First Dose of AstraZeneca on 02/25/21 Lot #PV46664
Berkshire, United Kingdom
48 years old
Q: What was your life like before you got the vaccine?
Very happy. My Husband and I enjoyed our free time going out places & holidaying in Cyprus each year. I have always been a sun worshiper, basking in the sun is the time I have felt most joy & contentment.
I was settled in my hospital admin job.
My grown-up Daughter had just given birth & I looked forward to happy times with them.
I was very healthy, hardy person, blessed with excellent health. Most people who knew me said I was the healthiest person they knew. I was very active, walking about 3 miles daily, to & from work in all weathers, exercise with a weighted hula hoop outside in all seasons & did yoga. I’ve eaten a mainly plant based diet for 5 years. I have never taken my health for granted & did everything i could to stay well.
I felt comfortable in my body, mind & spirit & my natural lifestyle bought me contentment & joy.
I have also done knitting & dressmaking since i was a child & l have always loved boho & casual fashions & had keen interest in fabrics. Photography, music & dance were my other hobbies.
Q: Would you like to share your reasons for getting vaccinated?
I was not initially going to get the vaccine. I had not had any vaccine for over 5 years, as I stopped having the flu shot when I started the natural, active lifestyle. My immune system was so strong, I never got sick & didn't need it. I didn't believe I needed the covid shot either, for the same reasons. I didn't like what I was hearing about these vaccines & knew they were still on trial.
However, for a reason I can't quite define, I stopped listening to my intuition, started listening to other people & decided to get it. I cancelled a few times first & cried the night before. This is the 2nd time in my life I have made a wrong choice by not listening to my gut instinct.
Q: What was your reaction, symptoms, & timeline?
6 hours after the shot, my feet turned stone cold. They lost feeling slightly. My head ached & I went to bed. I hit a high fever that night of 38 for the first time in my life. I was unable to sleep & called 111 who told me it was 'normal'. Next day I ached all over & had a strange chemical taste in the morning.
Towards that evening, I thought I could feel pins & needles in my feet. I thought i was imagining it, since it was so slight. I went to bed. Again, no sleep.
Day 2 - I awoke with full body fast pulsing painful pins & needles sensation all over. I was terrified. My skin was super - sensitive to touch, in a way it had never been before. I had a freezing cold feeling in my airways. When I went to bed that night, I was awoken after 1 hour suddenly by intense formication, feeling like solid prickly particles were closing in on my airways, threatening to choke me. I called 999 as I grabbed my Husband, begging him not to let me die. 999 operator said I just had anxiety ..
Over the next weeks i developed:
• shooting nerve pains in the left eye, making me fear I would go blind
• Loss of appetite & general unwellness
• Feeling freezing cold & feet randomly going cold
• Tingling tongue
• Anxiety & depression.
I feared sleeping, fears of blindness & the neck prickles haunted me. I slept sitting up for many weeks & only for an hour at a time, at most. Exhaustion set in, bringing its own symptoms, flashing lights behind my closed eyes & tinnitus. I would often scream out in sleep – traumatized. My eyeballs hurt when I laid down. The exhaustion cycle deepened. It was like a nightmare you never wake up from. I had never felt so consumed by illness in my life.
I would sometimes walk the streets at night, as the pain of laying down hurt too much. The bed-sheets & clothes felt like they were laced with glass & razors against my super-sensitive body. The deserted streets were dark & cold in March & April, i would often see foxes. Once I collapsed in our local park in the very early hours & was found by two kind people who called an ambulance.
By the 2nd & 3rd months i was almost driven to insanity by all-over burning nerve pain. It felt like my body was destroying itself, as if a huge war was going on inside. Especially my left arm burned relentlessly. I worried constantly about what was going on in there & no Dr could explain. They just kept saying i was anxious!
Dr's mentioned fibromyalgia & took no notice of the fact I had never had it before. It made me feel all the more despairing & one Dr talked to me almost as though I was on end of life care. This was very unnerving!
I visited A & E four times during the early months & left there feeling further crushed when they said nothing could be done , they didn’t know what was wrong & they had never seen such a reaction to the covid vaccines before. Their lack of knowledge, dismissal & denial of injury from these vaccines made me even more fearful, as if a person had long covid, they were looked after & helped by medics.
It seemed like my old healthy self was lost forever.
Bank holidays & occasions like Birthdays came & went with no enjoyment.
My Husband would rub E45 into my hurting skin, to try to ease the constant pain, which had different levels of burning & pins & needles. He constantly reassured me that it would get better. I tried to be hopeful & put a lot of energy into my plant based diet/supplement routine but I had partly lost touch with life & people around me. I was ambivalent on whether it was worth living with hope of recovery or dying. I frequently wished to just switch my body off.
Obviously, I was unable to work. I mentally resigned myself to a life of severe chronic pain, from which I recoiled in despair.
I had been prescribed amitryptaline 10mg, which had very little benefit. If i tried to take more the burning was worse. I tried acupuncture which bought no relief.
I tried to take my own life by starving & once I threatened suicide & was sectioned under the mental health act. An angel of a nurse instilled hope in me, telling me I would recover. I will never forget her, as she one of very few professional people who gave me the gift of hope. I was only there for a day & they let me go. The psychiatrists were kind, they said I would heal in time. I had reached a new level of anxiety that most people will never see. I knew no peace.
The out of hours crisis team did try to help me a little but they said my problem was more physical than mental. On the contrary, GP’s said the problem was mainly mental, so I was continually shunted back & forth between departments with no real help.
At 3.5 months, I started mirtazapine which helped a little with pain. I returned to work, just 9 hours a week, over 3 alternate days. My body hurt so much i cried after each shift for the first month. My seat had a special cover on it, as the chair felt like sandpaper against my skin. All fabric textures still felt distortedly sharp & painful, I recoiled from clothes I used to love & cried when I looked at them in the wardrobe.
I began to see a homeopath. He started me on bio resonance & a herbal mix. After the first treatment, it felt like the constant war within my body had been bought to a stop. I could feel this treatment was working in harmony with my body & spirit & over the next few months I managed to get back to working my normal hours with more happiness, I lost the suicidal tendencies & went on holidays to the Isle of Wight & days out. My health improved & some symptoms completely resolved. (eye pain & tinnitus went away).
A little more pleasure came back into life but the summer months bought me a heartbreaking knowledge that i had become sun intolerant. My skin would burn, blister & redden in the sun - i was unable to tan. It was a huge loss.
During months 9 & 10 bone pains began to set into my fingers, toes & gums in cold weather & red patches of skin would spontaneously appear, sometimes covering my whole body. GI symptoms also began, bleeding at the back & my appetite getting less. But in the positive, I now enjoyed watching telly again & was insanely grateful for any pain-free time.
Q: What is your life like now, after getting the vaccine?
I can no longer enjoy being outside in all weathers as I used to. My skin is still super sensitive to any light, pressure & touch - it is a nerve pain condition called allodynia. It is better than it was & steadily improves but has still taken all the joy out of fashion & my enjoyment of clothes has gone.
Also, the bedclothes often hurt at night & my sleep suffers. It still remains to be seen if my reaction to sun improves this coming summer. Last summer, sunlight through a window hurt my left arm. This arm remains hyper-sensitive.
I am still hopeful for more recovery. Each meal I eat is a nutritious one & I have begun going to the gym again which improves my blood circulation & helps symptoms a lot. I still exercise with the hula hoop in the garden but have to be careful of temperature now.
I am worried about the increase of GI symptoms but I will not have any tests or treatments at Dr's. My trust in them is completely destroyed.
Q: Share your experience with any medical care and any diagnoses you have received:
Medical care from GP's has been sadly lacking. I could not get a face to face GP appointment at all when symptoms were most acute. Drs gave me phone consultations in a hopeless tone, one even put the phone down on me! Fibromyalgia, anxiety & menopause were mentioned.
I told the Dr who diagnosed menopause that my periods are regular & strong but she wouldn't have it! I also said i'd never had fibromyalgia. But of course they said the vaccine could not possibly cause this! Even though symptoms happened immediately after it, they just said they were 'sudden onset with no reason - idiopathic'
They only offered amitryptaline for the pain, which offered limited benefit. Much later on by month 5 they offered pregabalin but after surviving the early months without, I was reluctant to start it, so never did.
The only face to face Dr's i saw were at A& E, they did not help & also admitted no problem with vaccine but while waiting my turn, i spoke to many other patients who had severe side effects, including bells palsy & tremors.
At least, i saw the same Dr at A&E both times, 3 months apart & he noted my improvement. This gave me a great reassurance.
My neurologist said i had sensory nerve over-firing & central sensitization. He is very hopeful of a full recovery but said it will take a very long time. He is pleased with my improvement so far & found nothing wrong on my MRI. His optimism has been a great reassurance.
Q: Was your reaction reported, and what was the response?
I firstly reported it to yellow card and didn't hear back. I reported it a few months later to Astra Zeneca, filled all the forms in but they didn't contact me or my GP's.
Q: Is there anything that has helped, and have your symptoms improved?
Yes, symptoms are improving.
This has been a journey for my mind, body & spirit to find health & balance again & a huge test of patience, as it's a long game.
My homeopath has been a huge help. The bioResonance is rebalancing my system. Also, my good diet, suppliments, encouraging & understanding atmosphere at home, good books, things to look forward to - family holidays being planned.
I have done much soul searching & continue to do so, to try to find meaning in this horrendous experience, this is where the spiritual books are helping. They have helped me deal with the misery & regret which consumed me in the early months.
I like also to read of others recovery stories & experiences.
Exercise is also helping greatly.
Q: Have you had Covid before? What was your experience if so?
I have not had covid but I have had quite high exposure to the virus in my job at times. I volunteered on the covid ward for 2 short periods during the height of the pandemic.
Q: What do you wish others knew?
I am seeing so many very healthy people suffering like this after the vaccine, medics need to stop denying these effects & investigate why these extra strong, damaging immune reactions are happening.
When this happens to people, they are typically offered no help, only denial, the medical wall of silence, to add to the distress & pain they are already going through.
Obviously the reporting system is missing most of the injury reports, the leading question is, why is all this not out there for public view? Why the censoring? Why is natural immunity being ignored? Why is the amount of people suffering being played down - this is not rare. I personally know several people it has happened to.
So many questions, no answers ..
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