Registration at our local H1N1 flu vaccine clinic in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia started yesterday at 12:30 pm. They started giving shots at 1:00 pm. We got there at about 12:45 pm. This was the line in front of us. It snakes out of camera range and around the corner. The woman in red was pushing a stroller that held a two-year-old. Luckily, it was sunny and not too terribly cold.
This was the line behind us an hour or two later. We learned that some people had arrived that morning at 6:30 am. (The older couple directly behind us, not pictured here, were the parents of the head of public health for our region.)
This was the line behind us around 5 or 5:30 pm. You can see Luke trying to climb up on the wall there and David in his business suit looking at him. (He'd thought he'd get the shot and go back to work.) You can't see Grandpa pushing Sylvie's stroller, but they were there.
Sylvie had a bottle when we first got there and then again around 3. We fed her standing there in line, which was a bit awkward. We were able to go inside the building and change her diaper in a kind of storage closet. She'd had her own four month vaccinations the day before and so she slept a lot. Luke had eaten his snacks by about 1:30. We sent David and Luke to get Tim Horton's sandwiches and coffee around 4. I had to send David home for another bottle for Sylvie around 6. The people in the line were very patient if someone in a group left and came back. I even saw people hold spots for strangers who were alone.
In the above photo, Luke is standing in a playground -- there are swings and a slide behind me -- and it was packed with kids all day. There was also a soccer field. Luke and David ran around it for at least two hours. Although there were lots of families there with babies and small children, most of them were in good spirits. I think the kids enjoyed the fresh air. Of course, by the time we got inside the clinic -- at 7:10 pm -- it was bedtime for most of them and they were getting extremely cranky by that point. There was lots of crying inside but miraculously, not from our two.
Inside the clinic, the scene looked like something out of a disaster movie. We had to wait to register and then view a film informing us of the pertinent facts about the vaccine. (The video was on repeat the whole day and you could hear the female narrator droning once you got close to the door). Then we had to wait again to get the vaccine. There were about fifteen people giving the shots to family groups behind cardboard screens. Unfortunately, the screens didn't really provide much privacy. I noticed a poor girl, maybe around ten years old, who cried hysterically and flinched violently every time the nurse tried to give her the needle. Her mother tried to hold her down but it looked to me as if they gave up in the end. She had two siblings who did get the needle -- so their seven-hour wait wasn't completely in vain. I spent most of my time trying to distract Luke from watching. He, David, and I had gotten our seasonal flu shots from our family doctor the day before (she didn't have the H1N1) and he had gone to bed crying about having to get another shot the next day. But he did remarkably well -- no tears at all.
After Grandpa, David, Luke and I had all gotten our shots (we adults had gotten them to protect Sylvie, who's only twenty weeks old and so can't be vaccinated), we had to wait fifteen minutes to make sure we didn't have any reactions. We left the building at 8:30 pm. I took Sylvie home and put her to bed, two and a half hours late. David had to take Luke to a store to buy him a Hot Wheels toy I'd promised he could get after the shot, even though it was so late. The child would not hear of waiting until today and frankly, none of us could blame him. He finally got to bed at 10:30, three hours late.
Luke and I have sore arms today. He seems fine. I am exhausted. But happy that we all got the shots.
Many, many children passed the time happily ripping plants out of the planters and "planting" them in the sand on the playground. It became a kind of fad. This is one such "garden" around 6 pm. I guess their parents were too tired to make a fuss about it. Or maybe their eyes were too glazed over to even notice.
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