Age: 27.0
Sex: F
Vaccine: COVID19
Symptoms: Feeling abnormal, Full blood count, Gait disturbance, Hypoaesthesia, Impaired work ability
Clinical narrative: Post COVID-19 vaccine reaction. Patient felt pressured by her work to get the vaccine for COVID-19 and on Thursday, 27 May 2021, patient decided to get the vaccine. She went to a mass vaccination site and within 5 minutes of receiving patient started to "feel weird." She reports that will in the observation line her throat felt heavy, so that talking was fatiguing. While in the observation line they checked her blood pressure and respiration. Per her report, her BP norm, breathing not restricted. It was recommended that she call EMS to have Benadryl administered. Patient declined at this point and decided to do this herself. Patient decided to drive herself to the ER. As I drove the numbness spread to behind my eyes, under cheek bones, jaw, back third of tongue, arms and joints including wrists and knees. Small turns along the way in the car would shift my proprioception and cause nausea, my response time was slower. I decided to stop by my house, get an ER go bag and then head to ER. By the time I got to ER I felt numbness in the back of my head and at base cervical spine worsened by rotation. As well as lower spine, non muscular. Getting out of the car I realized my walking was extremely slow, despite my best attempts to walk at a regular speed, it felt like walking in a pool. I checked in and told them mild anaphylaxis. I know they have a lot of people coming in and saying they have had a bad reaction to the vaccine when their arm hurts or they have mild cold symptoms, I didn?t have time to be perceived that way because I could feel my cognition changing rapidly. I realized talking with the check in lady that my ability to talk had changed, my cognition was significantly slower than half speed of normal and I was having word finding issues leaving me with simple sentences taking up to 20 seconds. In the car while using voice dictation to update my mom I remember the heaviness in my throat was getting worse making swallowing challenging. I was checked in pretty quickly. I knew what I wanted to say but the delivery was hard, I felt sabotaged neurally. They brought me right back. Attending ER doc was not phased in the slighted. Blood test panel looked normal, I sat in the ER chair there for two hours. I wonder if they just decided to wait it out. He ultimately came to me and said that I was probably fine, that everything looked normal that he could check. He asked me to walk for him and I needed to grasp his hand so hard just to get up, and then proceed to barely take steps because of how slow and off balance I was. He told me I?m likely allergic to the vaccine, he?s not seen a response like mine. That I should go home and wait it out. And that they have no treatment plan for adverse reactions at this time. I asked if Benadryl or some type of antihistamine was was wise and he dismissed the idea, I was surprised by that. When I left I felt a little better when I left in terms of numbness but was very slow getting out to the car. Since then I have had the numbness return in waves. I went to work the following day, made myself. It was hard, I started to notice things like processing the laundry in the back room, completely overwhelming me eye-to-brain, the laundry visually looked so busy and overwhelming, I had to leave the room due to a small surge in nausea x vertigo type of feeling. Looking at my computer screen and charting elicited the same response, to a lesser degree. I got home and it became much worse throughout the evening. I ended up cancelling my Friday, I know you know that?s a big deal for me.  Since then I have lost my appetite, have been sleeping from 11pm-1pm (since Friday, so two days in a row now). When I look around with my eyes this affects the proprioception and dizziness. I?m still pretty slow and weak. My parents took my laundry yesterday knowing I couldn?t do it. I cleaned my kitchen and showered and ended up paying for it the rest of the day with jaw joint numbness (made worse by chewing, does help with the appetite problem, as I eat I get neurally tired in my jaw with the numbness and just don't want to continue) and behind eye numbness returning as well as feeling like my head is on a slow off-kilter rotation around C1 like a slow motion bobble head (vertigo?). I?m also not emotionally myself and even had an argument with my parents which is unusual these days (I'm glad I can say that). After they left not an hour later, their visit started to fade so drastically in my memory I wasn?t sure how long they were here and even started to notice missing prices or gaps in memory of what happened while they were here (they were there for around two hrs).