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← Return to COVID vaccines and neuropathy
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Wow - Lot's of room for chatting here.
As for the EMG, when I had my first one, many years ago, it was done by a tech who was also a nun - she could have been my mean old Latin teacher! She kept telling me "Don't be a baby" "This doesn't hurt" "Offer it up" (if you're an old Catholic school kid you've heard it before). I avoided them like the plague for years - then the next tech was so gentle and reassuring it was amazing - and the pain was much less!
Then there is the matter of the symptoms starting up suddenly - in the world of inflammation, there is a strong theory that any "jolt" to your immune system can cause a reaction to which you are predisposed to suddenly flare up. For example, in addition to vaccines, inflammatory reactions can occur after a virus or infection, surgery, or an unrelated injury.
I believe, from what I have read here on Connect, both about vaccine reactions and neuropathy and PMR, that the exact "cause" may never be known, but symptoms can appear in a similar way. For example, people often first experience neuropathy symptoms after their bodies are stressed by surgery. It sounds like your docs may be thinking this too.
If the only place I ever read about the Covid vaccines was here on Connect, I would be afraid because of so many symptoms being reported here. But like your neuro, I believe the reactions are very rare. For example, over 300,000,000 doses of vaccine have been given in this country, but there are only 428,000 reports of reactions in VAER, and about 75,000 are considered serious. That's a VERY low percentage - it's just that people with reactions come to Connect looking for answers. In fact, in the Covid-19 group, there are about 1000 people, our of 100,000+ Connect members. Of course, symptoms and illnesses don't feel rare when they affect us!
Finally, please get your doc to report this to VAERS - don't waut for a consensus. The more data they have, the better we will all know the vaccines.
I hope your symptoms subside! Please let me know in a few weeks how you are doing.
Sue
Replies to "Wow - Lot's of room for chatting here. As for the EMG, when I had my..."
It definitely could be caused by the surgery, but that was May 18th and my symptoms started abruptly one week after my first vaccine. So who knows. Seems like a weird coincidence, but I'll wait for the experts to weigh in once I have my results. I know it's "rare," but almost half a million reports and 75,000 are serious ... that's a big deal to me. If you are one of the ones affected, the statistics don't matter. The CDC site confirms there are reported cases of new neuropathy with the JJ vaccine ... so logic follows that it may be possible with the other vaccines as well. I'm not thinking I got poisoned by a bad vaccine or anything ... just that my body is in an overdrive response because of my pre-existing auto-immune condition. I will definitely report next week after I get my timeline on paper to help with their questions. And I'll post again when I get answers if they are helpful. Thanks so much for the response and good wishes!
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@sueinmn, thanks for your thoughtful response. I do believe the vaccine is what triggered my cascade of events. The body works in such strange (but amazing) ways. While it has literally rendered me physically changed from pre-vaccine, I do also acknowledge the fact that I could have been one of the patients who did very poorly or even died with Covid. I have even seen one theory (do not have the reference unfortunately) that people with these types of severe inflammatory reactions to the vaccine may have been the sicker ones with the actual disease and/or may have been more prone to becoming a Covid “long-hauler”. When think of it that way I do get some respite from my “why me” thought patterns. I will be filing the VAERS report myself but my understanding is that they contact your physicians for further info. Yes, I do check in here pretty regularly and will continue to do so. Unfortunately I don’t see anything changing in a few weeks as this has been going on for almost 8 months.