
Inside the flu shot clinic at the Carleton Place Arena
For those of you who followed yesterday on Twitter, the flu shot clinic here in Carleton Place was well run and very successful. The clinic was open from 1 – 7pm and the lines were long, but moving well, which made people pretty happy.
The day dawned cool but not frigid and there was little or no wind. I decided to drive by the arena at 8 am to see if they were handing out arm bands, and at 8:21….no arm bands, but the lines had already started. There were about 25 people in line, including parents with little babies who were obviously planning a wait of 4 1/2 hours, which boggles the mind. I had a huge bag of warm clothes, food, water, Kleenex, a book and hand warmers. I’ve decided that hand warmers (those little things you shake to activate the heat) are MAGIC! They kept my hands so warm and I hardly even thought about the cold.
I got to the arena at about 10:45, right after storytime, and this is what the line up looked like in front of me.
Not too bad. And I should have counted how many library patrons were there. I could have easily gone down the line and picked out every second person as someone who regularly comes to the library. Great! Readers and health conscious! Here was the line behind me about a half hour after that:
Pretty soon after that, it stretched out about three times the length here, but it moved quickly. And people who popped into the library later this afternoon that had been in line said the wait was pretty short. Ten nurses, a very efficient system and resonable lines will hopefully make everyone happy. They were also very particular about making sure everyone was on the priority list.
There were a lot of great stories out there yesterday….from the mother who stood in line and breast-fed her tiny baby in the freezing cold, to dedicated moms, dads and grandmothers who held places in line and called to have the children brought to the arena once they were about to go in. It really was a community event…people shared chairs when someone got tired, others passed around cookies, granola bars and juice boxes for the little ones and everyone shared what little information they knew. This really is the information age….from twitters that updated the event live, to people texting information about line lengths, wait times and forms, it was easy to find out what was going on and what we could expect.
Thanks to my sweet mother-in-law Glenwyn who stopped by to see if I needed anything (like a bathroom break) and a huge thanks to our wonderful librarian Janet who came up with a tea for me, one for my mother and a hot chocolate for my niece! It was greatly appreciated!