‘For their protection’: Vaccine gives hope to family, health worker

GALLUP

The Navajo Nation’s Department of Health can add 1,000 more people to the 42,902 Diné who were vaccinated after Saturday’s vaccination blitz in Gallup.

Tséhootsooí Medical Center added another 1,000 at their vaccination clinic on Sunday to the ever-growing list of vaccinated Diné.

On Saturday, people drove up to the drive-thru clinic and lined up along the road to the University of New Mexico-Gallup Branch’s gym.

At a first vaccination on Jan. 23, hospital officials said 833 people received the first dose.

Drivers, mostly men and women over age 55, were directed by staff to drive in circles around the parking lot before walking into the gym where health care workers from Gallup Indian Medical Center administered the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Families like George and Helene Waybenais and their son Cody, all from Ya-Ta-Hey, New Mexico, received the shot and sat in the waiting area for 15 minutes to see if they developed any side effects.

Cody, 30, got the vaccine with his parents, in their 70s and 60s, because he cares for them.

“I do most of the shopping for my parents,” he said. “I take care of them. I’m the one that does everything for them.

“I put myself at risk so that way they have food and to make sure the dogs are fed,” he said. “If I don’t get vaccinated, I could still potentially bring it back. For their protection, I decided to go ahead and get myself vaccinated.”

Cody said before the pandemic, he went to concerts. Now that he can’t, spending more time with his parents is “the beauty” he chooses.

“The dark side is that they don’t get to see their friends and family,” he said.

Cody’s father, George Waybenais, 73, who was principal at Kin Dah Łichí’í Olta, said the school lost a bus driver to COVID-19.

He added that he lost loved ones too, which is why they stay home and rarely go out into public.

“I lost a younger daughter, a daughter in-law,” Waybenais said, adding his other son contracted the virus and recovered. “He’s a registered nurse for the prison system, caught it, but he got through it.”

George said the school developed a system based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, which included working from home.

“We’ve had to work from home,” George said. “A lot of Zoom meetings. Right now, I’m unemployed. We watched every movie on Netflix.”

Cody’s mother Helene said her family buried a nephew, who lost his life to the virus on Friday.

“We still have a nephew who is in Phoenix,” she said, referring to him being sick with COVID-19 and currently at a hospital. “We’re just hoping he gets out of it. I just want the people to understand what this virus is all about. It’s so dangerous. We don’t see it, we don’t taste it, we don’t even feel it.”

Helene said COVID-19 was predicted.

“The (elders) way back predicted – the Navajo elderly, the Hopi elderly, this was predicted,” Helene said. “Now we’re in it. That’s why the young people have to really take care of their grandparents, their parents, themselves and their kids.”

Though she felt there would be no cure for it, her hope is getting the vaccination could better protect people.

“So that’s why we came up here to see if we could get the vaccination,” she said. “We need to stay home and stop the spread of this virus. That’s the only way.”

Dr. Kevin D. Gaines, who is a family medicine doctor at GIMC, has seen what the virus does to people. He said the vaccines could make an impact.

“I think this is the hope for the future, to slow that down and put a stop to it,” Gaines said. “Our ER in our hospital (is) still very busy. We’re still seeing a lot of disease and a lot of really sick people. Hopefully, the more of this we can do, we’ll see the impact there and slow things down significantly.”

The highest risk age group – 75 and over and 65 and over – were chosen first because the mortality rates are higher in these age groups, said Gaines.

“If we can get them covered, that’s our best hope of impacting the mortality rates,” he said.

In terms of when a sense of normalcy may return, Gaines said it’s impossible to predict where the pandemic will be in the future. But he hopes to see normalcy by this summer.

“I think normal will be different a little bit, but hopefully closer to normal,” he said. “It’s all going to be day by day, adjusting as the situation changes. My hope would be sometimes this summer. That may or may not happen.”

For now, renting movies has become a family pastime for the Waybenais family.

“They have these new movies that come out, they charge 20 bucks to watch it, but it’s just like going to a regular movie house,” George said.

If you were unable to make one of the weekend vaccination events, according to Assistant Chief of Pharmacy Lt. Cmdr. Whitney Chancellor, patients can call the hospital at 505-722-1000 and make an appointment.

“At the hospital, during the week we’re doing appointments,” she said. “We wanted to have this event so we could open up more broadly and bring in more people in one day.”

Currently vaccinations have been for people ages 65 and older, Chancellor said.

“We’re just waiting to open it up to more people once we receive more vaccine and have a more steady flow of vaccine coming in,” she said. “We don’t have that quite yet in the area but we’re hoping to be getting there soon.”

To find out where you can get the COVID-19 vaccine, call your health care provider, or for related questions, call 928-871-7014.

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