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Published: 2022-01-18 06:30:00
Updated: 2022-01-18 11:28:03
Posted January 18, 2022 6:30 a.m. EST
Updated January 18, 2022 11:28 a.m. EST
By Kathy Hanrahan, WRAL lifestyle editor
It was a busy weekday afternoon when the people from Duke Human Vaccine Institute called me. They wanted to know if my daughter, Hayden, was interested in doing the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial.
I sat there for a second, shocked. I forgot that a year ago I had submitted both of my children’s names into Duke’s system for vaccine trials. My son is older and is fully vaccinated now. My daughter is only 2 years old and still pretty resistant to wearing masks, so we don’t go a lot of places. We are extra careful because pedriatric hospitalizations for COVID have been going up.
Without hesitation, I told Duke that we were still interested and wanted to know more. They broke down the process:
The first appointment would include a basic exam (height and weight, vital signs taken, etc.), a COVID-19 nasal swab and then a blood draw. We’d come back that afternoon to receive her first vaccine dose – which could be the vaccine or the placebo. We wouldn’t know. We would document her symptoms for a week via a special app.
We’d have a second appointment three weeks later, and we’d do exactly the same thing.
Since a third dose is being added to the protocol, we’d go back two months later for that dose.
It was a lot to process, especially when they told me her first appointment would be in five days! Despite the short timeframe, my husband and I agreed that we wanted Hayden in the study. Even though we knew it would be tough, we knew it was important for her to get vaccinated as soon as possible. And by particiapting in the study, we might be able to help get the vaccine to young children sooner.
Even if she gets a placebo, she would have accesss to the vaccine once she is unblinded from the study. That means she’d still have access to it earlier than if we waited for full approval from the FDA.
I’m not going to lie. I was nervous about the decision. As a parent, it is hard to make decisions for your child and not second guess yourself.
What if I put her through these three appointments and blood draws, only to have her get the placebo and not the vaccine?
What if I scar her for life because she is so traumatized by the entire process?
What if she has side effects?
I addressed each concern with my husband, and we did our research. We knew we wanted her vaccinated. We knew the study already had been through previous phases and no serious side effects for her age group had been found. We knew she was resilient and strong.
What helped me feel confident in my decision was something a friend told me. She said, “Well what would you feel like if she got COVID and you hadn’t done the trial?”
That would feel a lot worse – knowing I had a chance to protect her and didn’t take it because I was afraid. As a parent, you sometimes made difficult choices.
Now, I know I’m going to get lots of negativity from some people about our decision to do the trial. There are people who are going to say some pretty terrible things about me and my family because they don’t agree with vaccinations or our choice to enroll in this study. I ask those people to respect our decision as we are expected to respect theirs.
I hesitated about doing this series of blogs – yes, there will be more! – about our journey in the program, but we know we are doing the right thing. And we wanted to share the experience so others considering doing a clinical trial or even getting their children vaccinated, will know more about the process.
So stay tuned for a write-up about our first appointment and any symptoms we noticed from the first shot.
Check back tomorrow for a post about our first appointment!
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