I have been quite conscious my whole life about my health because I am immune compromised and I have severe asthma and am a little bit of a hypochondriac as a result. When I heard that there was a new disease that had just entered the US and it was in Seattle while I was slightly concerned as my parents had told me stories about close encounters with SARS when my father was traveling to China frequently at the time. Because of this I shipped home as soon as possible and about 2 days later there was a stay at home order announced in San Francisco. A moment that will remain seared in my brain for the remainder of my life is when we heard on the news that the stay at home order would be going into affect the following day and my mother and I went to the grocery store to get provisions and when we arrived it was a mad dash and there store was filled, more than I had ever seen, with the shelves stripped and a line wrapping the entirety of the store. 

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After that day, I can't say for certain, but I don't remember leaving my house for at least 6 months straight because of my own health complications but also because of my dad. During the pandemic on top of all of the other pandemonium my father ended up having to get open heart surgery because of a congenital defect and if he were to contract COVID chances are that he would have died. Because of all of these compounding factors everyone had to be extremely careful. Each day I would watch/read the news and see if there was any progress on the vaccine and eventually good news finally came and I was able to schedule an appointment for 5 days before my birthday and is a gift that I will not soon forgot. As I am immunocompromised I was fortunate enough to get my vaccine relatively early for which I am profoundly grateful and the screenshot above is of my going through the state of California public health website to schedule my appointment.

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Another in a series of life altering memories I got my vaccine at a mass vaccination site of which I never would have imagined. I recall having seen the movie Contagion as a kid and whoever did the research for that film deserves some kind of award because I felt like I was in the movie except I was living it. I went to a convention center and scanned my barcode after which I got in line allowing with at least a thousand other people standing 6 feet apart from one another. And I remember the wave of relief that went over me ever after just receiving my first dose because I knew that eventually I would be safe, and everyone around me would be as well.