Dan and I have taken extreme measures to avoid other people this past year. On March 3rd, 2020, we started social distancing and have not entered a store or restaurant since, not even our very favorite restaurant, Serranos. Wearing a mask followed soon after.
We love to swim, but have given that up. We love to dance, but only dance at home now. We play ping pong together at home. We ride Daisy, our tandem bike, and take long walks before dawn to minimize our contact with others.
We can do this because we are retired and have each other. We like to spend our days and nights together. And we like to go out in the desert far away from others where we camp and hike all by ourselves. This is another thing we love to do. We have been spending weeks on end all alone in the desert for 9+ years.
But this past year we have missed our grandchildren and children so very much it hurts deep in our hearts.
We would have liked to be allowed to give our coronavirus vaccines to our grandchildren, but that was not possible. We would rather they get the vaccine. They need the freedom to be children and to know that they are safe.
They also need their grandparents to be healthy. They need to have more time in their lives with their grandparents. These memories with grandparents will be invaluable to them as they themselves grow older. We know this, because we treasure our memories of the all too brief times we spent with our grandparents.
So in early January I started a search for us to get a coronavirus vaccine. Arizona had not included us in the group to get an early vaccine, because we were not yet 75 years old. But I was desperate to get Dan his vaccine as his body needs to fight cancer, not COVID-19.
I contacted our primary care doctor, but they we not able to give us any guidance on how and when we could schedule a vaccine. So I searched online and discovered that Arizona Department of Health Services had a website where we could create an account and register. But no vaccine was available for us.
From that time on I checked the numerous websites that I had bookmarked that had information pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines. And I checked them every day, often several times a day.
Finally I found a notice that on January 19th, Maricopa County would begin vaccinating seniors 65+ years old! Every day I tried to get an appointment for anytime from January 19th on, but to no avail, Early in the morning on the 19th, I once again went to the Arizona Health Department website and tried to get Dan an appointment. For the first time the website said that he was eligible for a vaccine, so I checked every single day starting with the 19th—no appointment available.
I kept at it. Finally when I got to February 23rd, I found an available appointment. Then Dan got on his computer (while I was on my iPad), and we we able to maneuver in this very difficult website and get us BOTH appointments for February 23rd at the Cardinal Stadium! And mine was only 49 minutes after Dan’s.
We were so excited. We were even able to ignore the fact that our appointments were 41 miles away on the northwest side of Phoenix, and we live in east Mesa. We were even able to ignore that our appointments were at 6 p.m. during the evening rush hour, and we are usually in bed at that time since we get up at 3:30 a.m. every morning.
We knew that we were lucky to have our appointments and would soon be able to get our first COVID-19 vaccine. We happily counted down the days. We printed out the barcodes that were our ticket to our vaccines. We scoped out the best driving routes to get to Cardinal Stadium during rush hour. We planned an early dinner and figured that the day after the vaccine, we would be too exhausted to get up early to ride Daisy and take our 4 1/2 mile moonlit walk. Who cares—we were getting our vaccines!
Thirty-four days later, on February 22, the day before we were planning to traipse over to Cardinal Stadium to get our vaccines.....Dan opened an email from Leisure World and saw this:
What amazingly good news!
Within two minutes we had both signed up for our vaccines and canceled our Cardinal Stadium vaccines. Less than a mile away from our home, in the safety of our own community, we were able to get our COVID-19 vaccines. The administration staff at Leisure World negotiated with Safeway to arrange for on-site vaccines for our community!
A big thank you to the Leisure World director and staff!
This is one of the many reasons why we believe that Nuestra Casa, our home in Leisure World, is heaven on earth.
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