Diversity Rules Magazine - _lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning_
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1345204
Amazon Trail - Con't from page 11 As Polio Pioneers, we received pins and cer ficates (which many of us s ll have, including me). Moth- ers of pupils volunteered to comfort us. I lucked out with a mom who put her arms around me and held me close during my ordeal. If I hadn't already been a dyke, I would have become one from that experi- ence alone—what pain? The more recent injec on was painless. For about two days a erward I couldn't li that arm without great discomfort, but as vulnerable elders, we ac- cepted the necessity of inocula on with stoicism. There was a nurse for each row of recipients so those in the back were able to watch for horrendous reac- ons from the procedure. There were none. The last corral was the observa on room where we waited thirty minutes, in case we needed an epi pen or ambulance. The firefighters roamed among us,smiling and joking with people they knew, check- ing on us all. Eventually, we crammed together on line to schedule appointments for our second shots. As a seasoned Polio Pioneer, sixty-odd years later, it strikes me as funny that I felt a li le proud, just as I had in grade school, to be part of this mass health ef- fort. There's a bond now, between my neighbors and myself, that we went through the unknown together, that we believed in the science and the medicine and did our patrio c duty to keep America safe. Before my observa on period ended, I took a seat at one end of a long bench and exchanged gree ngs with a courageous man perhaps twenty-five years my senior. As I watched the clock, I considered my- self lucky, way back when, to have received the real polio vaccine rather than the placebo. In the present, I know I'm lucky to have reached the current vaccine eligibility cutoff age. And lucky to have outlived the willful mismanagement of the Covid 19 pandemic. Unredacted: Unpublished Short Fiction Based On Personal Truth Now Available on Amazon Kindle Version: $3.99 Print Version: $14.89 Get Your Copy TODAY! 18 |Diversity Rules Magazine|Mar 2021