Experiences after the first Covid Vaccine

It is been a little over an year working from home and a lot has changed on how we interact in our daily lives - the kids have their regular zoom schedules, families along with spouses all glued to their desktops/computers from different rooms in their homes, shopping for groceries or other items happen in a hybrid fashion (both online and in-store during off-peak hours) and the list goes on!

On my end, I have co-authored a book for SAP along with my colleague on "Machine Learning with SAP S/4HANA" and have been involved recently in doing not only a blog series but infact a podcast series as well. The digitalization of services has been fastened not only on our personal lives but at a consumer level and an enterprise level as well. Like the saying goes - necessity is the mother of invention, the world and humanity is adapting faster than expected to this brave new world. While the effect of pandemic is slowly reducing globally, the next step of vaccinating the human kind on a global scale has been happening since Dec 2020! While it is a miracle to have a vaccine within an year, many factors including the technological innovation has definitely fastened the process.

This is one such attempt in providing my experiences now that I took my first dose of the vaccine shot. It was a normal sunday late evening and while relaxing at home, I got a message from my sister urging me to book a covid vaccine appt since some spots have opened up at a stanford facility in the bayarea. While I was reluctant to sign-up since I was concerned that the elderly and needy folks might not have got their turn, I was told from numerous sources as well as the nurse who gave a vaccine shot for my mother that if elders are living with you, it is imperative for you take a vaccine shot sooner. Hence I reluctantly signed up for the vaccine shot and scheduled for a thursday evening. Thursday being an auspicious day due to some spiritual significance, myself and my wife booked a thursday evening slot so that it would not effect my wife's work schedule. As you might already know that I have a very flexible work schedule and I thank SAP very much for that and ofcourse I am available 24X7 working for SAP!

After reaching the vaccine appointment place in san jose, to our surprise there were not many people ahead of us and the support staff quickly checked us in and we completed our vaccine shot within 10minutes - and after the 15min waiting period for observation, we left the facility and reached our home. Except minor soreness at the spot of the vaccine shot on the left arm, we did not feel anything else.

Generally on thursday evenings, I either prepare for my podcast sessions or shoot my podcast sessions during thursday evenings so that I can upload them online on fridays so that it is available for the community to tune-in and listen into my podcast sessions on "Machine Learning with SAP S/4HANA". Working from home during Covid times, altered my schedules and I try to do biking late afternoons once or twice a week and once on a weekend. A couple of other days I try to do a bit of high intense cardio on my in-house treadmill. Since I was in no-mood to prepare for the podcast or do a podcast on thursday evening after the vaccine, I decided to do a quick 20min treadmill cardio work-out and then had a quick shower. After this I completely forgot that I had taken the vaccine shot and continued on a few other tasks and dozed off to bed by 10:30pm or so - generally a bit earlier than my regular schedule. I did not expect what was in store for me soon!

I was awakened around 1am by the most severe chills that I experienced may be in my adult life! I was shaking and moving for about 5 to 7 minutes which awakened my terrified wife. For a minute I was thinking about my kids sleeping in the next room and all my life ran before my eyes! I quickly regained my stance and labored to move out of my bed and put on 2 sweaters and a thick blanket, switched off the fan completely (I generally put a fan facing my side of the bed even during the coldest winter days!!) I also took an advil pill and slowly got back to normal within 30minutes but could not get to deep sleep for another few hours. Waking up after another 8hrs, felt me very refreshing and doing much better. The reason I am putting my experience here is that most of us neglect our physical and mental needs and think our bodies and minds can accept any kind of stress.

I just want to stress the fact that this Covid Vaccine shot is not like your regular flu-shot and don't ignore the precautionary steps. Working from home, we hardly divide our personal and professional lives and been doing things at a continuous pace. Irrespective of what and how you do on a daily basis, having a good night sleep before and after the Covid vaccine shot is imperative and a few tips here:

1. Have a good night sleep before and after the vaccine shot.
2. Drink lots of water.
3. No cardio or exercising atleast until 12 to 14hrs after the vaccine shot. It is better to stay low for a day after the first vaccine shot.
4. Don't take any tylenol/advil within 8hrs of the vaccine shot.
5. Take some light meal before and after the vaccine shot.

I hope I have provided some thoughts so that you can all do your bit and be safe. There is nothing to worry but it is better to take precautionary steps, nah being "young at heart" or "having a fit body" is all good but the minimum precautionary steps are needed. I would also put my experiences after my second shot scheduled for Apr 22nd! I took the moderna vaccine shot but I believe these tips should be similar for any vaccine shot. I am not sure if this is true but it seems that people experiencing these kind of severe side effects after the first dose might have been infected with covid earlier but might be asymptomatic - which makes it even more important to get the vaccine shot so that you don't pass along this Covid to others!