Covid-19 vaccination experiences

Hi TigerLilea. I hope you are improving. I know you had a tough time after the vaccine.

 

Unfortunately the same thing happened again with the second shot.

 

My only suggestion is to be patient. I was really ill for the first 36hrs after my 2nd Moderna (no real side effects after the first), had a fever, a lot of muscle aches and was very weak. Most of it went away after 36hrs, although over a week later I'm definitely not back to my normal baseline regarding stamina (as far as that ever goes!).

I think, like with any worsening of symptoms, there's that worry of whether it will improve again, which is completely understandable! I was a bit nervous with it. Hopefully her experience will be similar or better than mine.

 

I had my second Pfizer jab earlier this week; like the first, it was uneventful and anticlimactic, giving me a seriously sore arm but thankfully not the temporary worsening of ME symptoms that I had anticipated. My perfectly healthy parents had far more side effects (on Pfizer and AZ, respectively).

Our bodies are weird. My thoughts go out to all whose mileage varied.

 

I am a bit late to report that I had a second vax with AZ a month ago.

As I travelled too far for the first one, I rearranged the second to be at my local GP and took a taxi and the surgery very kindly agreed to jab me in the car park so I didnt have to walk in and sit and wait etc which helped a lot. Driver very kindly went in and told them I was there as I forgot my phone. I was back home in under an hour and also got my mum's birthday card posted!

I chose the opposite arm as my response to the first was severe but the second was much milder and I just had a sore arm and slight fluey feeling for 5 days.

 

My daughter's friend experienced the same. Pfizer 2nd jag seems to hit harder ( anecdotally more females and more side effects if on pill / hrt) She is in GP training. Took 2 weeks to get back to normal. She felt like she had been run over by a bus with a migraine and flu mixed in

ETA I really hope that symptoms subside soon .

 

It took about 10 weeks from the second Pfizer dose for me to get back to baseline. My reaction seems to be less related to ME-symptoms, more of a flare of an (other) autoimmune diagnosis.

It has been very hard, but I said in advance that anything other than a permanent worsening would be worth it - and I stand by that. I am 100% sure that the virus would have been many times harder for me, and would definitely take the vaccine again.

The greatest fear (for my personal situation) during the pandemic has been to become hospitalized with Covid without the option of bringing someone who knows my needs and history. I know there still is a minor chance. But I am finally able to let go of that scenario, and it is such a burden lifting from my shoulders.

 

I think that my ME is actually auto-immune. That's why I'm reluctant to have the jab. I described my approach here: https://www.s4me.info/threads/covid-19-vaccination-experiences.19645/page-20#post-356226 in case you didn't see it.

I hope you continue to improve.

 

I wish I’d been that smart. Then again, with brain fog etc plus the limited information available, perhaps I didn’t have the ability to make a different decision. There’s going to be yet another vaccine probably reaching approval soon, one based on more conventional tech (not mRNA). Perhaps that one will be more tolerable for us, although I know of no scientific reason to believe so.

One thing I thought I understood but actually don’t: I’d assumed that whatever reaction I’d have to the disease would be worse than to any vaccine, because an infection creates thousands of times more immune-stimulating particles in addition to cell damage, and an infection would have days (10 days, 15?) of foreign particles circulating while a shot happens once, errr, twice in this case. Plus the tissue damage from the virus and resulting inflammation, wouldn’t that be greater in someone with a wonky immune system?

So, my attempt at logic said “Risk of Vx less than risk of virus, therefore get Vx now”.
But… I’d probably been exposed to trace amounts of the virus already (living in a big filthy city) and perhaps had a little bit of immunity, which perhaps might have continued to ramp up with those unavoidable small exposures. Maybe. And perhaps there will be different vx available soon, etc. There were many assumptions in my starting logic, assumptions which were on soft ground.

I’m noting very small hints of improvement in the last 2 days (couldn’t have typed this out 2 weeks ago). But I don’t know if that signals a trend or is simply a result of extreme rest, to an extent that isn’t feasible to continue.

Edit: Shouldn't have written the word "improvement", that was enough to blow it up. Had to lay down, then have an un-needed snack to accomplish a 2 minute task just now. Maybe the word improvement has too many syllables and I need to back down to, say, grunts. Maybe I'm not in great shape.

 

I'm very sorry that you have had such a bad response. If only progress hadn't been halted by the psychs, we might know more about ME and who should be vaccinated and who shouldn't.

I hope you continue to improve.

 

I just had my second AstraZeneca shot less than half an hour ago. Had a bit of OI light headedness before the shot and it did not get worse. If I have symptoms that are different from the post on my first shot I will comment by adding to this post. The nurse giving the jabs was really really good though, almost did not feel a thing.

Early 23 July, about 18 hours after vaccine. I have a completely different reaction so far. Last time I had to sleep a lot at this point, this time I cannot sleep much at all. Otherwise vaccine symptom free so far.

At over 52 hours after the vaccine I feel a tiny bit hot but have no other symptoms I can attribute to the vaccine. I seem to be almost symptom free for my second dose.

 

What I have heard anecdotally is that:

Pfizer second dose tends to be worse than first
AZ first dose tends to be worse than second

I was basically fine with my first dose of Pfizer, in early June - just a few hours of shivery fluey feeling in the afternoon (I'd had the jab in the morning), slightly achey body, and sore arm for a couple of days.

A little nervous of what the second jab will be like when I get that in a couple of weeks or so!

PS: I am the type of ME patient who never seems to get very sick with viruses (I get mild symptoms for a short time and then my body seems to fight it off quickly). So I was only expecting mild/short-lived side effects really, and seems my prediction was correct so far.

 

I get viral re-activations continuously, I even had fever sores on my lips the day of my Pfizer and a continuing vestibular virus for over a year. I had zero reaction to the first Pfizer except a sore arm.

A couple of healthy friends had a fluey/achy-type reaction for 24 hrs after their second Pfizer jab, zero for the first one.

My second jab is Tuesday (28 days after the first one) in the early morning when I feel worse. We will see what happens

 

Sweden is now trying out its own version of this. They have started a research study where they offer people 200 SEK (approx 16.7 GBP, 19.55 EUR, 23 USD) if they get the covid-19 vaccine.

Ny svensk studie erbjuder pengar mot vaccinering
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/ny-svensk-studie-erbjuder-pengar-mot-vaccinering

 

I'm particularly interested if it helps with your other symptoms...

 

It will be difficult to know for sure though b/c the symptoms are improving very very slowly. But I've had them come back in full force for a day or two.

 

Sorry for hijacking the thread again but the antibody saga unfortunately continues! From the previous episodes: very low number of antibodies in a private lab result (blood test, antibodies against S spike protein). A similar test at Semmelweis University was clearly positive. I'm in the same boat with the people with the Sinopharm vaccine (mine was AZ), who received similarly contradictory results. Semmelweis University and some doctors say one thing (in agreement with the FDA, that this result doesn't really matter), other doctors and most immunologists I hear say the opposite (and two of them even published a preprint paper a few days ago about the high number of negative Sinopharm results https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.15.21260362v1). As I said I'm pretty much in the same boat of not knowing who to believe as the ones who got Sinopharm, even if for different reasons. Confusing.

So: new tests, at the same private lab, but with testing the T-cell immunity too this time. Results: for the antibodies against the spike protein, it was almost the same: 34, so at the very bottom of the "moderate" range again, which was called practically negative by a doctor previously. The T-cell immunity: absolutely zero, nothing for two of the categories measured (relative IFNG+CD4 cells/million cells, activation of cytotoxic cells and relative CD40L+Cd4 cells/million cells, support of antibody production), and 57 for one category, where the minimum should be 500 (relative IFNG+CD8 cells/million cells, destruction of virus-infected cells). So I'm a total negative as far as T cells go.

The good news is that (probably due to the ongoing Sinopharm controversy) GPs are allowed to administer the 3rd round of vaccines from 1st August, but at least 4 months after the second shot (which is still more than 2 months for me), but in special cases the GPs can make their own decisions about the timeline (and which vaccines to give).

I have posted my results in a Facebook group where doctors (real doctors) answer people's questions about the vaccines. They seem to be very conservative about this, they are fully on the side of the FDA and Semmelweis University. They said they don't want to get into a scientific debate about this because they say I still may be protected but probably in my case it is better to try to get the third vaccine before the four months end, just to be sure.

So this is my plan now. If I'm really unprotected, then I'm really lucky that the Sinopharm controversy happened at the same time and that may help me to the third vaccine quickly. (And my GP is usually quite cool about these things, he has been giving me the flu vaccine free of charge for years now.)

 

Hopefully they've got a system in place to stop people turning up to be vaccinated for the 10th time. All sorts of scams possible.

 

They did require some form of I.D., but it seemed they were mainly interested in making sure that you lived and/or worked in the county where you were getting the vaccine. That concern probably stemmed from when there was a very limited supply of the vaccines and they didn't want people to seek them outside of their own county because it would have messed with their distribution calculations. How much cross-checking they do to prevent "over-vaccination," I can't say.

Given my reaction to the second vaccine, however, I wouldn't be all that eager to get a 3rd shot in exchange for a $50 gift card.