Vaccination Italian Style: "I'm the doctor who saved your husband's life!"

When Norma came out she said, "Guess who gave me the vaccine?"
"Who?" I said. "The mayor?"
"No," she said.
"A guy in a gorilla suit?"
"No," she said.
"Then who? Who gave you the vaccine?"
"The man who gave me my vaccine was the doctor who saved your life!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Darn," I said. "I wish you had gotten his name."
We drove a ways and I said, "Look. It's not too late to go back and get his name. I want to thank him for saving my life."
I wanted to thank the surgeons, too. I understand that in my anesthetic-induced psychotic delirium I gave the surgeons kind of a hard time. For which I am sorry.
"You think?"
"Yes. We must go back. Must get his name. I want to thank him. I am parking."

Transcript

There is a website in Tuscany for making vaccination appointments. So, wanting to be vaccinated, Norma and I sat at the dining room table and put in our information and made our pleas. Back in March. My plea was based on the notion that I am "fragile"--pronounced "frah'-jee-lay" in Italian -- and Norma's that since I got out of the hospital she has been my "caregiver." Which she has. Except she doesn't wear a uniform. Speaking of which, one day we'll talk about Norma's clothes-buying habits here in Italy. But right now we're talking about Monday. Monday she received a phone call. Italians make phone calls. Yes they do. With alarming frequency. This phone call said, "Norma Marianna Ida? Tennis?"

To which she replied, "Sì."

"Would you like a vaccine?" the caller asked.

To which also she delivered an enthusiastic "Sì" and was told, OK then, at 3:20 tomorrow, be at some place in Camucia. The place had a name and a description but it all happened so quickly she wasn't exactly sure of the name or the location of the place. She was, however, sure of the time. 3:20pm. Or 15.20 as we say here.

May I slow down here to make a general observation? Everything in Tuscany is hidden. Nothing has a sign saying what it is. Try and find a building. Good luck.

As to vaccines: First, Italy had no vaccines. Where are the vaccines? There was much passionate, high-volume speech and many headlines about vaccines but no evidence of actual vaccines.

Then Italy got some.Then came a website! The

Sistema di prenotazione online di Regione Toscana per l'effettuazione del vaccino anti COVID-19

was a damn good-looking website!

So we put in our codici fiscali etc. and waited for the promised SMS message. When it did not arrive, we looked at the web site again. The web site says that you can look up your application there to see how things are going with it. We found there was no evidence of our visit. Nor could we put in our information again. It wouldn't let us. The website was acting like a customs official or somebody at the questura. No go.

So we waited. We sort of got upset. We would check every few days and have the same result. It had never seen my codice fiscale and apparently didn't want to see it. That made me kind of sad but I kept at it.

Then on Monday came the phone call to Norma. She spent much of Monday telling people she was going to get vaccinated, and much of the rest of the time we conversed in depth about the meaning of the phone call as if it had been a papal edict or a Supreme Court decision.

Come Tuesday, Vaccination Day, about noon, as we're getting ready to go look for the location--we have learned to leave about an hour for driving around because they don't tell you where things are because "everybody knows" where they are. Because everybody grew up here and knows everybody else and how could you grow up here and know everybody else and not know where everything is? (Because we're, uh, Americani? Stranieri? You dig?) Everybody is Italian. Everybody is local. So it's noon and we're getting ready for our 3:20 appointment when Norma looks just one more time at the vaccination website. And there's her appointment: For 9:30 that morning! At which point she kinda freaked. As it was already noon!

This required more thinking on the order of rabbinical study, deciphering the meaning of a contradiction in an ancient text. I concluded that whatever the website said must be wrong. I based this on the observation that web sites are fine but when the action starts in Italy, the action is all personal, on the ground, face-to-face, and anything can happen, and nobody tells anybody anything, and everything can change suddenly and you just gotta deal with it and if you don't totally get that then you must not have been born and raised here.

To which I say a big "Duh."

So anyway being only recently released from our hundred-year-long lockdown, we had a pleasant drive down to Camucia (that little dump of a town in the shadow of Cortona. Sorry Camucia, but really) to scope out the location. It was "near the swimming pool." That was lucky because way back when things were open I used to swim there.

So we drove around and indeed there it was, at the middle school, with a sign even that said vaccino. That settled, we went to lunch with our good American friends who years ago came to Tuscany to build a big house, which years later they are still building. It's coming along pretty well, she says, while he groans. We're picking out lamps and choosing paint, looking at fan decks of color chips. But the huge stone building they must build at the foot of the driveway to house the --by comparison--tiny little electric meter is giving the husband fits.

Anyway, we ate sushi outside at Ryoshi and had a pleasant afternoon and then I drove Norma to the vaccino location and dropped her off and found a shady spot near the pool to take a nap. I was soon awakened by a ringing cell phone which happened to be mine. The voice of my wife said, "It's all screwed up here. There's been some mistake. I have to go to a different location." So I drove over there and picked her up and we drove around looking for the new location which, true to form, had not been described with any specificity because everybody knows what it is and where it is. So we drove around, and drove around, as we have learned to do in such situations, not panicking just looking, using our eyes and our intuition. "Look," Norma said excitedly. "There's a crowd!" That's one way you find things. You look for the crowd. It seems to us that Italians are very gregarious and love to be together shouting at each other. So a crowd is a good sign. As it turned out, the "other location" was just a short walk up the same street from the first location. She could have just walked up there had anyone said it's just up the street here. Anyway we went there and I parked the car and again took up the zen-like practice of waiting for my wife, while listening to cool jazz on jazzradio.com.

And here's the punch line. When Norma came out she said, "Guess who gave me the vaccine?"

"Who?" I said. "The mayor?"

"No," she said.

"A guy in a gorilla suit?"

"No," she said.

"Then who? Who gave you the vaccine?"

"The man who gave me my vaccine was the doctor who saved your life!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"No! Really?"

"Yes REALLY."

"Did you get his name?"

"Oh. Darn. It happened so fast ... I was so eager to get out of there ..."

"Darn," I said. "I wish you had gotten his name."

We drove a ways and I said, "Look. It's not too late to go back and get his name. I want to thank him for saving my life."

I wanted to thank the surgeons, too. I understand that in my anesthetic-induced psychotic delirium I gave the surgeons kind of a hard time. For which I am sorry.

"You think?"

"Yes. We must go back. Must get his name. I want to thank him. I am parking."

So she went back inside to ask who was that doctor who just gave her the shot in the arm (no one in our household is allowed to use the term "jab." I'm not sure why but I observe the moratorium.)

So what exactly did this doctor do in November 2020 when I was quarantining for Covid-19 and vomiting uncontrollably a strange-looking substance which some of the people who observed said it was just Covid-19 but then two doctors came and said, "This is not Covid. This guy needs to go to the hospital immediately." And rushed me off in a Misericordia ambulance. That was this doctor, who had now delivered Norma her vaccine. Talk about being busy saving lives!

His name is Dot. Filippo Pesciaioli and I'm going to send him an SMS thanking him. I hope that unlike me he reads all his SMS messages. (I would like to point out at this time that it is not uncommon for the Italian language to jam in four adjacent vowels. Literally it looks like the name denotes something having to do with fish, garlic and oil, but don't ask me about salsa aioli or anything else because I don't know the first thing about it.)

But there's more. (We're just getting to the part where I delve into my inner being, so be careful.)

After Norma got the vaccine, for a reward we went for ice cream. We have the best ice cream in the world. It's called Mondo Gelato. Where, incidentally, if you are vegan, or lactose intolerant, you can choose the chocolate or  any other flavor with a red spatula in it and it will be wonderfully lactose-free.

And now this next part concerns me, my character, my recent past, and this thing I call the Split-Second Forever, the way that certain sudden decisions or coincidences affect lives for generations to come.

Anyway, we're driving back after delicious ice cream at Mondo Gelato when we pass the Casa Della Salute, which is the medical clinic where I have been intending to get the Covid-19 test which will allow me to board a Delta "Covid-Tested" flight from Rome to Atlanta and ultimately to Gainesville Florida on Tuesday May 11 so I can surprise my friend Tracy Wald at a gathering of longtime friends scheduled for that week, a gathering, a trip, for which I have bought tickets already, on which I have spent much agonized computer time finding the right flight, for only a few of Delta's flights to Atlanta are of the Covid-Tested variety.

Now, about my character--its less-than-perfect aspects. When I get an idea to do something I can act with savage single-mindedness and focus, excluding all views save my own, to avoid hearing any objections for fear they might get in the way of

What I Really Really Want to Do

which arguments con, in this case, were numerous and obvious, as a non-vaccinated recent survivor of a medical calamity the likes of which you don't want to know about.

Suffice it to say that, lucky to be alive as I am, I was yet again risking my life in order to have a good time with my friends. Because I'm that way about my friends!

And get this: Upon emerging alive and relatively in one piece from my recent medical calamity, I had made a pact with myself, a resolution. I, I said to myself, am henceforth going to change my ways in the taking-crazy-risks department. I am going to be a cautious retired guy, alert to every cough, every twinge, every strange-looking thing on my skin. I am going to be a guy who runs to the doctor on the strength of a bad dream. Gone are the days of adolescent belief in my own invincibility and immortality. I have been scarred, cut open, diagnosed, misdiagnosed, treated, treated and released, readmitted, radiated, psychoanalyzed, subjected to therapy, manhandled, injected, swabbed, probed, little cameras looked at my insides, tubes run all up inside me, gloved hands positioning me, bright lights shining into me, anesthetics rendering me  in a daze for days, resident of the ICU for more hours than I can count, rough-rescued from high seas, truly in the hands of God, plucked from the waves, you name it. This pact of I'm going to be cautious now! was to be binding and retroactive if possible, to undo all the crazy things I have done in my past. So that meant that when, passing the Casa della Salute, I said, Hey, let's just stop in here for a minute to nail down my Covid-19 test so I can board the Delta "Covid-Tested" Flight to America next week and hang with my friends and play music and see my younger brother whom I haven't seen except on Zoom for a long time, not to mention Alex and Jim and Tracy and Jeff and Larry and Steve and Suzanne and Stuart and Chris and Mark ... all of whom I was going to surprise pop out of a cake and blow their minds ...

So we dropped in to see about the test and immediately got whisked away by a very on-the-ball lady whose name we never got but God help us if she was not a doctor because she took us in hand and before I knew it I too had a vaccination appointment, and was kinda scolded for not getting it together sooner as I am "frah-jee-lay."

But then we're not even yet at the part I came in for, which was to arrange the Covid test so I can get on that flight. And she said when is the flight. And I said Tuesday. And she said, there's no way you can get the test because it's not same-day results and we don't work on the weekend.

Besides, she said, pretty much: What the hell are you doing flying to America?! È troppo, troppo rischioso!

So this recalled to me my recent pledge not to be a headstrong foolhardy adventurer anymore but to be a calm and relaxed old retired guy tending the garden and writing an occasional line of verse. This bit goes deep. I've hurt people with my headstrong listen-to-nobody single-minded pursuits. So I had to hang my head and say You're right, Doc, OK, I'll cancel/postpone the flight. Not an easy thing but I did it. Sorry my Melrose friends. See you next time. It's not that you're not worth dying for but, well, we're each responsible for doing what we can to stay alive till next time. So have a good time, eat well, take a dip in the Ichetucknee for me, enjoy Mark's gig at the Depot, don't make Larry play bass, make Jonathan let somebody up on stage and I'll see you all on Zoom.

And now I'm going to send that life-saving doctor an SMS and thank him for saving my life.

I'll let you know what he says.