COVID-19 vaccine reactions: Families describe adverse responses to shot
NewsNOW from FOX | June 28, 2021

Sen. Ron Johnson holds a news conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with families from across the country who share their experiences regarding adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines. The state’s governor, Tony Evers, called Johnson’s roundtable “reckless and irresponsible.”

Two women describe their experiences in this video.

Rough automated transcript from YouTube:

and since being in such a career i have
always been pro science
and pro vaccination before my
vaccination
i was a healthy and active 39 year old i
enjoyed activities outside
traveling and crafting with my family i
also cherished my work
in a very busy pediatric dental office
i was not taking any medications prior
to the vaccine
and i have never had a coveted infection
and i have been tested for proof
in january my life changed drastically
immediately after the injection i felt
an odd tingling type dripping sensation
in my arm
i had immediate heart palpitations
and a feeling as if i was going to pass
out i’m so sick
and my blood pressure reading was so
high that i don’t know how i didn’t have
a stroke
i cannot quote what it was but as a
hygienist i take blood pressure readings
on my patients before i treat them my
adult patients
and it was so high that i was scared in
that moment that something was happening
to me
i did eventually stabilize they
monitored me for the 15 minutes and then
an extra 30 minutes after
and i did stabilize so they went on
ahead and sent me home
um when i got home i felt a little
you know woozy a little dizzy the next
couple of days i just had a headache and
just kind of that feeling of unwell all
of the things that i had signed up for
to get the vaccine
but it was three days later that my
symptoms
increased and accelerated i had a sharp
stabbing pain in my scapula area
that was just this intermittent like a
knife stabbing pain
i had tingling and numbness throughout
my body it ran down both my arms
i also still had the heart palpitations
i had these internal vibrations
and the only way i can explain the
internal vibrations is it feels like you
have this little electric shock running
through your body
like you’re stuck in a vibrating chair
like glued into it and it
never stops i have tremors in my hands
which has made me leery if i’ll ever be
able to practice as a hygienist again
and mike cheryl i am so
fearful that i may have some sort of
neurological issue after this with
parkinson’s
they have ruled out ms but again they
have not told me that i have anything
they can tell me what i don’t have i
have swollen lymph nodes
brain fog i had brain fog so extreme
that i would be having a conversation
with someone
and i would black out try to come back
to that conversation
and nothing was there swollen lymph
nodes muscle weakness unexplained skin
rashes
i had convulsions and nighttime seizures
i had to have my six-year-old daughter
wake me up from a fit in the middle of
the night
no six-year-old should have to do that
for their parent
i have also experienced thick
clotting heavy menstrual cycles
i was so afraid that i literally and i
have it with me
i prepared my will and my obituary
for my family because i didn’t think
that i would wake up to the next day
i have reported my symptoms to vsafe
bears
cdc fda pfizer
i have also sent information to two very
well known
research institutes and i have also
reached out to
prestigious universities
i’ve been dealing with this for five
months
these past five months my severe
neurological reactions continue to
plague me
every day feels like i’m trapped in the
movie groundhog day
i go to sleep praying thinking i’m gonna
wake up the next morning and be better
and i’m not i’ve had
multiple tests more than any person
should have to go through
this time in their life i have had
x-rays
blood work mris ct scans ultrasounds
eegs and more
to date the medical community has still
remained baffled
and unable to restore my health i’m
scared and frightened for my future
so i do have hope and this is why i’m
here today
speaking out this is not an easy thing
to do guys
but i hope that our conditions will be
researched and studied
i hope that we can find a solution in a
pathway to health that’s all we want
i would give anything i would give my
whole life savings
if i could go back to january 17th and
never to have had to experience this in
my life
and three that those that are suffering
and that those that will come behind us
because the vaccine is still rolling out
that they will benefit from us coming
forward and speaking today
we have suffered long enough i think
that we do deserve this time that you’ve
given us today and we are so gracious
that you’ve taken your time to be here
today
but we do deceive to be deserve to be
seen which you are seeing us today
and heard you’re listening but we need
to be believed
that is the biggest issue we just want
you guys to believe that this is real
we are real americans we are real people
experiencing these side effects
so i thank you for doing just that today
all right um so first thank you
um senator johnson for the opportunity
to share matty’s story and to all of you
for your willingness to listen this
isn’t easy for me
and it’s this has been very clearly
emotional so i’m gonna read what i’ve
written so i don’t
lose track my name is stephanie and this
is my daughter
maddie and we live in ohio on january
20th maddie
received her second dose of the pfizer
cova vaccine
as a participant in the clinical trial
for 12 to 15 year olds
all three of our kids volunteered and
we’re excited to participate in the
trial
as a way to help us all return to normal
life
my husband works in the medical field
and i have a degree in electrical
engineering
we are pro-vaccine and pro-science
which is why we agreed to let maddie and
her two older brothers volunteer for the
trial
before maddie got her final dose of the
vaccine she was a healthy
12 year old who got straight a’s
um and had lots of friends she had a
life
she was energetic she was not like this
although she does still have lots of
friends
upon receiving the second shot maddie
immediately felt pain
at the injection site and over the next
24 hours
she developed severe abdominal and chest
pain and the way she described
the chest pain and i quote it feels like
my heart is being ripped out through my
neck
she had painful electrical shocks down
her neck and spine
that forced her to walk hunched over she
had extreme pain in her fingers and toes
it actually made them turn white and
they were cold whenever you touched them
she had edema um
so my husband immediately took her to
the er as instructed by the vaccine
trial nurse
administrator which is what we were
instructed to do
her blood was taken for a renal profile
and tested she was checked for
appendicitis which he did not have
and given an iv was medicine then send
help
however in the discharge papers from the
children’s hospital er that she went to
the diagnosis stated adverse
effect of vaccine initial encounter
this would be the only time that that
was written in her medical charts but
it’s in there
over the next two and a half months her
abdominal muscle and nerve pain became
unbearable she developed additional
symptoms
that included gastroparesis nausea and
vomiting
erratic blood pressure and heart rate
memory loss
she mixes up words brain fog headaches
dizziness fainting she fell and hit her
head
and then um seizures she had
verbal she developed verbal and motor
tics
she had loss of feeling from the waist
down and muscle weakness
drastic changes in her vision urinary
retention and loss of bladder control
severely irregular and heavy menstrual
cycles and eventually
she had to have an energy tube put in to
get nutrition
all of these symptoms are still here
today some days are worse than others
our greatest challenge came when her
doctors began to consider
an alternative diagnosis well she really
didn’t have one before so it was the
first one
so like everybody else she had lots of
tests but not
nearly as many tests as everybody else
when she’s a child
why didn’t they do this all those tests
on her
sorry so because i couldn’t figure it
out
one physician labored labeled her as
having functional neurologic disorder
saying it was due to anxiety this
concerned us and we didn’t agree with it
because she doesn’t have the anxiety
look at her
i mean what 13 year old can sit here
calmly
okay if they have anxiety or mental
issues
at one point they even tried to admit
her to a mental hospital
so we did seek additional
medical opinions some of which came from
this group
in june we connected her neurologist
with another doctor that’s doing
research on adverse reactions like
maddie’s
she was finally provided but they
finally gave her an mri did an mri of
her brain
an mrv and a bunch of additional blood
tests
it took five months to get that
done over the past five months maddie
has been into the er nine times
and has been hospitalized three times
for a total of two months in the
hospital
what i want to ask maddie volunteered
for the pfizer trial
why why aren’t they researching her to
figure out
why this happened so other people don’t
have to go through this
instead they’re just saying it’s mental
if anybody’s mental to me
so today our journey is parents to help
our daughter maddie continues
all we want is for maddie to be seen
heard and believed because she has not
been
and we want her to get the care she
desperately needs so that she can go
back to normal why is she not
back to normal she was totally fine
before this she did the right thing
trying to help everybody else
and they’re not helping her
thanks