FA+
Shop
My experience getting the J&J vaccine
4 years ago
So, in a few days my state and many others will be making the Covid vaccines available to all adults. Due to a surplus of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at my local site, I was offered an early appointment. I think it would be useful to describe what it was like for anyone who has yet to get one, because I had a rather... interesting experience. This is an extremely long post, because I want it to be as thorough as possible.
Part 1: Getting the shot (the easy part)
My local site was Six Flags Magic Mountain, which had just re-opened last week. I was taken there and looked after by my grandmother, a retired nurse who has helped everyone in my family go through this process. At this point, most people who needed to get the vaccination for medical or employment reasons already had, so there was no line at all. However, my grandmother told me that when she took my great-grandmother a while back, the line extended far beyond the parking lot and into the intersection. So if you are going to get it when it first becomes available to you, be aware that the lines could be long during the first few days.
This was a drive in site, and I only had to open the car door once to give the nurse access to my arm. Even though the state gave me an early appointment, I guess for procedural reasons they still need a valid "reason" to give it to me early. However, this was just a formality. If you do get an early appointment and they ask you for a reason, well, let me put it this way. If you've ever gotten a medical marijuana card, whatever condition you used to get that prescription is also valid here. Any recurring or chronic conditions will do. In my case, it was Generalized Anxiety.
After a bit of paperwork, we pulled up to the station where the vaccines were administered. This part went pretty quickly. I got to choose which arm to use, which is good because when you get vaccines and the like frequently, you figure out that one is usually better than the other. It was over in an instant. It felt just like last year's flu shot, but with just a bit more sting. After that, we pulled into the waiting area. My grandmother told me that the injection was a bit higher on my arm than it probably should have been, which means it would be sore longer. I think that because they are doing so many vaccinations at a time every day, fatigue from the workers mean that they might be a bit less precise than usual.
We were in the waiting area for 15 minutes. There were nurses outside and they told us to flag them down if there were any immediate problems. They had a first aid tent set up, and there was also an ambulance if anyone needed transport to the nearby hospital. We passed the time watching all of the roller coasters go by. I really miss Magic Mountain. I practically grew up there. It was so close to my childhood house, and all of my friends and I had season passes. When all of this is over, I'm gonna go back. Anyway, there were no issues after 15 minutes, and after receiving my CDC vaccination card we were free to go.
Part 2: The side effects (what the phrase "flu-like symptoms" really means)
I got the shot at around noon. I felt fine, besides the sore arm, for quite a while. Though I noticed early on that I had suspiciously lost all of my appetite. For me, that's usually a bad sign. At 8PM, the "fun" began. At first, it was the side effects they warn you about: chills, muscle aches, tiredness, and a cough. Most people get these. I decided then that I would go to bed early, and maybe I could sleep off the worst symptoms. That went very badly for me. Because I got unlucky. I ended up being one of the 10% of J&J recipients who got a near worst-case-scenario.
First, the aches got worse, and they would continue to get worse the whole night. By around 10PM, I had developed a fever, which ramped up in intensity over the next six hours. At one point, my body felt so hot as to be painful to the touch. But whenever I tried to do anything to cool myself down, like take my top layer of covers off, I would instantly get these almost electric chills running through my whole body. I kept drinking water a little bit at a time as my grandmother told me to, but with each sip I could feel my stomach get more and more upset. It also became dangerous to move, as every movement made my stomach turn in a really bad way. And even though I was drinking water, it didn't make the fever any better. My mouth was constantly dry.
Note: if you get squicked out by vomiting, skip the next paragraph.
At just before 4AM, I ran out of water. I was then faced with two choices. I could let the fever dry me out completely, or I would need to refill the bottle, risking the nausea becoming unbearable. I decided then that I would try to do a little movement at a time, and see if I could get by that way. It worked, for a while, but when I finally lifted myself to a sitting position, I realized I had crossed a line. A few seconds later, I found myself violently retching into my trash can. Because I hadn't eaten anything in over 12 hours, it wasn't vomit the way you usually think of it. Around 50% of the time it was a dry heave, and the other 50% I threw up a mixture of water and mucus. This lasted for a few minutes. When it finally subsided for the last time, I was able to stand up straight, and I noticed that at some point during those minutes, my fever had broken.
The worst of it at this point was passed. I quickly started to feel better, but there was a problem. I had just lost up all of the water I had been drinking, and I was very dehydrated. My fluid balance was probably bad too. I needed to re-hydrate fast. I was able to walk to the kitchen and re-fill my bottle without any nausea. But the real test was if I could keep the water down. If I couldn't, then the only remaining option was hospitalization. Dehydration can turn deadly quick, especially out here in the L.A. desert. I took some careful sips of water, and I took a shower because I felt dirty. The water stayed down.
After taking a shower, the final two side effects took hold. Every muscle and joint in my body was aching bad, and I would start to have coughing fits. A single adult-strength Tylenol fixed the pain, though the coughing is still here. My grandmother visited our house like she does most days, and she helped me through the next steps. I had half a slice of toast in small bites (I realized as I was eating it that my stomach wasn't 100% ready yet, but I was able to hold it down). Later I had a banana to get some potassium, and had no problems. According to my FitBit, I finally passed out at 10:30AM, having been awake for exactly 24 hours and 14 hours after the symptoms began.
Part 3: Conclusions (and general musings about the pandemic)
So, what can we learn from this? On the bright side, I don't have to do this again. J&J is one and done. Upon some further research, it appears that young people like me are more susceptible to having bad side effects for some reason, but nothing that happened to me was unheard of. Again, 10% of people who got J&J have reported similar symptoms. If I had to guess why, I think it is because J&J uses the more old-school Adenovirus Vector method, instead of the fancy new mRNA method that the others do. My immune system discovered that there were unknown, fully formed viruses floating around of unknown origin, and went all hands on deck to destroy them. But for 90% of you, the side effects will be much easier, maybe a bit of a headache and chills for a day or two, but then you are fine. That is what happened to all of my friends, family, and coworkers who got the vaccine so far. I was just very unlucky. One other small downside to this is that J&J is less effective at prevention than the other variants, but from what I have read it is 100% effective in lessening the symptoms and preventing hospitalization in patients who do contract it later. So if (spirits forbid) I do get it, at worst I might just have to go through this bad night one more time.
Finally, this experience made me wonder about something. In February 2020, when Covid was rapidly spreading around Anaheim where I was living at the time (though we didn't know how bad it was yet), I had these exact same symptoms with varying intensity over a period of about a week, followed by a residual cough that lasted for a month. At the time, I thought it was just the flu. But looking back, I wonder if it was Covid. I've heard that for some people, it goes more to their gut than their lungs. A relative of mine had the exact same experience, as did a few others people they knew. When I did take a test, many months later, I had no antibodies. I've learned through all of this how my body can be both very fragile and very resilient at the same time. It's a paradox, but it's my reality.
Part 1: Getting the shot (the easy part)
My local site was Six Flags Magic Mountain, which had just re-opened last week. I was taken there and looked after by my grandmother, a retired nurse who has helped everyone in my family go through this process. At this point, most people who needed to get the vaccination for medical or employment reasons already had, so there was no line at all. However, my grandmother told me that when she took my great-grandmother a while back, the line extended far beyond the parking lot and into the intersection. So if you are going to get it when it first becomes available to you, be aware that the lines could be long during the first few days.
This was a drive in site, and I only had to open the car door once to give the nurse access to my arm. Even though the state gave me an early appointment, I guess for procedural reasons they still need a valid "reason" to give it to me early. However, this was just a formality. If you do get an early appointment and they ask you for a reason, well, let me put it this way. If you've ever gotten a medical marijuana card, whatever condition you used to get that prescription is also valid here. Any recurring or chronic conditions will do. In my case, it was Generalized Anxiety.
After a bit of paperwork, we pulled up to the station where the vaccines were administered. This part went pretty quickly. I got to choose which arm to use, which is good because when you get vaccines and the like frequently, you figure out that one is usually better than the other. It was over in an instant. It felt just like last year's flu shot, but with just a bit more sting. After that, we pulled into the waiting area. My grandmother told me that the injection was a bit higher on my arm than it probably should have been, which means it would be sore longer. I think that because they are doing so many vaccinations at a time every day, fatigue from the workers mean that they might be a bit less precise than usual.
We were in the waiting area for 15 minutes. There were nurses outside and they told us to flag them down if there were any immediate problems. They had a first aid tent set up, and there was also an ambulance if anyone needed transport to the nearby hospital. We passed the time watching all of the roller coasters go by. I really miss Magic Mountain. I practically grew up there. It was so close to my childhood house, and all of my friends and I had season passes. When all of this is over, I'm gonna go back. Anyway, there were no issues after 15 minutes, and after receiving my CDC vaccination card we were free to go.
Part 2: The side effects (what the phrase "flu-like symptoms" really means)
I got the shot at around noon. I felt fine, besides the sore arm, for quite a while. Though I noticed early on that I had suspiciously lost all of my appetite. For me, that's usually a bad sign. At 8PM, the "fun" began. At first, it was the side effects they warn you about: chills, muscle aches, tiredness, and a cough. Most people get these. I decided then that I would go to bed early, and maybe I could sleep off the worst symptoms. That went very badly for me. Because I got unlucky. I ended up being one of the 10% of J&J recipients who got a near worst-case-scenario.
First, the aches got worse, and they would continue to get worse the whole night. By around 10PM, I had developed a fever, which ramped up in intensity over the next six hours. At one point, my body felt so hot as to be painful to the touch. But whenever I tried to do anything to cool myself down, like take my top layer of covers off, I would instantly get these almost electric chills running through my whole body. I kept drinking water a little bit at a time as my grandmother told me to, but with each sip I could feel my stomach get more and more upset. It also became dangerous to move, as every movement made my stomach turn in a really bad way. And even though I was drinking water, it didn't make the fever any better. My mouth was constantly dry.
Note: if you get squicked out by vomiting, skip the next paragraph.
At just before 4AM, I ran out of water. I was then faced with two choices. I could let the fever dry me out completely, or I would need to refill the bottle, risking the nausea becoming unbearable. I decided then that I would try to do a little movement at a time, and see if I could get by that way. It worked, for a while, but when I finally lifted myself to a sitting position, I realized I had crossed a line. A few seconds later, I found myself violently retching into my trash can. Because I hadn't eaten anything in over 12 hours, it wasn't vomit the way you usually think of it. Around 50% of the time it was a dry heave, and the other 50% I threw up a mixture of water and mucus. This lasted for a few minutes. When it finally subsided for the last time, I was able to stand up straight, and I noticed that at some point during those minutes, my fever had broken.
The worst of it at this point was passed. I quickly started to feel better, but there was a problem. I had just lost up all of the water I had been drinking, and I was very dehydrated. My fluid balance was probably bad too. I needed to re-hydrate fast. I was able to walk to the kitchen and re-fill my bottle without any nausea. But the real test was if I could keep the water down. If I couldn't, then the only remaining option was hospitalization. Dehydration can turn deadly quick, especially out here in the L.A. desert. I took some careful sips of water, and I took a shower because I felt dirty. The water stayed down.
After taking a shower, the final two side effects took hold. Every muscle and joint in my body was aching bad, and I would start to have coughing fits. A single adult-strength Tylenol fixed the pain, though the coughing is still here. My grandmother visited our house like she does most days, and she helped me through the next steps. I had half a slice of toast in small bites (I realized as I was eating it that my stomach wasn't 100% ready yet, but I was able to hold it down). Later I had a banana to get some potassium, and had no problems. According to my FitBit, I finally passed out at 10:30AM, having been awake for exactly 24 hours and 14 hours after the symptoms began.
Part 3: Conclusions (and general musings about the pandemic)
So, what can we learn from this? On the bright side, I don't have to do this again. J&J is one and done. Upon some further research, it appears that young people like me are more susceptible to having bad side effects for some reason, but nothing that happened to me was unheard of. Again, 10% of people who got J&J have reported similar symptoms. If I had to guess why, I think it is because J&J uses the more old-school Adenovirus Vector method, instead of the fancy new mRNA method that the others do. My immune system discovered that there were unknown, fully formed viruses floating around of unknown origin, and went all hands on deck to destroy them. But for 90% of you, the side effects will be much easier, maybe a bit of a headache and chills for a day or two, but then you are fine. That is what happened to all of my friends, family, and coworkers who got the vaccine so far. I was just very unlucky. One other small downside to this is that J&J is less effective at prevention than the other variants, but from what I have read it is 100% effective in lessening the symptoms and preventing hospitalization in patients who do contract it later. So if (spirits forbid) I do get it, at worst I might just have to go through this bad night one more time.
Finally, this experience made me wonder about something. In February 2020, when Covid was rapidly spreading around Anaheim where I was living at the time (though we didn't know how bad it was yet), I had these exact same symptoms with varying intensity over a period of about a week, followed by a residual cough that lasted for a month. At the time, I thought it was just the flu. But looking back, I wonder if it was Covid. I've heard that for some people, it goes more to their gut than their lungs. A relative of mine had the exact same experience, as did a few others people they knew. When I did take a test, many months later, I had no antibodies. I've learned through all of this how my body can be both very fragile and very resilient at the same time. It's a paradox, but it's my reality.
Man, that really blows that you got the extreme spectrum of the side effects. I'm glad you're okay now. It goes to show that everyone reacts differently to the vaccine. I got the Pzfier brand, and the only side effects I got was sore arm for 1.5 days and head-splitting headache for 4 hours after 1 hour of the injection.
