KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Laura Peckham got the call that she would be one of the first Truman Medical Center Nurses to receive Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, she started counting down the minutes.
"I feel better than yesterday. I am still excited," Peckham, who received the vaccine on Monday, said.
TMC began vaccinating staff members Monday when the hospital received its first vacvine shipment.
"I feel just fine," Sarah Kiehl, an intensive-care unit nurse and the first person to receive the vaccine said on Tuesday.
Both Kiehl and Peckham said the vaccine is a sigh of relief, as they work with COVID-19 patients.
"It's totally surreal," Kiehl said. "It seems just as this is the day we have been talking about for a long time and to actually have it be here, really wild."
Kiehl said right as she got it, she thought about this.
"I just keep thinking all the people we have lost," she said. "It's been really cool to get to see, 'OK, maybe this is how we get out of this.'"
Since getting the vaccine, both are feeling good.
"I think we all have some injection sight soreness and a lot of us are just noticing just that pain," Kiehl said. "I noticed I am a little bit tired. But it's very difficult to tell if that's working. I am on my third 12 [hour shift] in a row.".
Peckham said her arm hurts "a little bit," like with the flu or tetanus shot.
"Otherwise, feeling great," Peckham said.
While they are experiencing normal side effects of the vaccine, these nurses said at the end of the day the vaccine is the hope we all need.
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel," Peckham said. "I feel like finally we're entering a tunnel on the way out of this."
