“The shot itself doesn’t hurt,” Hunter Gouldthorpe said. “What’ll really knock you out is what comes after.”  

Gouldthorpe has been working as a pharmacist at the Salisbury, Mass. branch of CVS pharmacy for two years.  

Though the high paced work environment is often a source of stress, his position came with an unexpected perk this past week: he was able to get his doses of the vaccine early.  

“I got a call from one of my co-workers who works at a clinic in Newburyport and she said, ‘How fast can you get here?’ She told me she had extra doses of the vaccine she could give to my co-worker Justine and I.”  

Justine Curley, also a pharmacist at CVS, said, “shots generally make me woozy”, but regardless, she was excited. 

The two vaccines currently being distributed by the FDA are from Pfizer and Moderna, both of which are two dose vaccines.  

The vaccine appointments, usually scheduled via the mass.gov website, are typically scheduled in tandem. However, in Gouldthorpe and Curley’s spontaneous situation, the second dose would be scheduled upon their departure from the clinic.  

Gouldthorpe and Curley said that, upon arrival, even though they had each worn a mask to the clinic, they were asked to change into blue surgical masks provided by the staff for addition protection. In addition to this, they were asked to fill out a “proof of vaccination” card that would later be timestamped for safety purposes and used as verification for the second dose. After this, they waited in line and entered a large room with “roughly a hundred people in it.” Curley said.  

Despite the seeming intimidation of the whole ordeal, Gouldthorpe remarked that the whole affair was quite casual. “The nurses were chatty and super friendly, people in line were laughing and talking…” So casual, in fact, that Gouldthorpe didn’t even notice the impact of the needle entering his arm. “It was like…Poof! ‘Alright, you’re done, go over there’” 

This was the point, Curley noted, at which your vaccination card gets timestamped. “They need to know when you got the shot so they can monitor you for about fifteen minutes after immunization” she said. This precaution is taken to ensure that patients don’t have an adverse response to the vaccine. After waiting out that period, both feeling fine, aside from slight wooziness and a little soreness in their arms, Gouldthorpe and Curley handed over their cards to the staff, scheduled their second appointments, and were free to go. 

Gouldthorpe noted that the day after he received first dose, the side-effects he experienced were quite mild. “My arm was a bit sore. I had a slight headache and I was a bit fatigued, but other than that, it wasn’t too bad.”  

After the second dose, however, Gouldthorpe had a much different experience. The day after he received the second shot, he said he took a precautionary Tylenol first thing in the morning, fully anticipating he’d start to feel like he’d been “hit by a truck” soon enough.  

Much like the previous experience, he was fatigued, but this time he broke a fever and went into a cold sweat. His face and his ears got noticeably hot and his head really started to hurt. After this, he began to feel increasingly ache-y.  

He took a second dose of Tylenol that night, a few hours before bed, in hopes of subsiding the fever to help him sleep. Unfortunately, it didn’t make much of a difference, as he says he rolled around much of that night “feverish and ache-y”. 

Luckily, the second day after getting the second dose, his fever “completely broke” and he felt “much better”. 

 All in all, was it pleasant? “Not totally,” he laughed.  

Was it worth it? “Absolutely,” he said.