On Friday, the boys might have gotten the COVID vaccine. Or maybe not.

A few weeks ago, my sister texted me about a Moderna vaccine trial for adolescents, and one of the clinic sites was here! (And she works for Johnson & Johnson, tsk tsk.) So I filled out a form and blah blah boring paperwork stuff, and the upshot is, I let the boys skip school on Friday so they could spend all day in a clinic in Metairie maybe getting the vaccine.

I sound all blase about it, but it was actually really cool. The thought that they were 3 of 3000 adolescents in the country participating in this trial so that the vaccine can be approved for all teenagers is pretty dang exciting!

(The fact that they are identical triplets was not a factor in them getting into the trial. But it did get us as many ooohs and aaahs as it did when they were babies, which now I realize I kind of miss.)

So we were there for about 5 hours. After filling out paperwork, we were put in an exam room where the boys had a brief exam (heart and lungs) and a COVID test. They were taught to use a diary app where they’ll track any symptoms or side effects, and then blood was drawn. Linus went first and it took two nurses and a cool light and a bottle of water and four sticks for them to finally get four teaspoons of blood from him. The other two were a lot easier, but I was so proud of how well Linus handled it all. (I probably wouldn’t have.)

After the blood draw, they got a shot! Who knows what it was…the vaccine? Saline? In the whole trial, 2/3 of the participants get the vaccine so odds would say 2 of them got it, but who knows.

The trial will last 13 months, and we’ll have to go back to the clinic a ffew more times. I’m pretty pleased that yesterday they did the “homework” without any prompting from me.

In a few months (they couldn’t give an exact timeframe) the (forgive me for using incorrect terminology) study will be unmasked and the kids will be given a second set of shots. We won’t ever(?) know if they got the vaccine in the first set and saline in the second set or vice versa, but at least we can be assured by the end of it they will be fully vaccinated. So despite the fact that they’re getting compensated quite handsomely (I told them they had to buy me lots of presents) the real reward is that they will be vaccinated sooner rather than later.

(And who knows when I will be…George has already had his first shot so I’ll probably be the last in the family to get it.)

So, here we are, two days later. Do I have any theories about who may have gotten the vaccine? I do. I think it will be more obvious after the second shot, when side effects are supposedly more pronounced, but I suspect Linus and Oliver got it and Miles didn’t. That’s based on the fatigue they felt yesterday and the irritation at Linus’s injection site.

Maybe we’ll know in a month, maybe not. Either way, YAY SCIENCE!