Matt

My name is Matt and I’m 27 years old. Prior to the COVID vaccine I was living on the farm, always active, doing all kinds of hands-on projects around the place and getting out most weekends. On top of that I was a full-time support worker looking after the younger generations. I had no health issues whatsoever, I rarely made a trip to the doctor, just the usual check up every now and again.

Because of my line of work, the COVID vaccine was mandated. I never wanted it, I wasn’t against anyone else having it, I just didn’t want it for myself because I’d never had any other vaccine and didn’t feel it was necessary being the healthy fit person I was. I waited until the very last day before the mandates kicked in, but at the end of the day I had to work. I’d seen my family get the COVID vaccine and they were fine so I thought, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

I arrived at the local doctor’s clinic, extremely nervous and shaking. I got the AstraZeneca on 19 October 2021 in my left arm. Immediately I felt heat start to travel through my blood stream and throughout my body. I told the doctor, and he said it was normal. I felt a little bit dizzy, and while I was waiting the required 15 minutes, the doctor told me that AstraZeneca can cause blood clotting so he prescribed blood thinners before I even showed signs of blood clotting and told me to take them as a precaution. 

I bought the blood thinners (which I never took) and left for home which was about a 45-minute drive. On the way home I was blacking out and had a heavy arm. When I got home, I pretty much went straight to bed. The next day I woke up feeling drained, I called in sick to work and my partner went to work for the day. When my partner returned home from work, she found me in bed with a high temperature. She helped me into a cold shower to try and cool down. When I got out of the shower I blacked out, falling into my partner’s arms. She dragged me onto the bed and called the ambulance.

When the ambulance arrived, we stated that the only thing that was different was me having the vaccine. They just said this was a normal reaction and they tested my temperature which came back at 42c. I was taken to Laidley Hospital. On arrival they put me in a room and then forgot about us for a couple hours. When we went looking for help, they actually said that they had forgotten about me. Once someone came to see me, they did the usual. They ran an ECG, blood pressure test, and took my temperature. They didn’t find anything other than my temperature being 38c so they told me to take Panadol and to go home to rest.

I went home and the next morning I woke up having twitches in my face and my eyes rolling to the back of my head. My partner called the ambulance because she thought I was having what looked like a seizure. When the ambulance arrived, they did the observations and asked what we would like to do. My partner insisted that I needed to go to hospital, so they took me to Ipswich Hospital. 

On arrival, I was accompanied by my partner who stated that this was from the COVID vaccine. They dismissed us, saying it was a normal reaction. They gave me an ECG and full bloods which came back normal, and then tried to discharge me. Thankfully my partner kicked up a stink and fought for me to stay overnight which they very reluctantly agreed to in the end.

My partner had to leave and I don’t remember much of what happened over the next 12 hours because I was in and out of seizures the whole time. The nurses were around but they didn’t help me. I remember hearing some of the nurses speaking about me being injured by the COVID vaccine as they were doing the changeovers and the way they spoke of me was like, ‘Whatever, he’ll be alright, it’s nothing to worry about’.

The next morning my partner came to pick me up as soon as the doors opened. However, she found me seizing in my bed and the nurses doing nothing about it. My partner went to look for help and got a nurse to come over, but they didn’t do anything and told us that they would go and find a doctor. When the doctor arrived, she told us that I wasn’t having a seizure. When I asked what was happening, she said that I was just ‘twitching’. My partner argued about my condition for a bit then they just decided on the spot that they were going to discharge me. They were saying this was a normal reaction and that it would eventually stop, therefore there was nothing to worry about.

They wanted me to walk out of the hospital but I couldn’t walk, so my partner asked for a wheelchair which took an hour to get. As I was being wheeled out, my seizures were becoming progressively worse, my whole upper body was seizing at this stage. I could barely keep my head up or open my eyes.

My partner got me in the back of the car and called my mum. She told her there was no way I was going home in this state, and so they both agreed that I should go straight to Greenslopes Hospital. By the time I got to Greenslopes, my condition was even worse to the point where I was convulsing, unresponsive, and had stopping breathing.  

On arrival the doctors glanced at me being wheeled in and took me straight through, no questions asked! We stated that this was from the vaccine and that we were just discharged from Ipswich Hospital. They were mortified that this was even allowed to happen. They didn’t say a whole lot about this being related to the COVID vaccine, but they didn’t dismiss it either, they just wanted to get my condition under control.

It didn’t take them long to stabilise me but it didn’t last very long and my condition worsened. My seizures were now on and off for hours on end, getting longer and more severe to the point where we would have to hit the emergency button so the nurses and doctor could race in with the crash cart; they would attach the defibrillator on me just in case because my breathing was stopping on and off.

It was legitimately like a movie scene with 20 doctors running around yelling out medical terms, pulling machines out and cords hanging off me, sticking anti-seizure medication in me (diazepam and midazolam). It was chaos. But this was all a blur to me. Unfortunately, it was my partner who had to witness it all. When they realised the medication wasn’t working, they started running a bunch of tests on me. They ran ECG, bloods, X-ray, MRI, and lumbar puncture.

All tests came back clear, and they decided to admit me overnight. It was nice to finally feel somewhat validated and to be taken seriously after what I had experienced with the Laidley and Ipswich hospitals. I was admitted at 11pm and a specialist neurosurgeon was called in. He even woke his kids up and brought his kids in with him.

There wasn’t much he could do at this time of the night, but he was invested in me enough to make an appearance and present a plan. He suggested that I should be put into ICU that night which happened at 1am after the worst seizure I’d had, which lasted 1.5 hours without a break. I don’t remember anything other than waking up with ice bricks all over me. I was in extreme pain throughout my joints and muscles all over my body. The nurses had no idea what to do, they were only able to stand by with the crash cart just in case.

I was finally transferred to ICU on 22 October 2021 once I was stabilised, and I was under 24-hour watch with everything that happened being recorded. When my partner and family arrived the next day, they were told that I had been seizing on and off all night, but nothing had lasted as long as the longest one, so they were hoping that the worst had been and gone, which turned out to be right.

The specialist neurosurgeon came back in the morning and ran an EEG which showed no epileptic activity on my brain. My whole family was then called in and he diagnosed me with dissociative seizures. My mum repeatedly asked, “So this was from the COVID vaccine?” but he would only verbally say in a roundabout way that this was from the vaccine. Still to this day he won’t put pen to paper. Luckily my GP has stated that this is a COVID vaccine injury. I was discharged while still having seizures and I still have them to the current day. 

Over the last year I have had about 40 seizures in total and I’ve been back to hospital twice with no results. I have just learned what my triggers are and how to deal with it on my own with the help of my partner. No medication was ever prescribed, so I just take supplements and try to eat a clean, healthy diet and drink plenty of fluid which has been working. I have found that beetroot juice of all things has been working the best.

I still twitch on a regular basis, but the worst of my seizures seem to be over. My biggest problem now is that my core temperature regulation is messed up and I overheat all the time. Sometimes I can’t get my temperature down for days on end. This is my biggest concern and I still have many unanswered questions regarding this.

I’m about 15 to 20 per cent of my old self. I can’t do what I used to, I can’t work outside anymore, and I have had to change my clients to make it easier for me to manage. I’m not able to be in the sun anymore and I can’t complete basic daily tasks without having to stop for a break all the time.

I would just say to everyone experiencing a vaccine Injury, to get it out there. It took me a while because I was a scared of facing backlash from the public, but I reached a stage where I realised I have nothing to lose and it’s up to us to show everyone the true reality of what is happening to everyday people like myself.