Health & Fitness

If You Love Mom, Don't Let Her 'Wait And See' On Getting Vaccine

KONKOL COLUMN: Like 1 in 3 Americans, my parents were on the fence about getting vaccinated until they saw the consequences of waiting.

Joanne Konkol went out to lunch with her son for the first time in a year after getting her first coronavirus vaccine shot Wednesday at the United Center in Chicago.
Joanne Konkol went out to lunch with her son for the first time in a year after getting her first coronavirus vaccine shot Wednesday at the United Center in Chicago. (Mark Konkol/ Patch)

CHICAGO — This is the story of a family that rebuffed public health guidance: mine.

My 93-year-old grandma should have been at the front of the line for COVID-19 vaccinations after the doctors and nurses.

But she didn't get the vaccine before her upstairs neighbor and my aunt and uncle, who live across the hall from her, all contracted coronavirus weeks ago.

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My mom visited them a few days before Grandma's fever came, and the coughing fits started.

Mom came home and made supper for Dad. The next day, I stopped over because I missed them.

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That's when my coronavirus anxiety set in.

Mom and Dad had been eligible to be vaccinated, too, but didn't get the shots.

They had their reasons. And like a lot of stubborn people who think they know best, Mom and Dad wouldn't budge on their vaccine defiance no matter how much I nagged them.

Even after Grandma started to get sick, Mom told me not worry so much, and pray more.

Mom and Dad are among a demographic — about 1 in 3 Americans — on the fence about getting vaccinated.

They're conservative voters who don't particularly trust the government.

Dad says he doesn't like vaccines because, in the '80s, his father always seemed to end up hospitalized after getting the flu shot.

Mom counts herself as one of the "wait and see" adults who aren't lining up to be COVID-19 vaccine guinea pigs. "It's too soon to know if it's safe," she said.

They refused to take vaccination appointments after my sister the nurse, her husband and two kids got COVID-19 and recovered.

Their anti-vax stance didn't change even when my sister got inoculated when it was her turn.

I wanted to scream at them.

A few times I did — not that it did any good.

Then Grandma fell out of bed. Paramedics took her to the hospital with dangerously low oxygen levels that turned out to be the result of COVID-19 pneumonia. She's still there. Alone. Sometimes struggling to breathe, enduring coughing fits. Nurses say Grandma's in guarded condition.

"That means it could go either way," my mom said.

Every day is filled with moments of worry, prayer and sometimes tears that we keep secret from each other while clinging to hope that dies last.

For me, there's the fear, too, that my wait-and-see parents — 70-somethings with coronavirus comorbidities — would remain too stubborn to protect themselves with medicine to keep the virus at bay.

So, my sister and I teamed up one more time to pressure Mom and Dad to get vaccinated.

We offered up statistics: Vaccines are highly effective protection against getting severely sick and the quickest way for life to return to normal.

"Nobody dies because they got vaccinated," I told Mom and Dad.

When that didn't work, I tried giving them a guilt trip: Do you want me to be crippled with worry that you're going to die because you wouldn't get a shot?

My sister, the fully vaccinated nurse, told them getting inoculated was the quickest way to get back to something like a normal life.

They didn't see the rush until being presented with the most severe consequence: If you don't get vaccinated, forget about hugging your grandchildren this year.

That's when Mom and Dad relented.

Looking back, that might have been the easy part.

Because even though Dad, an Army veteran, scored an easy appointment through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Mom remained out of luck.

Getting vaccinated in the south suburbs is nearly impossible for senior citizens who struggle with computer literacy like my parents even before Gov. J.B. Pritzker opened up vaccine eligibility to anybody over 16 years old with underlying conditions.

For weeks, Mom couldn't get an appointment at CVS or Walgreens. We had no luck getting vaccination reservations at the state's mass vaccination sites at South Suburban College and Tinley Park Convention Center — which still don't have enough doses for the masses who want them.

My sister tried to get Mom a vaccine reservation at the hospital where she works, but shots were in short supply there, too.

Finally, I got Mom scheduled to get inoculated at the FEMA mega-vaccination site.

But when I told Mom she'd have to get the shots in a United Center parking lot, she had a severe reaction to what experts call the "hassle factor," a major reason there remains wide vaccine hesitancy in America, particularly among older folks.

"Forget it! I'm not driving downtown," Mom said. "Where am I supposed to park? I'm not doing that!"

Shortly after I convinced Mom that it wouldn't be so bad with her sonny boy as her chauffeur, she got an email saying her 11 a.m. appointment Wednesday had been changed to 3 p.m. — setting the stage for us getting caught in rush-hour traffic.

The email turned out to be the result of a computer glitch.

Her late-morning appointment was still on.

But, for a moment, the prospect of having to endure a logistical nightmare to get a vaccine — that Mom didn't really want, anyway — nearly inspired her to call off the whole inoculation thing.

On Wednesday morning, I dropped Mom off on Madison Street outside the United Center, where Illinois National Guardsmen kept the line moving like a well-oiled machine.

"I showed them my reservation, and they asked a bunch of questions, if you ever had cancer or chemotherapy. … I told 'em I had all those things," Mom said. She chuckled.

Around 11 o'clock, a military man jammed a needle in Mom's arm. It didn't hurt, she said.

Mom's only complaint was that somebody scolded her twice for sending text messages during the mandatory post-shot waiting period.

I asked her if she saw many Black people under the vaccination tent. "Not many," Mom said.

The whole vaccination process took about 20 minutes.

When it was over, we picked up tasty sandwiches at Conte Di Savoia in Little Italy and ate on a bench in Piazza DiMaggio, a tiny park on Taylor Street.

"It's been a long time since we went out to lunch together," my half-inoculated Mom said.

I smiled, and said a silent prayer for Grandma.

I wouldn't wish this waiting on anyone.

If you can get a shot, take it.


Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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