Photo by Nikola Đuza on Unsplash Honestly, I didn't think there were any of the old-style tiny Walmarts left until we pulled up to the one in Marlin. We drove almost an hour and a half to get there, though, so the size of the store was irrelevant to me.
I live in a county of 29,000 residents, only 1,800 of them who are fully vaccinated, according to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. And I don’t actually trust those numbers. On the agency's availability map, the total number of vaccines shipped to all outlets in the county is 2,000, and some of those were second doses, so the numbers don't exactly jive. Add that to the fact that no new doses arrived in the county in February and I started searching elsewhere. I've been on lists in three other counties at the advice of my cardiologist.
On the day the announcement was made that doses were going to be available at pharmacies in Texas, specifically, CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart, I started my search of those three websites. All three had sites that were relatively easy to manage, but then I spend a great deal of time on the computer. I could see how an elderly person without computer or smartphone skills would find the sites challenging.
CVS appointments in the county next to mine were booked as quickly as they appeared. The same for Walgreens. But when I entered my target zip code (which was not mine, because there's not a Walmart within 15 miles of my house) I was shown appointments available in the tiny town of Marlin, on Highway 6, south of Waco.
I picked a date and time and with a few more questions was scheduled for February 18 at 12:20 and hubs was scheduled for the same day ten minutes later. We both received follow-up phone calls from a Walmart representative as well as emails confirming our appointments.
Then Tex-mageddon hit. Along with all of the things we worried about that week, hubs and I worried ourselves nearly sick over how we were going to make the drive to Marlin on roads still iced over. We studied the weather forecast, hoping for sunshine on Thursday. We checked the highway conditions on the TxDot website.
By Wednesday morning it was looking impossible, so I started trying to call the pharmacy at the store to see if they could reschedule. That too proved hopeless. I scoured Facebook pages for Marlin businesses to see how hard the town had been hit by the storm. They were struggling just like my own community.
About the time I gave up trying to call the store, they called me-- with a sincere apology for not calling sooner. The woman explained that their power had been out until then, leaving them unable to even know who they needed to get rescheduled. She offered us replacement appointments a week later.
Once inside the tiny store, which was about as far from being a "superstore" as you can get, we located the pharmacy and waited behind two other pairs of people registering. During the sign-in process, they set up our appointments for our second doses and we were provided with information about the vaccine. Once we had our CDC cards in hand, we were told to follow the blue arrows on the floor to the fitting room. Yes, really.
Upon arrival in the fitting room area, an associate asked us another set of screening questions and took our temperatures before assuring us the pharmacist would call our names shortly. Within minutes, a nice young man with a face shield appeared at the door to one of the fitting rooms, called my name, and invited me inside.
The room had been set up with a desk and some shelving. He had everything he needed at hand, including vials of the Moderna vaccine, syringes, alcohol swabs, injection site covers, and a stack of Epi-pens, which was a little unsettling.
He explained the process and the possibility of side effects or adverse reactions. Once all that was complete, he expertly injected my first dose and signed my CDC card. Hubs was right behind me. We were told not to leave for about fifteen minutes. The exact injection time was written on our cards so there would be no question.
Chairs were provided for waiting both before and after. While there, I visited with the other people waiting. Not one was from Marlin. There were a mother and daughter duo who had traveled from Waco and a young woman who was from a county to the east. She said she felt a little guilty getting it at her age, but her doctor said her asthma was bad enough that she needed it and qualified. I assured her that the goal was to get as many vaccines into arms as possible and it didn't matter whose arms they were.
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