After months of treating patients injured by Covid-19, as well as those who had car accidents and heart attacks, Dr. Andrew Matuskowitz was exhausted and worn out. The doctor works at the University of South Carolina Medical School in Charleston.
“I didn’t expect to really feel like I was getting the emotional vaccine,” Matuskowitz, 37, told CNN. “However, I still felt so overwhelmed by this almost ecstasy about this idea that there is actually a purpose in mind.”
Joy, hope and emotion are some of the emotions that these health care workers say they feel. Here are some of their stories:
“Business as usual” even on the day of the vaccine
Gratitude. This is the word used by emergency doctor Matuskowitz to describe how he felt after receiving the vaccine on Thursday.
He was surprised when he actually felt the greater significance of the syringe filled with the vaccine sought in his arm.
“I had come in every day like every day, only I was in a hurry and taking the kids to kindergarten and they were just tired of it all,” Matuskowitz said. “I woke up really excited while I was going to get the vaccine, during the vaccine … and after that, while I was driving home.”
The last six months since South Carolina had the summer wave Covid-19 meant that Matuskowitz and his colleagues had to continue, treating patients with a “normal as usual” attitude, he said.
He felt the same way this week, but said he noticed an “explosion of emotion” from his colleagues that the vaccine was coming.
“Every clinician and nurse I spoke to was eager to get the vaccine,” he said. “There is great enthusiasm from the medical community on the front lines.”
Being part of the solution
“I’m not afraid,” she told CNN. “I trust science. My profession is deeply rooted in science. I trust science. What I don’t trust is getting Covid-19, because I don’t know how it will affect me and the people around me that I could potentially transfer the virus to. “
After receiving the shot, he told Anderson Cooper on CNN that he felt “great.”
“I want to be part of the solution to put an end to this pandemic,” she told CNN. “I also believe as a leader in the organization I lead by example. I don’t ask people to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”
The paternity of juggling and the first lines
Julia Slovis, 33, returned from maternity leave to the pediatric critical care unit at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in June, even stepping into a pandemic.
She and her husband Benjamin, 35, do just as many jugglers working on the front lines of the pandemic and being the parents of two young children. He works in medicine just four miles upstairs as an assistant professor and director of clinical informatics in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University.
Overall, it was educational and adaptive, both as parents to keep children stimulated at home and as medical professionals working with patients battling the virus, Julia said.
“I’m so excited to start the process of getting the world back to normal, and my vaccine is a small part of that,” Julia told CNN. “It’s like a common sense of community that I can do a little thing to get this world back to normal through my vaccination.”
Benjamin was vaccinated on Wednesday and told CNN he was “completely well and happy” with no side effects.
And, although she has already been vaccinated, Julia following suit on Saturday, the couple said that getting it does not change their habits. Both intend to continue wearing face masks, avoiding holiday plans with family or friends and practicing social distance and good hygiene.
Sitting down to receive the vaccine, Benjamin said he was lucky and cautiously optimistic “that this could lead to the beginning of the end” of the pandemic.
“Did I breathe a sigh of relief?” he said. “Only in the sense that nothing will change at this time, but it certainly gave me a sense of hope that maybe we could think about the future.”
The couple will receive the second dose in January.
One step closer to embracing the family
For the past eight months, 43-year-old infectious disease doctor Dr. Saumil Doshi has said he has personally seen up to 200 coronavirus patients. Doshi is also the director of the infectious disease fellowship program at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC.
Doshi was among the front-line workers who received the vaccine on Friday.
“I am delighted and grateful for the amazing collaboration between the scientists to make this possible,” he said. “But also realizing that we are far from the finish line. I took my fire, kept my mask and went back to work.”
The choice to get the vaccine was crazy, Doshi said, after analyzing the data and carefully following the approval process.
“There have been so many works that have contributed to the development of this,” he said. “So many people analyzed the data and were independent of the companies that developed the vaccine, so I’m fully confident that every step has been taken to make sure it’s safe.”
“And although it was an easy decision to get the vaccine, I didn’t take it easy,” he said.
“After the vaccine, I will have to wear a mask and continue the social distance until we control the pandemic,” he said. “This will require many more people to be vaccinated.”
And even after the second dose, which Doshi will receive in three weeks, he said it is still possible to take Covid-19 because the vaccine is not 100% effective.
“I feel good” about the launch of the vaccine
On Monday, Boston Medical Center received a shipment of Covid-19 vaccines, making it the first hospital in Massachusetts to receive the vaccine and begin vaccinating medical staff during the week.
“Staff are ‘feeling good’ about this important turning point in the pandemic,” the hospital wrote on Instagram.
So, to show how good they felt, some of them burst into a choreographed dance sequence of one of Lizzo’s songs.
How to bring together the scientific community to create the vaccine is something to celebrate. Matuskowitz hopes this is not lost on people, he said.
“The community effort of this one vision was a big part of why I felt so grateful and so happy,” he said. “I think Covid is always with us, just like the flu, but now we have a way to prevent it and suppress its ability to affect us. This knowledge based on all this scientific work has been a remarkable human achievement.”