WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Last Thursday, Tamara Byram says she started feeling some COVID-19 symptoms.
She said she was already planning to get the vaccine, but knew she had to do it sooner once she lost her sense of taste and smell, and felt fatigued.
"Thursday evening, when I started to eat my dinner, I was like, 'I can't taste this, there's no seasoning,' it was just nothing," she says.
She got the vaccine the next day, and now, she says most of her symptoms are gone.
"My symptoms, they've kind of subsided, but my taste has not come back, my smell has not come back yet," she says.
Although her symptoms subsided, Byram says she's glad she took action when she did.
But like many Americans and Georgians, she was hesitant at first because of the FDA not fully approving it yet and her current list of daily medications.
That's until she thought about Rylee, her granddaughter.
"I have a 4-year-old granddaughter who is in pre-K now, and with the children going back to school and everybody being in contact and the whole mask thing, I just didn't wanna be in a position where I couldn't be involved in her schooling or be involved with her at all."
Byram says getting the vaccine was emotional for her.
"The thing that got me was once that needle went in my arm, I cried. I cried because what it did was it brought it to reality," she says.
Now she's urging others to roll up their sleeve like she did.
"When you do get it, you don't know how it's going to affect you personally, and I know that was a question in my mind."
Byram is set to get her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in three weeks.