Age: 54.0
Sex: F
Vaccine: COVID19
Symptoms: Feeling hot, Headache, Heart rate increased, Impaired work ability, Insomnia
Clinical narrative: I received my first Moderna COVID-19 booster on 1/19/2022. Within about 6 hours, I started feeling warm and feverish. I had chills, body aches, and a feeling of tightness throughout my body. I left work and went straight home and got into bed. My temperature was 103.7 at 11 PM. I didn't take anything to relieve it, as I was advised not to. I was up until about 3 AM, which was when my fever finally broke. I felt so uncomfortable that I was rolling back and forth in my bed. My heartbeat was also really fast and pounding at this point, and I actually worried that I was dying. I got to sleep after my fever broke, and I woke up some hours later with a horrible headache, runny nose, and deep cough. I also had a temperature of 101.5. I also experienced diarrhea, and I couldn't even keep water or chicken noodle soup down, because I vomited them up. The diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting occurred intermittently for the following 2 weeks. My fever would also spike up to 102 every day during those 2 weeks. I also had chest pains in the area around the heart for the following 2 weeks. The runny nose and cough lingered, and over a year later, I still have them. I went to the ER at one point, because my PCP couldn't see me, since the protocol was that doctors weren't to see patients who were recovering from the vaccines or were possibly at risk of having COVID-19.  When I was at the ER, I told them my symptoms. They ran an EKG, took a chest X-ray, took a blood sample, and gave me fluids and an anti-inflammatory. I was told that no structural anomalies were found in the chest area, but I was in atrial fibrillation for about 2% of the time that they were monitoring me. I was at the ER for maybe 6-7 hours before they released me. When I left, I didn't feel any better than I did when I had arrived. In about March or April 2022, I saw my PCP. My PCP said that it sounded like I was having a severe reaction to the vaccine. He also said that the chest pains I described were possibly indicative of myocarditis, in which case, nothing could be done other than waiting it out, though he did mention the possibility of taking antibiotics. I contracted COVID-19 in July 2022, and I had all the same symptoms I had after receiving the booster, only they lasted for 3 weeks instead of 2 weeks. Over a year after receiving the booster, I still have the runny nose and deep cough. I also run a temperature of 99 at least once a week. I now take metoprolol to treat the atrial fibrillation, which helps. The atrial fibrillation isn't gone, but it's now more controlled. Unfortunately, this wasn't the first bad experience I had had with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. After I got the first dose on 1/12/2021 (027L20A), I was sick with a fever of 102 the day after the shot; the fever shot up to 103.5. I had fever, chills, severe headache, and severe body aches for about a week and a half. I also had intermittent heart palpitations and intermittent chest pains. My heart would beat really fast at times, and it then it would stop, and I wouldn't know whether it would start again. The heart palpitations and chest pains lasted for a week and a half. After the second dose of Moderna (042L20A), I got the fever, chills, and body aches about 6-8 hours after getting the shot. The fever and chills lasted about 4 days. During the first 2 days, my temperature was 101.5. After that, my temperature shot up to 103, and this lasted for only one day. I had a runny nose, cough, severe headache, severe body aches, and intermittent chest pains and intermittent palpitations for 5-6 days. I stayed at home while I was recuperating for a week, and there was one day before I returned to work on which I actually felt good and almost normal.