Help Brittany Recover from Vaccine Injury

Words from Brittany: 

I’m not writing this & sharing it to tell you it was or wasn’t the injection because I don’t know. Doctors don’t know. All I know is this isn’t normal, I’m not normal & this isn’t okay. This past week has been the hardest & most confusing week of my life. I don’t wish this upon anyone.

Get the injection or don’t get the injection that’s completely your decision and I respect it. All I know is I regret mine & want to spread awareness about it, as well as update friends and family who’ve been wondering. I refuse to stay quiet about it any longer. Here is my story, it is long so buckle up.

I’m a healthy 23 year old with no underlying health conditions. I decided to get the Pfizer vaccine on Monday August 9th around 6:30pm, at Walgreens. I waited the recommended time of 15 minutes to make sure I was okay. All was fine.

I drove home and on the way home, I was feeling a bit dizzy. I got home safely and just wanted to rest. I had a pretty bad headache, was dizzy on and off as well as numbness and tingling in my extremities. Of course, my immediate reaction was “These are just side effects of the shot, I’m just going to take it easy and get some rest”. I went to sleep and was awakened around 5:30am with my whole body being numb, still a headache, confused, still tingling and had really sharp pain behind my left eye. My brother took me in to the hospital - St Lucie Medical Center and as soon as I got there, they tested me for COVID, did not await the results for it and was released within 20 minutes because the nurse claimed “there are too many COVID positive patients in here right now, we don’t want to potentially expose you. Come back if symptoms worsen.”

I stayed home and again, just was tired and wanted to rest. I fell asleep to take a nap, my boyfriend stayed with me as well to make sure I was going to be okay. A few hours later, I woke up to use the restroom. I stood up out of bed, got really dizzy, passed out and then woke up at the hospital.

My boyfriend stated: he thought I was in the bathroom or out of the room doing something. It was about 40-45 minutes that had passed, one of the dogs had to use the bathroom, so he got up to take them out and found me on the floor, unresponsive, lost bladder control. He called 911 and had the ambulance come grab me to bring me back to the same hospital I was at this same morning. At this time, they were concerned I might of had a stroke of some sort. They only did a CT scan & it came back normal, they again released me and said to come back if anything worsens.

I laid in this hospital, “awake” but confused and had not a clue what happened. Alone. Vulnerable as I couldn’t move or speak. The nurses kept coming back to ask me questions, to get me to speak to them, and I couldn’t. I had answers in my head but I couldn’t form words or sentences. Still to this day, this is going on. I feel trapped. They resorted to “blink twice if you can hear me” and I blinked twice. About an hour passed and I was finally able to nod my head to answer questions and move my body a bit more. At this point, I motioned writing. They asked if I’d want a pen, I said yes. I was finally able to write “I know what I want to say, I can hear you, and understand you. I just can’t get the words to come out. I don’t know what’s going on”.

The nurses were just as confused as I was. They said “we can admit you but we do think tests will come back normal, you could be reacting to the vaccine, we don’t know. We strongly recommend you go home due to there being so many COVID positive patients here.”

At this point, still unable to talk, I wrote “ok, I will go home” on a piece of paper. They discharged me. Symptoms still persisted, the next day, Wednesday August 11th, my arms turned bright red and hot, still numb and tingling in the extremities, and the pain behind my left eye had been excruciating. Nothing was going away or getting better. My boyfriend insisted that he took me to a different hospital where he knows they’ll do extensive testing to try to get to the bottom of this. We went to Cleveland Clinic Tradition hospital. My boyfriend had to be my voice to the nurses and doctors. They decided it would be best to admit me and did extensive bloodwork, an MRI, an X-Ray, multiple EKGs, ultrasounds of the heart, every test under the sun. I had seen a physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist & a neurologist while there.

When I woke up from the hospital on Thursday, August 12th, we awaited results on all testings that had been done to rule out strokes, blood clots, etc. Everything came back normal. They decided to do an EEG of the brain to check brain waves for possible seizure activity. The neurologist said to get ready to be discharged as he was almost certain the EEG would read normal as well.

It didn’t. I had an abnormal EEG that suspected possible seizure activity. The neurologist informed me there’s no way to tell 100% if I had a seizure or not, all they knew was it was abnormal and indicative of possible seizure activity. He stated I will be unable to drive for at least 6 months, if I have a seizure after this it will restart the 6 month period. He started me on Keppra, an anti-seizure medication as well as a medication for the terrible headaches I’d been having, stated to follow up with a neurologist and speech therapy to help my speech come back properly.

No one has had answers as to why any of this has happened, with tests remaining normal but yet my speech is so severely impaired, I still have pain behind my eye, suffering from pretty severe headaches, I’m weak & still have numbness at times.

Since this, I have followed up with an Ophthalmologist - who confirmed there is nothing wrong with my eye that he can see. As well as another neurologist, who agreed with the one I had seen in the hospital.

This has been the hardest week of my life. I’m thankful the imaging was normal, which means there’s no damage to the actual brain.

I’m thankful my boyfriend found me when he did. Had it been any longer, who knows the possible amount of damage that could’ve taken place. He has been my rock through all of this, I’m thankful for the amount of patience he has. I’m thankful for my family. I’m thankful to everyone who has checked up on me during this time. I’m thankful that I will re-gain my speech, eventually. We just don’t know when. 

UPDATE 8/20 - went back to the ER Friday night August 20th, symptoms still persist along with some new. New symptoms: severe lower right back pain that shoots down my right leg, makes my leg completely numb & loss of bladder control. 

They did a chest x-ray, another CT of my head and a CT of my spine & lower back. All came back good except for the spine one. There’s bulging discs in L3-L4, L4-L5 as well as bulging discand minimal facet disease at L5-S1. Facet disease is : degeneration of the facet joints in the spine. 

I have never had back issues like this. It is now impairing my ability to walk and do daily tasks of life. I was discharged from the ER with muscle relaxers 3x daily. Diagnosis this time: sciatica. & So the journey continues. 

UPDATE 2 - 8/21 - back again to the ER Saturday night. Friday night I was able to walk out of the ER, tonight I couldn’t. The back pain has severely affected my ability to walk, put pants or socks on, or even use the restroom. They decided to do an MRI of my lower back and found T12-L1 central/left disc extrusion & Mild central Spinal stenosis. This is more than likely causing the terrible sciatica they diagnosed me with the night before. The journey still continues. 

Prayers and positive thoughts strongly requested & appreciated to give myself and my family the strength to get through this 

 I am very grateful to have insurance to cover alot of the medical bills that are coming in. My out of pocket max is $6,350, so t hat is the max I will have to pay! I know I won't be tons of thousands of dollars in medical bills, however I am immensely grateful for donations of any amount to help me meet my Out of Pocket! 

Thank you in advance!