how to get a free shot-blocker

a tale

The child psyche is slapped up with Tyvek on an empty block and flaps in high winds. You wonder what it will turn out to be. What the cutouts are for.

In fall, we are booked in at Walgreens for three Pfizer boosters. Making an appointment in at a Walgreens in Troy for shots is like booking in to buy the specific OTC allergy med your husband likes to sniff in high-allergen season; they don’t care and they’re not preparing for it.

A lot of groundwork has gone into the appointment on my end, though, because Jaffs is a renowned panicker. For most of his vaccinations and also the time he stuck a bead up his nose in the early-pandemic phase in New York City, I’ve had to wrap my tentacles around him and squeeze until the medical work is done. But this time, we are 6 years old, have been doing dry runs for mental rehearsal, and have a prickly plastic shot-blocker on hand to trick the nerve endings long enough that we bypass the pain response. We hope.

At the check-in (“check-in”) the girl in the pharmacy gets distracted because we have the same birthdaaaaay! So there is a lot of to-do and astrological talk without actioning the carefully rehearsed order of events that will see the three of us get our jabs before anyone tries to hit the e-brake. We wait 15 minutes, planets grinding through their arcs, stranded by the do-it-yourself cardiovascular disease test, during which time Jaffs loses the nerve.

By the time the pharmacist comes, things are wobbly. Scuttle is ready to go, but Jaff’s spidey senses are tingling, and that intuition is not helped by us being ushered into a tiny interior box of a room to get our arms out under meat lights. Also worth saying that pharmacists are not known for their bedside manner. They have pediatric vaccines, yes, but their main thing is putting the lids on containers correctly, not building trust or deftly managing the choreography of a nervous child or reading the parental cues that say even the military couldn’t handle this kid in COVID-times at the Crossgates Mall vaccination site.

I get my shot first, then Scout, when the sight of the gleaming needle entering pallid skin sets Jaffs’ kettle fully off. He is screaming “LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT” and somewhere in the scuffle as he tries to heave the door open and I try not to lose him, he or I bump up against the light switch, dropping the room into pitch black.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH,” says Jaffs. “I can’t seeeee!” says Scuttle. “I think you have to open the door to reset the sensor,” says the pharmacist, who still has no bedside manner and doesn’t understand that if we open the door we will lose Jaffs forever.

The pharmacist is right, though. We can’t get our morgue lights back on without yanking open the door to let in natural (*more fluorescent) light and jig the switch. By then, Jaffs is OUT.

Because we are in the pharmacy in an age of nouveau shoplifter panic, I never really lose him. I can see Jaffs jogging up and down the aisles in a cold sweat on the slanted disco mirror that wraps around the ceiling. He runs on the diagonal through an Escher painting, the toothpaste boxes and cans of formula watching on, trapped in their plexiglass cells. 

When I pass back by the vaccination room, the pharmacist asks me if I still want the shot for Jaffs. BUDDY. What they don’t teach you in pharmaceutical school.

A pause here to think about how US survey signals big shifts in primary care to pharmacy and clinic settings as consumers seek lower medication and healthcare costs and also how AMA president sounds alarm on national physician shortage. But the moral isn’t the crisis of care in the U.S., and it’s not the jittery and permissive parenting that people like me practice. There isn’t one.

I see the shape of Jaff’s panic: a perfect black cube in a warehouse glowing with 70 lumens per square foot, and completely lacking any human warmth. A shop that sells Christmassy Pez dispensers but also may attack you.

He doesn’t get his vaccinations until January, when he has his annual checkup at the pediatrician and we bring the shot blocker and the nurse tries to build trust but he hides in the corner under the table and finally after trying out every parenting approach I’ve ever seen or read about or whiffed I say, “I am going to pick you up and hold you until the shots are done” and wrench him out of the corner and wrap tentacles around his soft little body until he has been jabbed. Jaffs is holding the shot blocked in his hand, and the nurse says “want another shot blocker to keep?!” and hands us the one she used. Here, have another. For funsies.

postscript: I have written before of J’s fear of injections. In this old Kafka’s, I offer the tale of the time he hid in the house so long that I called the police. Why couldn’t I find him? Because he did this, lying flat under a bedsheet:

nice

bonus postscript: When I explained shot blockers to my sister, she said “oh, like a birthing comb.” “What’s a birthing comb?” I asked, and I can’t believe this is a real thing (“I was made to do this!”).

Mmm-hmm

Scuttle (8) to Jaffs (7): You’re weirding Mum out, man.

Goodies

It’s not just music, you know:

The idea that music journalism has no value is one of the most pervasive thoughts circulating among the suits who control the industry. What those people continue to deprive us of is smart, varied music coverage produced by actual journalists, most of whom now find themselves being squeezed out of an industry that only rewards slavish devotion to the biggest pop stars, or a constant courting of drama, gossip, and violence that is only tangentially related to music.

Why did this Fence essay on dogging feel so jolly?

I came across a bizarre post on my Nextdoor page. A user was complaining: they had taken their family to Farningham Wood to go star-gazing, only to accidentally stumble across an orgy.

I still think Fiona Shaw’s tiny role as a counselor in Fleabag is brilliant, and now she’s in True Detective and seems excellent there too. Please enjoy this excellent 2001-2002 portrait of Shaw by Victoria Russell.

Enjoyable: Rumble Strip podcast from Erica Heilman, which touches on all kinds of small and big things in Vermont.

This seems very interesting.