V Day

Morning spent chainsawing the branches in the trailer and then getting myself ready for the 30 km trip to one of the two Corona vaccine centres in our county & the separate, self-governing enclave of Memmingen city.

While getting myself cleaned up noticed something alarming which normally would have set me racing around to get an appointment with a consultant specialist or even head towards a hospital A&E department. However, NOTHING was going to stop me getting my jab, NOTHING.

On the way picked up a sack of chicken feed and sacks of wood pellets for our central heating. April is determined to go into the record books as the coldest since 1977.

Arrived 25 minutes early but went in:
1) Security checks temperature & gets you to wash hands
2) Reception #1 checks you are on the list for today
3) Reception #2 cjecks even more you are on the list for today & issues you with an A4 sheet of paper with your Number & several forms to film out, which many had done online at home but still have to be done again.
4) Waiting room #1 fill in forms. Wait perhaps 10 mins
5) Number comes up & called to a cabin
6) Checker #1 checks you have filled in all the forms and have your WHO Vaccine passport (all Germans have always had these for tetanus, polio etc etc)
7) Doc #1 comes in to check you really are as sick as you claim to be when registering online as having pre-condition. He also starts to go through the official warnings of side effects. I stopped him and had already signed saying I accepted the risks. He signs all the forms himself.
8) Waiting Room #2 where doctors all gowned up came out with the paperwork and called out name of next victim. This took a good 10-15 minutes.
9) Doc#2 calls you out and takes you to a cabin, sticks the vaccine sticker in your passport, squiggles his name on it and in 10 seconds has the jab in. Mine, an older doc probably retired, sang all the time. He told me it was to take people's minds off it!  Didn't feel a thing. I got the BioNTech/Pfizer, 2nd jab in 6 weeks.
10) Waiting Room #3 have to wait 20 minutes for any side effects
11) Exit/Reception #3 collect paperwork and leave building.

I was out 15 minutes after my appointment time. All very friendly and efficient but very German - administration doting every 'i' & crossing every 't'. No queues anywhere.

The German vaccine rollout started properly in April as the supplies finally came through and now GPs are also doing them. By the end of this week, Germany was vaccinating one million people a day. I remain very concerned and critical about the priority and notification system and it's now under severe pressure from politicians and the press to turn it entirely over to a first come, first served basis, regardless of age and condition.

Anyway, very pleased to have got it. Back home drove car to stables to unload chicken feed from the boot. The got back in to reverse car to house, but on starting the car engine kept dying immediately after 1 second of starting. Thought it may be the fuel pump so checked the fuse and a few others I could see, but nothing helped. Hoped it was simply the car overheated and would try again in the morning. Perhaps a new side effect from the vaccine??

Now back to thinking about the "problem" I had discovered earlier. An abscess. Covered it in cream & prayed. Restless night thinking about probably being in hospital tomorrow!