fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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The Honorable Choice

I developed my fear of needles as a kindergartener in the early 1950s. With my classmates, I waited in a slow-moving line to receive the Salk polio vaccine. When I later complained to my parents about a sore arm, they commiserated—but also assured me that the soreness would pass, while polio would be forever. I thus learned that vaccines are vital to my well-being.

That being said, the COVID-19 vaccine still causes me some anxiety. The speed with which it was developed—and the lack of knowledge about its long-term effects—worries me. Yet as I sit in my living room, the same setting in which I have sat for the past ten months of isolation, I realize that I have limited choices: to be vaccinated and, hopefully, become immune to COVID, or not to be vaccinated and, sadly, continue to live a life of isolation and vulnerability.

What has convinced me to embrace the vaccine is watching people I respect—Dr. Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and front-line caregivers—receive their injections in front of a live television audience. I have not seen any eyes squeeze shut in pain when the needle enters their arm, and I have not heard people cry out. Except in a handful of cases, I have also not learned of people experiencing ill effects from either of the currently available vaccines.

Although I am a humanities person—someone who acquires her lessons about life and gains her insights into people from literature and theatre—I am also a woman who values scientists and their awe-inspiring research. Scientists, working independently and collaboratively, have created these vaccines; they work not for self-glory but to win a war against a formidable opponent—COVID. They do their research for senior citizens like me, adults like my children, and teenagers like my great-niece.  How can I turn my back to their efforts? How can I refuse a vaccine that might end the nightmare that defines current life?

My paternal grandfather died in the 1918 flu pandemic, leaving behind a 23-year-old wife and two-year-old son—my father. Had a vaccine been available to him, he might have lived, and the history of my family would have been a different one.

To honor scientists, to honor Grandfather Edelstein, and to give myself and those around me protection from COVID, I will take the vaccine.

Ronna Edelstein
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

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