Age: 57.0
Sex: F
Vaccine: VARZOS
Symptoms: Influenza like illness, Injection site pain, Myalgia, Pain in extremity
Clinical narrative: In preface, note that I had arisen at 5 AM to have a breast ultrasound, as a follow-up to a questionable mammogram. Therefore, I was stressed out. What I also never get up that early. Therefore, when I got the SHINGRIX shot at 11 AM, later that day, I was already tired. (Hence, it may have been unwise to have obtained the SHINGRIX shot that same day). The shot injection site hurt, immediately. It felt like "those pin prick shots in the 1960's" where your arm hurts as if someone punched you really hard. Within a couple hours, I was experiencing extreme fatigue and joint pain, similar to "the body flu". The feeling felt like "I'd been hit by a Mack Truck". Rapidly, my joints were hurting. By 5 PM, even the bottoms of my feet hurt. My spouse and I were on a "family joy ride in our car", approximately 1 hour from home. We took a walk, drove around, ate some lunch in a restaurant. Throughout this process of feeling so horrible, all I wanted to do was go home to bed. NOTE THAT NO ONE EVER SAID, "This shot will KICK you. You should go right home to bed." All I was asked was if I had been sick, prior--which I had not. I also noticed that I was getting chest pain. I have mitral valve prolapse, and tend to "notice and feel" my chest pain. Because I've had CP for years, I also have trained myself to "take note when it's a DIFFERENT kind of pain". This was a "different kind of pain". Clearly, the shot was affecting my heart. That was my opinion. The CP was not occurring with inhalation/exhalation. It was just pain that made me feel like crap, that made me feel like I needed to slow down, that made me feel like I needed to immediately go to bed. We got home around 7 PM. I think I ate some yogurt and went to bed. I took a BENADRYL and an AMBIEN--which is something I would normally NEVER do. My neighbor suggested that perhaps the shot was triggering an immune response that affected my joints. That suggestion felt plausible, so I took a dye-free BENADRYL.  BENADRYLs USED to make me sleep. In the last few years, they no longer give me a restful sleep. Therefore, I got up--30 minutes later--and said, "Heck, take an AMBIEN. Your body needs restful sleep. The BENADRYL doesn't feel restful. You need to be out cold." Therefore, I did so. Note that I also called the Pharmacy where the shot was administered at approximately 7:30 PM. The pharmacist who answered the phone took note of my symptoms. She said she felt this was not an emergency.  She also said, "the heart is a muscle," (and I realized she was implying that, if my muscles were all aching--and if the heart was a muscle--that perhaps my heart muscle was being affected, also). This was a horrible experience. I have never had this experience with a flu shot. I wish someone had warned me to go home and go straight to bed. Admittedly, my day was packed with more activities than I normally would have squeezed into a 14 hour day. But, regardless, the symptoms I experienced were "off the charts".  Also, a side note: In 1993, I had a heart catherization. They plugged the groin site with a collagen plug. In 1993, the collagen plug was a "newfangled product". I had a similar body reaction to what I experienced with the collagen plug. The only difference was that the collagen plug reaction lasted 4 months.