Robyn is a volunteer vaccinator in Lewisham.
The message requesting volunteers came from my GP surgery, just days after my Dad had died. He missed his 1st vaccination by just 10 days, so when I saw the opportunity to see others his age get vaccinated, and feel the relief of not living in fear of Covid, plus the chance to soon be able to see loved ones in person again, I knew that it would be a good type of bereavement therapy.
I’d wanted to volunteer earlier in the pandemic but with a broken wrist, I wasn’t much use as I couldn’t carry more than my own shopping needs, or drive supplies around. It was immensely frustrating.
On that first day of the vaccination centre opening, Jan 8, 2021, it was pretty much chaos. Neither of the waiting rooms had heating, it was freezing, there weren’t enough chairs due to having to place them at a safe distance apart and one lovely 91-year-old lady described it as a bear pit. She wasn’t wrong, but like all of her generation, they stoically hung on, despite an interruption visit by the chancellor and his PR entourage. And for their patience, they all (around 1,000) got their first Pfizer vaccinations.
Just guiding people to rooms for their vaccinations was really all I was doing initially, but it quickly became apparent that administrative skills would help the vaccinators do their job more efficiently and I enjoyed learning the process, the requirements before a vaccination can be given, and how those clinicians would deal with tricky situations — like language barriers, misinformation about vaccines and even keeping abreast of changing data about vaccines, like the issue of blood clots seen in other parts of Europe.
And now I’m taking part directly in the vaccination programme as a non-clinical voluntary vaccinator. My Dad had grown up during WWII and had always feared that his children would be conscripted to a modern war. Despite only having daughters, his fears were increased the year women were allowed to take frontline roles in the British Army. I remember joking with him that if things ever went badly, I’d sign up as a medic. The pandemic is as close to a world war as I hope to ever experience, and it looks like my medical prediction came true.