Age: 23.0
Sex: M
Vaccine: COVID19
Symptoms: Musculoskeletal stiffness, Myalgia, Paraesthesia, Pyrexia, Sleep disorder
Clinical narrative: My first dose of the pfizer vaccine was relatively asymptomatic. Received at local hospital. Sore arm that lasted a few hours, nothing too concerning.  This adverse event describes my second dose however, received Jan 23, 2020, approximately 3 weeks after the first. Again, this was received at local hospital. The next day, I felt the expected side effects of terrible chills, whole-body myalgia, and a slight fever. Again, I was not too worried as this was expected. I could not sleep that night, but otherwise, I felt significantly better in the morning.   Unfortunately, on Jan 25, 2 days after the second dose, I began to feel a strange tingling sensation in my forearms, and a pain in my lower back. This paresthesia felt as if the insides of my arms were vibrating, and rather than a "pins and needles" sensation, I felt electric shocks through my forearms and extremely discomforting tingles. I could not bend forward without terrible shocks through my arms, and my back pain can only be described as aching. I immediately scheduled an appointment with my doctor for Monday afternoon, That entire Sunday, it felt as if the tingling sensation, rated at 7/10 discomfort, grew to 10/10. I physically was wincing and turning, unable to find any position where my arms were not experiencing electric vibrations. My back pain, which was tender to touch, and if I pressed hard enough on it or laid on my back, caused the same electric sensation not just in the forearms but the entirety of my upper torso and my arm. Taking deep breaths was painful, as it elicited the same discomforting paresthesia. At the time, I was one of the first groups taking the pfizer shots, and it was still unclear if taking NSAIDs was a good idea to alleviate pains and the suppress the immune response. I agonized that entire Sunday and through Monday morning, the shocking expanding from just the forearms to the shoulders around the deltoid, and the back pain soon covered my entire upper torso. For whatever reason, waist-down I was completely fine. Even bending forward only elicited the pain upwards, nothing ever went down my legs. I had slight neck stiffness, a throbbing headache, intense back aches, bilateral upper extremity paresthesia, and pain on deep inspiration at the height of my pain on Monday morning. By this point, the pain had kept me awake for almost 30 hours.  When I finally could see my doctor via telehealth appointment, he prescribed me 800 mg ibuprofen to be taken every 6-8 hours I believe. After taking the ibuprofen, the pain lessened significantly, going from 10/10 to 2/10. I was finally able to go to sleep sitting up straight on a sofa chair. The paresthesia was gone, the pain on deep inspiration was gone, but the tenderness and dull ache in the lower back seemed to stay even on the ibuprofen. I noticed that if I laid down on my back to try and sleep, even with the medicine in full effect, the electric shooting and paresthesia would immediately return. If I quickly removed pressure from that area, it went away.  The ibuprofen's effect lasted only about 5 hours. I would take another as it slowly crawled back up to 4/10 pain or if the paresthesia was returning. Over the course of an entire week, I constantly needed to be on ibuprofen. By Friday, so almost 6 days after the shot, the paresthesia and back pain could be completely suppressed by the ibuprofen and I was able to lay on my back with no problems. Without medicine, I was sitting at a dull 3-10 back pain, but the paresthesia was gone. The back pain finally vanished on Sunday, 8 days after the shot, and I no longer needed ibuprofen. No fevers, chills, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, radiation of electrical pain down the leg, vision change, or loss of bowel/urinary control throughout the course of these symptoms.  My experience reported to my primary care doctor, via our health messages. I did not return any contact to hospital or my vaccination site.