I want to hold your hand

Once upon a time there was a young girl called Sarah. At school one day they lined all of the students up outside the staff room at school - usually a room it is strictly forbidden to enter. Then Sarah learned it was because everyone was getting their MMR vaccinations. Sarah freaked out! No one told her this was happening! Her mum had to take her to the doctor's surgery instead and held her hand while she was injected. And the same for her tetanus vaccination a few years later. Then Sarah moved to the UK far far away from her mum. When she was invited to Sri Lanka to be a bridesmaid for a very good friend she was very very brave and went to get her travel vaccinations on her own. But she did consider just not going, that's how scary the thought of the vaccinations were to her.

A few years after that, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had four choices of medication - two she would have to self inject (ARGH!), one that involved two intravenous infusions a year apart and monthly blood tests for FIVE YEARS after that, and one that was two pills a day and blood tests every three months. She chose the pills of course! Soon, she got used to the blood tests, and the flu vaccinations the NHS wanted her to have free of charge every year. One day, she realised she wasn't afraid any more.

Then a deadly pandemic swept across the world. Sarah didn't want to get sick so she got vaccinated as soon as she could (she still told the vaccinator she was a little bit scared). And then she volunteered at a vaccination centre. She just wanted to help other people not get sick.

She volunteered at the vaccination centre for months and months as the people coming along changed from older people and vulnerable people like her, to younger and younger people. One day, a teenage girl came in on her own. She was frightened. The vaccinator said "can you hold her hand?" The girl squeezed Sarah's hand tight as she received her vaccination and looked very relieved when it was over! Sarah thought about the girl she had once been and was very glad to have helped.