Anecdotal -
Exclusive: 53-Year-Old Woman Details Aftermath of COVID Vaccine Injury
Julie Gamble had a fulfilling life: a stable career, the freedom to travel, and three children and one grandbaby to cherish. But that life was disrupted when the 53-year-old developed severe reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine and was no longer able to work.

But that life was disrupted in the spring and summer of 2021 when Gamble developed severe adverse reactions after getting the two-shot COVID-19 vaccine primary series — which resulted in her losing her job.

Gamble, now 53, spoke to The Defender about the vaccine injuries she sustained, the symptoms and challenges she is still experiencing, the ongoing difficulties finding doctors willing to treat her and classify her symptoms as vaccine-related, and the supportive role online groups for vaccine-injured individuals have had in her life.
The Defender reviewed documentation and photographic evidence verifying Gamble’s claims prior to publishing her story.

Gamble, who lives in Ontario, Canada, received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on May 17, 2021. For the second dose, she received the Moderna vaccine on July 18, 2021.

Her symptoms appeared almost immediately after the first dose, she said:

“I came home and I was really, really tired. It felt like an anesthetic tired, it didn’t feel like a ‘regular’ tired.
“I had developed a rash all over my body. I was itchy and my eyelids swelled up. I recall the bottoms of my feet being extremely itchy, more so than anywhere else, and I was sweating profusely. I started getting Charley horses in my calves. So, of course I was drinking a lot of water. I recall losing my vision in my right eye.”

Variations of the symptoms lasted for about a week after her first dose. She called a pharmacist who told her to take an antihistamine and, “if my tongue started to swell up, go to the ER.”

Soon afterward, Gamble developed other symptoms, including weakness in her ankles and a fluctuating heart rate.
“I also recall I was wearing my Fitbit. I’d walk into work, and I’d check my heart rate and sometimes it was at 140 and then it would drop down to regular, about 70 beats per minute. I’d be sitting down and I felt a little odd and I’d look at my Fitbit and my heart rate would shoot right up and then it would come right back down. And I stopped wearing it because I assumed my Fitbit was broken.”

The leg cramps kept getting worse, but Gamble attributed them to dehydration because where she worked “was quite hot, and so that’s what I thought was happening.”
‘I felt guilted’ into getting second dose

Gamble said her reactions to the Pfizer shot made her “leery” of getting a second dose — even her pharmacist recommended against it, she said.

“I spoke to the pharmacist about it, and I told him what had happened to me and about my muscles cramping up,” Gamble said. Her pharmacist recommended she see an immunologist before he would administer the second shot.

However, the doctor Gamble saw was far less sympathetic, she said:
“I didn’t have a family doctor, so I went down to the hospital thinking the receptionist or somebody would just book me an appointment with an immunologist.

“Instead, they put me in a waiting room. I saw a doctor and he told me right from the get-go he was not going to give me an exemption, he wasn’t going to give me an appointment with an immunologist. He told me to take an antihistamine and I would be fine.”

A combination of “nudging” from her doctor and Canada’s strict COVID-19-related restrictions led Gamble to go ahead with the second dose — especially after her doctor lectured her about “being a good citizen and not killing people,” she said.
So, I felt guilted into it, and I knew I couldn’t leave Canada unless I was fully vaccinated.”

Gamble’s pharmacist was uncomfortable administering the second dose but proceeded on the doctor’s recommendation. Though Gamble didn’t develop a rash this time, she did experience fatigue and blurry vision again.

“I felt like, okay, I’m going to sleep this off. And once again, after about three days I started to feel a little bit better. But then I started dropping things all over the place. At first, I just kind of thought it was weird.

“But then I noticed my sense of perception was off. I’d go to open a door and where I thought the door was, my hand would be two inches away from the door. I started having brain zaps. I still tried to work, and so I was at work, and I tried to write a report and I could barely hold my pen. My hands were
cramping up.”

Gamble also noticed slurred speech and changes in her ability to swallow food. “At that point, I decided obviously I can’t go to work. And I noticed muscles were starting to atrophy between my pinky finger and my ring finger.”

A neurologist at her local hospital, the London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, “looked at my hands and said, ‘There’s something going on here.’” He admitted her for the night.
However, in the morning, another doctor dismissed her concerns, telling her she was ‘bending my arms too much.” She then made an appointment with a doctor she had seen during a previous adverse reaction to medication. But by that point, her condition had deteriorated further.

“I was losing the muscles rapidly,” Gamble said. “Within two months, I went from having normal-looking hands to completely skeleton-looking hands. The muscles in my arms started to atrophy, [and] in my feet behind my kneecaps. I could really feel it. My balance was off. My blood pressure was low.”
Trying to get a diagnosis ‘has been hell’

During one of several hospital visits, Gamble said doctors were particularly dishonest to her.

“One of the doctors said to me that some people are getting Guillain-Barré syndrome and he was going to check me for that. So, he gave me blood work.” But Gamble later learned that’s not even the right test for Guillain-Barré.

“They have to do it with a spinal tap,” she said. “I kind of feel like every doctor I saw had a reason to try to make up something different other than it was the vaccine.”
Gamble is still having trouble finding a doctor willing and able to treat her — and medication that will be effective and not cause further adverse reactions.

Meanwhile, she is dealing with multiple health-related challenges. “Just trying to get to the bottom of what is going on has been hell,” she said.

She has since found a family doctor who prescribed prednisone, but Gamble said she had a “horrible” reaction to it. “My hands turned blue, my tongue turned blue, I was getting brain zaps. I was passing out and my husband took me to the hospital.”
Doctors then told Gamble she had Raynaud’s disease, but “I don’t have that because [the symptoms were] on both sides of my hands and on my tongue,” she said.

She added:

“They sent me home like that. I tried to get help at one point, and I couldn’t get help. My husband, I guess I got a message out to him, but it was all gibberish. He came home thinking I’d had a stroke. He took me to the hospital; they did a CT scan, and everything came back normal. Apparently, my blood work comes back normal.”
Continued....
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