Age: 68.0
Sex: F
Vaccine: COVID19
Symptoms: Antiphospholipid antibodies negative, Joint swelling, Loss of personal independence in daily activities, Musculoskeletal stiffness, Pain in extremity
Clinical narrative: She got her vaccine, she had a sore arm about an hour or so later and it lasted for sevearl days, which is not unusual for her.  The AE started around Tuesday morning on the 3rd, and her right knee started to swell and it got very swollen to the point that she was putting ice packs on it with no reason for it.  She continued to do that, but she noticed that when she was driving her car and went to turn her steering wheel and her arm was very tight, and she started to have swelling in both hands, and got her ring off.  Her right hand continued to swell, and her left hand somewhat.  During the night both of her  hands were tingling to the point that it woke her up from a sound sleep.  She was starting to get very concerned.  She iced her knee some more, elevated her legs, and put some cold compresses on her hands, and started to notice that her left hand was starting to swell.  Then it stayed that way until the next day.  The swelling started to subside in her right knee ,but her left knee started to swell.  Then both her hands where to the point that could not rinse out a dish cloth as they were extremely swollen and painful.  At that point on Wednesday she called an Orthopedic specialist and was able to get an appointment on 9/6/24.  He examined her, took x-rays of her hands as they were hurting the worst.  One knee was pretty swollen and still painful, but the other one was not as swollen.  X-rays showed no arthritis in her hands.  She was sent to have blood work, and had extensive blood work done from complete blood panel to lupus, rheumatoid factors, and has 4 pages of the blood work as the tests were done.  All came back normal and everything in the good range.  She returned to the orthopedist on 9/13/24 and saw him again and he went over all the tests results and said that everything that looked good.  She did not have any accidents where she would have hurt herself to cause the pain and swelling that she had.  She told her the only thing that she could think of was that she had a COVID vaccine, and  he said that she may have had a reaction to the vaccine, and her body was in overdrive due to the reaction that she had.  She even had pain in her neck from it, and a little bit in her ankles, but not so much.  He prescribed Meloxicam if she wanted that and also suggested Ibuprofen and another antiinflammatory that she wanted to use.  She took an Advil the day before her visit, and did not seem to get any relief, and does not want to take anything if it's not helping.  The pain in her knees did go away, the swelling in her hands, wrist and fingers went away.  She still has a little bit of tingling from time to time, and last night is the first time that she was not awakened with tingling in her hands.  The swelling seems to have diminished in all of her joints.  Her knees are back to normal, and her hands are back to normal and is able to steer her car now with her right hand.  She  did not have any problems with her hands or knees prior to the vaccine.   About 5-6 years ago when the measles epidemic came out and was told that she should get the measles vaccine, which she got.  As part of that they said that you could have achy joints for a couple of weeks, which she did, which was told it was more common in women, and was expecting that.  She had not seen anything in the CDC literature from this type of reaction from the COVID vaccine.