‘The first dose lifted me and gave me great courage. Now that I’ve had the second jab, I feel totally fine’ 

Josie coped well with the successive lockdowns, but she missed playing bingo, and she rarely, if ever, left the house. “I was just knitting all the time for the special-care baby unit in Castlebar and Dublin. I did a lot of baking too. I missed the bingo more than anything else, but the online mass was great.”

Breaking into laughter, Josie says: “I have got very religious, over-religious. I watch maybe two masses a day, and if there is a funeral, I will watch that too.

“I come to Frank’s grave maybe twice a week. At the graveyard, I’d meet different people, and we used to joke that was our social outing.

“I’m on my way up there now to say thank you to Frank for minding me. I feel totally fine after the vaccine. I didn’t even know Diarmuid had put the needle in.”

General practitioners reached a milestone yesterday, having administered 584,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines.

Rural GPs such as Dr Murray, who is this writer’s brother, and his team in Knock have steadily adapted to the new world of pandemic medicine.

It has been a journey marred by tragedy and extreme stress, but vaccination clinics have proven to be joyous and optimistic occasions.

Kathleen Tarpey and her husband Jerome, from Kiltimagh, are grateful for the security and freedoms vaccination will bring.

Kathleen is undergoing chemotherapy and the fact she now feels protected has given her enormous courage.

“This is my second dose, and it is a great day for both of us. I feel a lot more secure,” she said. “For my first few treatments, I was absolutely terrified. I was going in with scarves around me.

“The first dose lifted me and gave me great courage. And I feel a lot more secure after today.”

Practice nurse Maura Gannon has worked at Knock Medical Centre for 26 years. She admits that never in her “wildest dreams did I think we would be hitting a pandemic”.

“While we have had a lot of anxieties and worries and people have been stressed, today is a very happy day to be working,” she said.

“From today, all our over-70s will be vaccinated, and a lot of our age group 75-80 will have received their full dose.

“It’s a life-changing experience for them.”

Orla Loftus Moran is one of only four registered advanced nurse practitioners working in general practice in Ireland.

She says she never sleeps the night before a vaccine clinic.

“A huge amount of work goes into running the clinics,” she said. “You just have to be meticulous. We felt a
very big responsibility to our patients to ensure we covered everybody that needed to be covered.

“It’s a great privilege to do this, but it is a great responsibility. But it all comes together on the day.”

Dr Madeline Ní Dhálaigh, together with her colleagues at the Kelly Henry Medical Centre in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, administered close to 500 vaccines to their patients on Saturday.

Dr Ní Dhálaigh is a member of the GP Committee for the IMO and believes the pandemic has proved “how efficient general practice is, particularly when it comes to mass vaccination”.

“It can’t be underestimated how tiring and time-consuming it is,” she said. “But we recognise there is no other way out.

“It has been difficult. We keep reminding ourselves that pandemic medicine is difficult. There is nothing nice and clean-edged about it.

“But GPs know we have to put our shoulder to the wheel to get out of this.

“We are now starting on the high-risk cohort 59 years and under, and we will be trying our very best to get to as many people as quickly as possible.

“Pandemic medicine by its nature is imperfect, and it behoves the profession to respond to all the changes the virus presents to us.”

Dr Winifred Kelly Henry has been a GP in Castlerea for 49 years. She takes great joy in seeing the delight in her patients who received the vaccine.

“It’s wonderful to see their smile and the relief on their faces. People have suffered so much with the restrictions.”

Sharing a joke with her patient Mary Mulligan, the two recall their many years of knowing each other.

Mary sees the occasion of getting her first vaccine as a gift.

“I live on my own, I’m widowed, and I’ve been in jail for the last year,” she said.

“I don’t go anywhere.

“My son does all my shopping for me. I am indoors most of the time. It is hard, but we have to do what we have to do.

“I am delighted. It’s a great day.”

Visit our Covid-19 vaccine dashboard for updates on the roll out of the vaccination program and the rate of Coronavirus cases Ireland

Irish Independent