WESTERVILLE, Ohio — As companies worldwide worked to create a COVID-19 vaccine, the race was on to find adults who could be a part of  initial trials.

What You Need To Know

  • Learning about MRNA helped Dr. Newcomb make her decision about participating in the trial

  • Dr. Suzanne Newcomb wasn't supposed to learn until March 2021 if she received the placebo or actual vaccine

  • She's been teaching for 36 years and wanted to find a way to help others 

Dr. Suzanne Newcomb is a senior lecturer at Otterbein University in Westerville. Teaching music in person has a whole new meaning now that she’s been vaccinated.

“I wanted to do whatever I could to help the situation. I feel like last summer we were all so helpless feeling," said Newcomb. "Hearing about the need to produce a vaccine fast, I thought they're going to need people and maybe there's a little selfishness of well what if I get the right thing. That would be wonderful."

So, she took a chance.

She got checked out last August to see if she’d be a good fit for the Pfizer vaccine study and then become a test subject. She got her first shot with no sign of trouble afterwards. Then, she got the second one.

“And I was like, yeah, the second one I was all achy teaching at night. I got the shot at (2 p.m.) and I was teaching, you know, doing the online teaching and I was like, wow, I can feel every bone in my body that aches (and a ) fever,” she said.

Wanting to go back to teaching in person, Newcomb was anxious to find out if she’d gotten the real thing, so she made a call. The next day, she learned she'd received the vaccine. She said she was relieved.

“I thought, definitely, the students would feel more confident knowing that I had been vaccinated,” she said.

Now she just hopes others, including her students, will get vaccinated too.

Related Stories