I am angry. My husband and his co-workers are frontline physicians treating sick covid patients. He has not received a vaccine and not even received a date for his vaccine. He works in the emergency room of a busy hospital which has treated most of the covid cases in our area. When most other healthcare professional could not work at the beginning of the pandemic, he was out there regularly working in the emergency room and picking up extra shifts because he felt it was the “right thing to do”.
Now the vaccine is available. I see so many friends, family members, colleagues, strangers, most who are in healthcare who are receiving the vaccine. Most of the people that I see are not frontliners and are not treating actively sick and dying covid patients (I know this for a fact due to their specialties). They may not even be actively seeing patients. Yet somehow my husband is not able to receive his vaccine yet. His hospital has a lottery system and limited supply, and his number has not come up yet. We both get so upset when family members send us their pics of themselves getting vaccinated, yet they have never treated any known covid patients! I vocalize my concern and all I get is:“Oh that’s too bad, he should be able to get it”.
I am just so angry. Angry that my husband willingly works to treat covid patients and all other sick patients, yet he has not had the chance to be vaccinated. I feel like he and his colleagues (including the nurses and techs that also work in the ERs/ICU) across the entire country should get this vaccine first.
I see a change in his behavior – he is internalizing his disappointment. But I know I can’t change his thoughts until I work on mine.
I am so angry about this. Angry at everyone who is getting vaccinated, angry at the system for failing it’s front-liners, angry at the unfairness of the situation. And I feel tremendous shame that we “follow the rules” and somehow this did not work out in our favor. I also feel that some people take advantage of these situations to get what they want. The action I take from these feelings is withdrawal, depression, disconnecting with people in my life. I just think it is unfair. I don’t want to talk to my friends and family due to the shame and anger that I feel.