SAN ANTONIO — Valerie Gomez will remember March 13, 2020, for the rest of her life. It was the day University Hospital received its first patient infected with the coronavirus.
She recalls a blanket of uncertainty coming over the room.
"You could just feel it," she said. "Everybody was just freaking out. Anxious. Scared."
The 32-year-old is an ICU nurse manager and patient care coordinator at University Hospital. She and her team have endured 280 days, and counting, of the novel coronavirus's impact.
"I don't think a single health care provider could have ever prepared themselves to deal with this much darkness, death, fatigue," she said.
The weight of the virus created isolation in her professional and personal life. It challenged her time to participate in normalcy with her son and wife. The couple even had to put off expanding their family.
"I tend to wear a smile where there is just anger and just discouragement in my heart," she said.
Hope has arrived in a bottle for Gomez. She plans to be immunized with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination Saturday night.
The Texas Department of State Health Services will receive 159,900 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to inoculate healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
State officials are also expecting 460,500 doses of the Moderna vaccine, which gained emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration Friday evening.
Bexar County expects to receive more than 35,000 doses next week -- 30,200 doses of the newly approved Moderna vaccine and 4,875 from a second shipment of Pfizer vaccine doses.
"To me, personally, it means that I almost feel safer kind of going out into the world," Gomez said. "To take my kid to the park."
But she said all of her peers don't share the same enthusiasm. For some, the jury is still out on the vaccinations.
The doses come as Bexar County is poised to reach the 100,000 positive cases mark before Christmas.
At 99,142 cases going into Friday, the number of those diagnosed with the coronavirus in the San Antonio area surpasses the combined seating capacity at both the Alamodome (72,000) and AT&T Center (18,581). More COVID-19 cases exist in Bexar County than a sold-out game night for the Dallas Cowboys and San Antonio Spurs combined.
But the vaccination for Gomez represents the light at the end of the tunnel even, as Bexar County passed the 100,000 case mark Friday evening.
The nurse supervisor said she loves her job, saving lives, and her team at the hospital.
"We still have to be safe. We still have to be smart," she said. "We still have to protect our neighbors."