Age: 26.0
Sex: F
Vaccine: COVID19, COVID19
Symptoms: Magnetic resonance imaging normal, Muscle tightness, Pain in extremity, Paraesthesia, Peripheral swelling
Clinical narrative: It started with back of knee pain that made it difficult for me to walk. I went to an urgent care on 4/12 and I was given a steroid for my leg inflammation. When the pain didn't subside two days later, I went to the ER and was admitted. It did not feel like I had muscle weakness. It felt like there were long rubber bands in my legs that felt tight and were about to snap. I also began to develop sensitivity to light touch (loose sweatpants moving against my legs while walking would cause pain up and down my legs). It has gotten easier to walk as time has gone on, and now instead of two large rubber bands feeling tight in my legs, it feels like there are many tiny, tight strings running up and down my legs.Sometimes if I walk too much or overextend my legs, these strings feel like they're on fire. Recently, my arms and different parts of my body have felt light burning intermittently throughout the day. My hands also felt like they were very hot yesterday (5/8) evening. When I looked at my hands, they looked a bit red/swollen with a tinge of blue/purple coloring. Fingers felt tender when typing, though I saw no sign of bruising. A few days ago, when I would hold up my phone to text, within a few seconds, my arms and hands felt like they were falling asleep. My right arm appeared to be worse that my left (it would fall asleep faster). The feeling in my arms would return when I would put my hands to my sides. This has never happened to me before. I have tried using my hands less and tried being more gentle with them. As a result, my arms and hands feel better after periods of rest/light use, but if I start using my arms/hands more regularly, the falling asleep sensation returns. I have also noticed more skin sensitivity as of late. I stopped wearing pants to prevent from feeling the leg pain I had mentioned earlier in this message. However, I was walking around the house yesterday (5/8) only wearing underwear, and I started to feel some light pain around the band of my underwear. I removed it and the pain went away. In addition, I normally wear loose t-shirts, but recently I had been experiencing a burning in my back/spine area. Once I removed my shirt, the burning sensation stopped. Wrists have also been feeling a bit stiff/achy as of late. Today (5/9) I was typing for about 30 to 45 minutes while working on this document. My fingertips felt tender, but I thought that I could use my hands for a bit without issue. I positioned myself so that my hands were below my body for constant blood supply. However, my right hand ring finger started to hurt and made it hard for me to type, so I have been resting on and off while working on this. It was a sharp string pain running along my finger. I checked both hands and they were red/swollen. Similar to this, on 5/2, I felt left middle finger pain that came and went over the span of a few days. I have not felt this left middle finger pain as of late. When I was in the ER (around 4/17), I felt left foot toe pain in the toe that's next to the pinky. The toe pain and finger pain were similar to each other in the sense that it was a sharp string pain. The working theory from the ER is that the vaccine might be causing flare ups for different ailments that I have had or am currently experiencing. I had injured the back of my left knee while in college, I had twisted the toe that started to feel pain while in the ER a few years back, I've had hemorrhoids before, but they've usually been painless and not noticeable. However, around the same time that it became harder for me to walk, my hemorrhoid pain became excruciating and now I have multiple hemorrhoids. I was tentatively diagnosed with potential reactive rheumatoid arthritis as a result of the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine. The latest development in this string of occurrences is that as of this morning (5/16/2021), I've had some brain fog that has lasted me the entire day. In addition, I have a dull, achy pain stemming from my right shoulder-blade to my right elbow that I've been experiencing for a few hours now. My hearing has also been feeling more sensitive for this past week now. I noticed this starting from about 5/8. One of my friends was talking to me, and whenever she spoke, her voice sounded a bit fuzzy from my right ear and I could feel the vibrations in my right ear when she talked. The next day, my phone pinged, and similar to my experience with my friend, it sounded fuzzy in my right ear, plus I could feel my eardrum vibrating. Usually, I'm quite hard of hearing and putting things on the highest volume isn't enough for me, but now, putting things at regular volume can seem a little too loud for me at times.