H1N1 vaccinated

...I feel like I am an animal when I say this......but yes....we were vaccinated for the H1N1 influenza today. Yeah there has been a lot of hype over the whole thing...and us living in the highest birth rate state you can imagine all the pregnant ladies and kids out trying to find this vaccine. We want our family to be healthy and safe...especially with kid #2 on the way in 9 weeks....so not getting the vaccine to us is not an option.

The Utah health department has not released the H1N1 vaccine to any doctors office - anyone that gets the shot for now has to go to the health department for it. This week was round #3 of H1N1 availability...here is how the first two rounds went:

Round #1 - 10/24/09 Saturday shot clinic in Salt Lake county...apparently completely insane. People double/triple parked around the health department to find out that 7,000 doses "spoken for" with people in line in only 30 minutes!.

Round #2 - 10/27/09 Tuesday shot clinic in Utah County. We had a close friend go at 8am when they opened the doors. She said there were 2,000 people in line in front of her and she waited FIVE HOURS to make it to the front and get her shot. Did I mention it was SNOWING outside with a high of 35 degrees on this day?

Then the health department got a bit smarter for round #3...and that is where we came in ;)

On Monday at 8am the Utah county health department started handing out priority tickets for H1N1 vaccines. Jen, Zach and Glen are on the priority list...Dustin is technically not. Jen headed down to the health department - arriving at 11am (couldn't get out of work earlier than that!). She only had to wait in line for 2 minutes to get four "tickets". Our "tickets" were to come back today at 2pm for the shot. By the time Jen got back to work on Monday the Utah County health department had already posted on their website they were out of tickets. Jen must have been cutting it close!

So today all four of us - Jen, Dustin, Zach and Glen (Dustin's dad) arrived at the Utah County Health department about 10 minutes before 2pm. There was a line forming at the door - we were probably #25 in line. At 2pm they opened the doors - in 5 minutes we were at the front having someone review our paperwork. Then we went into another room where they had 10 different lines of people administering the vaccine. In another 15 minutes we were done and on our way. Overall I thought the whole process went fine - no long waits. They had cool band-aids and stickers for the kids.

A few other thoughts....that shot HURT way more than the normal influenza shot. It burned going in. Zach actually didn't fuss too much with his shot. All the other kids in the room were crying - they all knew they were getting shots and all the parents just kind of looked at each other because what can you do? Pregnant women don't need a second dose of the H1N1 vaccine anymore, but kids under the age of 10 do...so in a month we are going to be looking for another shot for Zach...hopefully by then the supply can meet the demand.