In Praise of Edward Jenner

I had my second vaccination today. I shook a bit again. I know this is just nerves and a side-effect of my psychiatric medication, but it is embarrassing, especially as the person giving the vaccine was worried and repeatedly asked if I was OK to go home or if I wanted to sit for a while. Of course, as soon as I was outside, I stopped shaking, because it’s the social anxiety aspect that is so triggering.

I was going to go for a walk afterwards, but it was very cold and windy and I had had to wait outside for quite a while as there is limited queuing space inside the pharmacy where I had the vaccination, and what space they did have was being used so people getting the Pfizer vaccine (I had AstraZeneca) could sit down for fifteen minutes afterwards. I’m hoping I don’t get any side-effects, but who knows?

I didn’t do much today other than get vaccinated and do my usual Shabbat chores. No writing and less than half an hour or so of Torah study. I may do a little more Torah study, although probably not much, as I want to go to bed early so I can get up early tomorrow, or as early as is possible when we can’t start dinner until nearly 9.00pm because of Shabbat coming in so late (it is nearly summer, as hard as that is to believe looking at the storm raging outside my window).

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I had a call from the autism hospital after I emailed them again last night. They said I should have received a revised diagnostic report and leaflet by email. I checked and they had the right address. The guy tried to send it again, but I still haven’t got it. I receive email via Webmail for somewhat complicated reasons, and it sometimes has a sensitive spam filter, so that could be the problem. The guy who phoned said he would get a colleague to send the email from a different address in case that helps and that he’ll send a physical copy in the post today, so hopefully I will get the report and leaflet one way or another in the next week.

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I hope to go to shul (synagogue) tomorrow morning and then on to friends for Shabbat lunch. This is all dependent on not having either autistic burnout or vaccination side-effects. I’m somewhat nervous, and a technical point about the laws of carrying on Shabbat in an area known as an eruv (which permits some forms of otherwise forbidden carrying) is causing me some confusion. I didn’t like to ask my rabbi mentor in Israel halakhic (Jewish law) questions while there was a war going on and my community rabbi is away on holiday. I tried contacting the halakhic question answering service provided by the umbrella body my shul belongs to, but they didn’t get back to me. I think I have a solution, but I’m not 100% happy about it. The whole thing is causing me more stress than it probably should. It gets tied up in a complicated way with the question of just how many prayer services I’m planning on going to tomorrow, which in turn ties into questions about social anxiety and autistic burnout.

With this as with so many other things, I wish my life didn’t have to make everything so complicated, but I guess that’s what living with a disability will do for you. It’s easy to forget that living with a disability is about living with a disability. The boring everyday living tasks don’t go away just because you’re dealing with an ongoing condition, you just have to use more energy and more time to get the same results. It’s not always possible to ask for adjustments, let alone get them.

I do hope I get to shul and the lunch, worries notwithstanding. I’m not hugely social, but it would be nice to socialise with someone other than my immediate family for a change.

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Other worries: I have lots of confused thoughts about Israel and the ceasefire; antisemitism; and being Jewish at the moment, but I don’t really want to share anything political, and I don’t have time or energy to sit down and think about the more nebulous spiritual-type thoughts today.

I’m also worried about a long-distance friend who emailed me for the first time in months yesterday to say she’s having marital problems. I feel bad for her, but I don’t know what to say. I feel I once gave someone in a similar situation really bad advice (although I think it all turned out for the best in the end, fortunately). I want to be empathetic without giving advice as such, which is not always easy.

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