Charity’s column: A jab in the gym

If it takes a village to raise a child, it certainly takes one to raise an immune response in the herd of seniors, school-teachers, front-line workers and other COVID-vulnerable Shelter Islanders.

And boy, am I grateful I got to join the herd last Friday.

On an island with one doctor, one pharmacy, and no urgent care, let alone a hospital, the swift and efficient immunization of about 20% of the population in one day was a miracle.

Persistent and effective town leaders, three days of round-the-clock efforts from Town employees and community volunteers, followed by the crackerjack nursing team from Stonybrook Southampton and Eastern Long Island hospitals pulled it off.

The largest mass-vaccination in Shelter Island history gave 503 Islanders the right to bare their arms to protect the community and themselves.

When the good word came down on Wednesday, the entire community mobilized. Laurie Fanelli and her team at the Senior Center recruited volunteers to help them contact the hundreds of seniors who had been waiting on a list for months, like 94-year old Ann Brunswick.

“It’s about time,” Ms. Brunswick said, “I had an appointment off-Island, but not until late March. I have a friend whose off-Island appointment is not until April. I’m so glad to be vaccinated without a ferry ride and a long drive.”

Ed Shillingburg showed up for his 9:30 a.m. appointment and was met with a public-health-and-safety show of force. “I think there were more uniformed people in one spot on Shelter Island than I’ve even seen before,” he said. “It reminded me of a general election in the days before mail-in ballots, where everyone in town had to show up in person. By the end of the day, everyone must have been wiped out, but when I was there, everyone was bright, and it was a lovely morning.”

Kiki Boucher told me she had been trying since January. “I have friends who went to Plattsburgh. They drove six hours. I tried Walgreens, CVS, my doctors in the city. I tried at 5 a.m., at midnight, I could not get close to it.” 

She sprained her right wrist slipping on the snow a couple of weeks ago, and asked the nurse who vaccinated her in the gym on Friday to use the same arm since it hurts anyway. On Saturday she was still feeling a warm glow of community, and the sore arm was no problem.

When I got the call late Friday afternoon informing me that my number was up, my cheer was so loud it scared the dog. As one of the co-morbidity lottery-winners, there was a shot for me, provided I got over to the school fast.

I stepped into the gym as the last rounds of shots was being administered, and Peggy had the serum in my shoulder before I knew she was holding a needle.

The 15-minute waiting area was a beehive of joyous activity with Althea Mills, chief nursing officer at Stonybrook Southampton Hospital in the center of it. Her close-cropped salt and pepper hair and precise way of expressing herself let me know she was a wartime leader, but the way she sized me up — “Hmm, will this be the one to faint on us?” — was warm and reassuring. The woman was saving lives, so I thanked her for her service.

“We consider ourselves your hospital, and if we can prevent you coming in very sick, then we will do it,” she said. “We see the other side of this, when people come in and they can’t breathe, they are dying, and our hands are up in the air because we’ve tried everything.”

Ms. Mills was quick to point out that the Stonybrook Southampton and Eastern Long Island Hospital team was asked to deploy on Shelter Island by the state, and 500 doses of vaccine were directed here because, “Someone in your community was very active in calling the state and saying, we have a high population of a vulnerable group.’”

She said Shelter Island is the biggest one-day event they have done so far on the East End.

The post-injection waiting area that took up most of the gym floor felt like prom right before the band starts up and they turn down the lights. Relieved and jubilant people chatted and laughed, and I wasn’t surprised to hear somebody say, “Let’s get this party started!”

Supervisor Gerry Siller was all eye smiles (like everyone, he wore a mask) as he described the case that he and his team, including Police Chief Jim Read and Deputy Supervisor Amber Brach-Williams made to state officials that Shelter Island qualified for this extraordinary aid due to the size of our elderly population (a third of us are over 65) and our thin medical infrastructure.

Although we may hate thinking of ourselves as living in a “medical wasteland,” that’s the term state officials use to characterize communities that can’t vaccinate their residents without a point of delivery (POD) event like the one we got.

The morning after her vaccination in the school gym, Ann Brunswick told me she woke up with a song in her heart and the lyrics of an old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical number from Carousel in her head,

“This was a real nice clambake, And we all had a real good time.”

Apparently one of the lesser-known side-effects of the vaccination is a joyful feeling of community, because a lot of other Shelter Islanders who got the jab on Friday felt it, too.