I made the second Pfizer vaccine.
While the girl at Sibley Memorial Hospital was preparing the mini syringe I discovered my left shoulder and it occurred to me a distant episode that occurred in January 1995, when I had just been appointed head of IRI for America.
I have to say, I'm a vaccine veteran.
As soon as the polio one came out I made it inoculate, then it was the turn of the Asian (bad experience) and since then every year I have had the flu vaccine syringed. Then the one against pneumonia, measles and vaccines to go to India to my son Marco.
As soon as I landed in D.C., I asked the young doctor, who had been following my co-workers for a long time, where I could submit to this flu vaccine.
Dr. Smith pointed me to a medical building in Massachusetts Ave where he would book me.
So one morning of a cold January I went to that building used only for medical studies and laboratories.
To tell the truth, it is not that at first glance the main entrance of that palace was the height of modernity.
The previous structure of the palace had been maintained but certainly not for aesthetic reasons but rather to save on renovation costs.
Anyway, I turned to the information office to find out what I was supposed to do to administer the famous vaccine.
Judging by the young woman's perplexity in helping the public, the demand for the flu vaccine should not have been very frequent.
Unable to give me an immediate answer she pointed me to a chair in the corner of the room and tried a series of phone calls and confirmation requests.
In the end she beckoned me to approach me again and told me, to go to room number six on the first floor taking the staircase down there at the bottom.
A little surprised for all this artisan organization (especially when compared to the medical laboratories of Rome) I began to climb the large round staircase, evident simulacrum of ancient riches of the previous owners of the stable one.
I tracked down room number six and slipped into it waiting to find myself, you know?, in a drug-hospital context: that is, a sunbed and other medical equipment.
Room number six instead was absolutely bare with a central coffee table, a couple of juxtaposed chairs, and a series of color prints of American landscapes on the walls.
After putting my briefcase and jacket on the table on the espalier of one of the chairs, not knowing how to spend time waiting for a nurse complete with a syringe and vaccine, I began to observe the wall prints.
The wait had been going on for almost 10 minutes and I was beginning to resent the lack of professionalism of that organization to which the young doctor Dr. Smith had assigned me.
As I continued to observe a print out of Yosemite National Park, I heard a noise of footsteps and caught with the tail of my eye the white of a gown that clearly belonged to the girl of the must.
A pretty blonde holding the syringe in her hand and asked me with a certain imperious doing: "Are you ready? Get ready...!"
Our reader who has followed us to this point with extreme patience certainly wondering why the editor of this blog is dwelling on such an elementary experience, must take into account the fact that the episode has its own morals.
First of all it is good to point out that when someone said to me "Blessed are you that you are abroad" it was not that I was very pleased.
When you change country, even continent, the repetitiveness of daily actions sacralized in many years of stay in a capital like Rome (where life is certainly not easy, but where you still have to adapt and look for an Italian remedy to the many problems that happen on you) everything changes and getting in tune with the domestic culture of your new location is certainly not easy.
So when the blonde imposed her "Are you ready? Get ready...!" trained by many years of experience in Italian laboratories and hospitals, I turned again towards the wall and the press I was observing, loosened the belt of the pants that I dropped together with my underwear discovering a portion of the right buttock.
And I waited for the vaccine to be injected.
An inhuman scream (I must admit with sincerity) shocked me.
What are you doing?, the blonde screamed like a viper.
Realizing the unnatural situation in which, in spite of myself, I had come to visit myself and continuing to observe the damn press of the Park Yosemite, I replied to the hysterical blonde: "I wait for you to make me the flu vaccine ..."
I felt epidermally that the situation was degenerating.
"But where do you want me to give you the vaccine?", the obsessive kept yelling.
In dramatic situations like the one I'm making clear to you, believing that sincerity can pacify a person who for his and mine reasons is going out of his mind at the time is the worst mistake that can be made.
"In the ass...", I had to confess
"But you're crazy - coated up and find out your arm" the nurse continued, adding a terrifying question that petrified me: "Where do you come from?"
I had to confess that I was Italian and I was not at all pleased about it.
When I reported the incident to Dr. Safayan, who was quite amused by expressing a cruel superiority that stemmed from the clash of cultures, he said to me: "Maybe you don't realize it but you ran a serious danger because that nurse could have sued her for 'sexual In dramatic situations like the one I'm making clear to you, believing that sincerity can pacify a person who for his and mine reasons is going out of his mind at the time is the worst mistake that can be made.
"In the ass...", I had to confesse.
"But you're crazy - coated up and find out your arm" the nurse continued, adding a terrifying question that petrified me: "Where do you come from?"
I had to confess that I was Italian and I was not at all pleased about it.
When I reported the incident to Dr. Smith, who was quite amused by expressing a cruel superiority that stemmed from the clash of cultures, he said to me: "Maybe you don't realize it but you ran a serious danger because that nurse could have sued her for 'sexual harassment'.
____________________________________________________________
History #2
"Doctor, there's a cop over there who wants to talk to you...", Nancy Hurst, my great super secretary was visibly nervous.
"I just got to D.C. and the grains start,"" I say, "Let this agent through and let's see what happened."
This was about one of our officials, a beautiful and intelligent Hawaiian.
That morning he had taken the elevator to go up to the sixth floor where our group's offices were.
In the United States, when you enter an elevator, you have to layer up looking at the door.
Now with the pandemic every elevator can bring a maximum of four people to be holed up in every corner of the cabin.
In those days, however, especially during peak hours, dozens and dozens of people packed up in the large elevators of our building.
The policeman explains to us that our effervescent young lady had to endure the insistent and admiring gaze of such a man who would then come out on the next floor.
As soon as she reached her office Antonia, let's call her that, she had called the police denouncing that she had been subjected to a sexual harassment in the elevator by a "brute" of whom she provided the connotations saying that the man worked in a company upstairs.
Easy for the police to track down the admirer who was being led away obviously handcuffed as it is used around here.'.
____________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment