I’m definitely one for stretching out celebrations as long as possible, hence the Christmas lights are still up inside and outside of the house as well as the Valentine’s cards and my birthday cards from last week, and with M’s 15th birthday fast looming this is definitely a busy time of year for celebrating, but I’m thrilled to be able to add another celebration into the mix this week – and that’s that I’m finally having my first COVID vaccine tomorrow.

I’ve been incredibly lucky in that our local GP practice has kept their website and social media accounts updated with their plans for the vaccination rollout and so I’ve known for a couple of weeks that they had chosen to leapfrog Group 5 as those individuals could book appointments online at one of the mass vaccination centres and instead were going to focus on working their way through the 3,000+ of us in Group 6. I was rather hoping for an extra-special birthday present and whilst I didn’t receive the vaccine itself, I did get a text inviting me to book my appointment for this week.

After 50 weeks of spending very little time with anyone outside of our immediate household and not venturing much further that the 8 miles or so to my office on the odd occasion, it is extremely encouraging and exciting to finally be going forward with a positive step towards being able to widen up my circle. Of course, we will continue to follow the guidance given about wearing masks and social distancing, but it does feel we’re going in the right direction at long last. G and M return to school next week which naturally comes with its own concerns, but I’ve been clear that I expect them to continue with the precautions we put in place back in September and both have also said they will masks as needed whilst there.

I don’t know how my body will react to the vaccine, especially knowing that my T1D is likely to bring some additional tricks to the party given just about anything can impact it and not always in the ways you’d expect it to. Keep an eye on my Facebook and Twitter feeds over the next few days as I will be attempting to give regular updates following my jab, assuming that there’s much of anything to say other than that it’s done!