--has a vaccine story.

"I scored an appointment this morning!"  So wrote a joyful, relieved, and frustrated friend from Massachusetts.

Her email came with the subject line: "Vaccine Appointment Woes." This Massachusetts woman scored her appointment having started by clicking on a website before 8:00 a.m. with fluctuating notices of likely wait times, and got through after twenty minutes. Various appointment slots were offered and then withdrawn from the screen as she entered her personal data, but she got approval of an appointment in a week, chose morning times, which caused her computer to freeze, changed to afternoon times, which got deleted, and chose a late afternoon time and got through. The only time available conflicted with another appointment she had scheduled long prior, but she was warned of a six-hour wait-time to try to reschedule an appointment once made, so she cancelled the conflicting appointment. She had her vaccine slot appointment time, and she wasn't giving it up. Relief.

Another friend on the east coast said he was trying to get an appointment through the MyChart application. He was filling in the questionnaire, one answer per page, regarding eligibility, symptoms, exposure, travel, and which facility he wanted. Then it tells him that there are no doses available anywhere. Still no appointment.

A third correspondent, this one in Ohio, reported a good experience with MyChart and he was guided to getting an appointment for his first shot. However, he described a neighbor who had a great deal of trouble, having registered with a county health department which eventually called her to say she could get a shot, but only if she could get to a remote place within the hour.

Tam Moore

Everyone has a story. My own story here in Medford, Oregon is that on the first day I was eligible, February 22, I called the advertised phone number for vaccination appointment scheduling. That morning I called it repeatedly and got no ring, no response, a dead phone. In early afternoon I tried again and after perhaps twenty tries, suddenly, the phone call went through. I was on hold for ten minutes, and then a person answered. I have an appointment March 5.

In the context of these emails, I asked Tam Moore, a person a few years older than myself, what his story was. He reported that he got his second shot today, and at this moment felt great, both in health and by the process.

Tam Moore, a Vietnam veteran, is a lifelong journalist, who worked in television in his early days and then in print, writing for the Capital Press, a regional newspaper focusing on the agricultural industry. In the mid-1970’s, Moore served as an elected Jackson County Commissioner in southern Oregon. He was elected as a Republican in 1974, back at a time when Oregon Republicans were progressive on civil rights, when there were pro-choice Republicans elected locally and statewide, and when Republicans supported cleaning up the environment.

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Amid uncertainty, some things just go right

 

It was chilly and overcast when I pulled into the Veteran’s Administration Rehabilitation Center for my second COVID vaccination this morning. Fresh from reading comment on the Internet about difficulty some are having even getting an appointment for vaccination, I checked in, waited for the six-passenger golf cart which shuttles you to another part of the facility that’s been COVID central for over six weeks.

The VA Center is all that’s left of what was once a U.S. Army Hospital when Camp White on the Agate Desert outside of Medford, Oregon was a two-division training post during World War II. It houses some vets going through rehabilitation therapies and is the hub for medical support of several thousand veterans who live in Southern Oregon. 

There was a letter, then an email, when the VA got access to vaccine back in January. At age 86 I fit right in the priority group for shots, after the facility’s front-line medical workers and resident patients.

 What’s striking about the folks who turned out for the initial shots on my scheduled day is the amount of mobility-impaired people with me. There are canes by the half-dozen, walkers and guys so unsteady they arrive with care-givers to help them along. We whizzed through the paperwork, the separation in waiting areas and the post-shot 15-minute sit down in case allergic reactions turned up. And 35-minutes later I was in my car headed to another errand with a sore shoulder.

Today  there was just me and one guy with a cane. We’d all been told to come back 28 days after the first shot – at the same exact appointment time.  It turned out the same nurse who gave the first shot was there for my second. But they had moved her to another station in the complex set up so up to six patients could get a jab at the same time. The needle, properly labeled, was ready along with forms and nitrile gloves. What wasn’t ready was quick access to the VA electronic medical records. My nurse was shuttling between a laptop and a two-screen computer to enter the data. Twice she excused herself to check with someone else. 

“We’re in a lull,” someone said from outside the room where I waited. Finally the shot. 

In the observation area, just me and the guy with the cane. He beat me through. After observation, waiting for the chilly shuttle I chatted with the VA door keepers.  An ex-Marine with his jaunty fatigue cap, a woman manning the disinfectant and wipe-down job and the lady who checks you in and out. Seven more to go before lunch, she said – and one called, he’s going to be late; driving over from Klamath Falls over a snow-pack-covered mountain pass. 

The volunteer shuttle driver dropped me off 10 feet from my car, after telling me he likes the duty so well he’s been working five days a week since this vaccination thing began.  I was on the road 29-minutes after I parked. 

Moore in Vietnam

When I retired at age 70 and checked in to where I could get the mandatory prescription insurance, the VA was more than willing to take me on. Turned out they wanted to know about my health because back in ’66 and ’67 in Vietnam I frequently operated through areas defoliated by Agent Orange. That’s a cocktail of potent herbicides linked over time to a host of neurological disorders.

 Despite the horror stories you sometimes hear about VA medical care, my experience has all been good.

I can’t say the same about the rocky-start of the national COVID vaccination campaign. Anecdotal stories of trouble and frustration abound. When I got home this morning and checked my email, there was a frustrated message from my old friend Felice Pace. He lives over in Del Norte County on California’s Far North Coast. He wants his journalist friends to blow some smoke on the vaccine shortage in his part of California. “What is going on, “ he asks. “Why is Del Norte County being treated the same way as many third world countries which are being denied access to vaccines?”

 I don’t have answers. I do know that working on a river in a defoliated rainforest 55-years ago and living 11-miles from a VA facility that knows how to mobilize to administer shots makes a difference.