I had just returned back to work from my maternity leave. I was a busy mom to a one-year-old and three-year-old. I was active, loved to garden, cook and spend time with family.
A couple weeks after my second vaccine, which was Moderna, I started to notice some proprioception issues when going down the stairs. I had to look at each step before stepping, or I would feel like I was going to fall. I ignored the symptom and thought it was just in my head.
On 9 August 2021 I went swimming, put the kids to bed, had a shower and then noticed that my feet had pins and needles. Over the next hour the pins went all the way up to my stomach. I had bad back pain and tried stretching but was starting to feel weak in my right leg. I asked my husband to help
me to the washroom, but I could not pee. That’s when we knew something was very wrong. Within four hours, I was paralyzed from the waist down with a neurogenic bladder and bowel.
I had five MRIs, three CTs, a spinal tap, spinal arteriogram, and enough blood work to test me for every autoimmune disease and everything came back negative. What did show was an extensive lesion from T6-T10 on my spinal cord. I had five days of high dose steroids and then seven treatments of plasmapheresis exchange.
All this was over the course of six weeks in the hospital. I then went to six weeks of neuro rehab to try to relearn how to walk. I am so thankful that the PLEX and many prayers brought me to where I am today. I can walk, though I still struggle with my gait, tone and neuropathy. I go to physio weekly, and exercise to strengthen daily. I still cannot work as my job requires me to be fully mobile. I tire easily but am working on my endurance – I have to keep up with my busy family. I still have a long road ahead, but I feel like I’ve already run much of my marathon.
Most doctors ignored my question as to whether this was caused by the vaccine. I was a perfectly healthy, 33-year-old mom at the time, with no medical history. My official diagnosis is idiopathic acute longitudinal acute extensive transverse myelitis, and I believe it was instigated by the Moderna vaccine.
We all rushed to get the vaccines because we believed it was best for our friends and family. Now we need to take our time and look into what negative reactions have occurred before we rush to have our children jabbed with these vaccines.