I Have Been Pfizered
My blood runs thick with microchips.
I'm going to break my planned trip narrative for a day in order to record a little event that will likely carve out a disproportionately huge corner of my memory. This morning, Robin and I got up early for appointments we'd somehow managed to get at Northwestern Medicine-Central DuPage Hospital in suburban Winfield to get our first installment of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19. We are now well on our way to whatever qualified immunity this thing will give us, with second-shot appointments made automatically for April 28th. This means that starting in the middle of May, we will spend several months eating at all the restaurants.
The vaccination process across American society as a whole has been a clunky thing that's taken way more time than it should have -- and there's a spot in the on-going trip narrative where I might talk a little about my thoughts on that -- but Northwestern-Central DuPage made their version of the thing go easy. We're long-time patients of Northwestern Hospital anyway; the entire reason we moved to Chicago 17 years ago was that Robin got a job there, and she automatically signed us both into their medical empire. This is probably why I'm not dead right now, as I'm bad with medical stuff and with bureaucracy as a whole, and I likely never would have gotten a doctor on my own if Robin hadn't made it easy. That would have made 2009 a really bad year for me. But I did get a doctor, and they keep track of me electronically, so as soon as the state of Illinois decided I was worthy of a vaccine, Northwestern sent me an email telling me to sign up. I don't always check my email in a timely fashion, but Robin checks hers fifteen times an hour, and she got the same email I did. So she got us signed up for today's appointment. Northwestern-Central DuPage will vaccinate about thousand people today, and they have a ton of hospital employees funneling people in and out of there like a counter at a good McDonald's. It was the easiest thing in the world.
My arm hurts now, but I don't care. I'm really looking forward to the 28th.
Editor's Note: Northwestern Medicine-Central DuPage Hospital is round, and all the walls are curved. One of the last conversations I had with my Dad through his Parkinson's-related dementia was about the curved walls at the new hospital in Owensboro, and about how building curved walls left so much useless space. It's a treasured memory, because it was so typical of the kind of nothing conversations my Dad and I always had. Me and my Dad came at architecture from similar directions.
I Have Been Pfizered
My blood runs thick with microchips.
I'm going to break my planned trip narrative for a day in order to record a little event that will likely carve out a disproportionately huge corner of my memory. This morning, Robin and I got up early for appointments we'd somehow managed to get at Northwestern Medicine-Central DuPage Hospital in suburban Winfield to get our first installment of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19. We are now well on our way to whatever qualified immunity this thing will give us, with second-shot appointments made automatically for April 28th. This means that starting in the middle of May, we will spend several months eating at all the restaurants.
The vaccination process across American society as a whole has been a clunky thing that's taken way more time than it should have -- and there's a spot in the on-going trip narrative where I might talk a little about my thoughts on that -- but Northwestern-Central DuPage made their version of the thing go easy. We're long-time patients of Northwestern Hospital anyway; the entire reason we moved to Chicago 17 years ago was that Robin got a job there, and she automatically signed us both into their medical empire. This is probably why I'm not dead right now, as I'm bad with medical stuff and with bureaucracy as a whole, and I likely never would have gotten a doctor on my own if Robin hadn't made it easy. That would have made 2009 a really bad year for me. But I did get a doctor, and they keep track of me electronically, so as soon as the state of Illinois decided I was worthy of a vaccine, Northwestern sent me an email telling me to sign up. I don't always check my email in a timely fashion, but Robin checks hers fifteen times an hour, and she got the same email I did. So she got us signed up for today's appointment. Northwestern-Central DuPage will vaccinate about thousand people today, and they have a ton of hospital employees funneling people in and out of there like a counter at a good McDonald's. It was the easiest thing in the world.
My arm hurts now, but I don't care. I'm really looking forward to the 28th.
Editor's Note: Northwestern Medicine-Central DuPage Hospital is round, and all the walls are curved. One of the last conversations I had with my Dad through his Parkinson's-related dementia was about the curved walls at the new hospital in Owensboro, and about how building curved walls left so much useless space. It's a treasured memory, because it was so typical of the kind of nothing conversations my Dad and I always had. Me and my Dad came at architecture from similar directions.