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 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) — As the new Moderna vaccine is being distributed, health care professionals are trying to ease fears about what the side effects of getting the shots are like.

That was the reason a Roseville Sutter Health ICU doctor chronicled her experience of taking the vaccine in a vlog.  

Dr. Vanessa Walker got her COVID-19 vaccine on Friday. She and others who treat COVID-19 ICU patients were eager to get protected from a virus that has been killing their patients.

On their minds was the safety of their families, and 12 hours later Walker’s kids helped her remove the bandage.

“Whoa, can’t even tell anything was there, doesn’t hurt,” Walker said. “A little bit sore but otherwise pretty good.”

By bedtime a few hours later, she reported that she was “starting to feel a little tired and fatigued, and starting to get a little, like, muscle aches and in other muscles and some of my joints.”

But the aches were mild at the 24-hour mark.

“Hey, guess what? I feel totally normal. I don’t have any fever, muscle aches, fatigue,” she told her audience.

And at the 48-hour mark, there was just a little soreness in her arm like after getting a flu shot, a time to urge her viewers to get the vaccine when available.

“It can save your life and the ones that you love,” Walker said.

Today, at the 72-hour mark, even the arm soreness was gone. She said that getting the vaccine and a booster will be a relief for ICU workers who worry about bringing the virus home to their families.

“It will be a big sigh of relief after we’ve got our second shot,” she said.

Still, she added, hospital workers and their patients are still feeling the devastating effects of the virus.

“They are coming into the emergency department in droves; it takes a long time to wean them off of the oxygen, or unfortunately, they are dying,” she told FOX40.

Walker said the vaccines are a light at the end of a still long tunnel — if people will get the vaccine when they are able to.

She added that the Sutter ICUs are seeing more patients in the so-called lower COVID-19 risk groups, patients in their 30s and 40s.