I am 39 years old. I was 38 when I got the COVID vaccine. I’m a dad of two and have a Diploma of Fitness. I used to be a personal trainer. I’ve always trained at the gym every day and I did natural bodybuilding, but have never taken any steroids. Basically, I have a professional knowledge of fitness and nutrition and am very careful about what I put in my body. Most recently I was working in the corporate sphere. I didn’t need the vaccine for my job, but I couldn’t access the gym without it.
I got the vaccine purely to be able to train at the gym. I went to the massive Homebush pop up clinic for my first Pfizer vaccination, which was in left arm. This was 3rd September 2021. I had no side effects afterwards, so I felt good that at least I’d done the right thing and everything was fine.
It was only 10 days later that I started experiencing quite significant chest pains, like someone was standing on my heart. My chest felt heavy. I had never felt anything like this before. I wondered if I had anxiety, so I cut the caffeine from my coffee. Just to be safe, I booked an appointment with my GP for 18th of September. My GP did a routine check-up, but nothing seemed amiss. I didn’t even mention that I’d had the jab in the appointment because at this stage, no one knew about any of these side effects. All I had ever seen, heard or been told was that it was ‘safe and effective’. It honestly didn’t occur to me that what I was experiencing might be related. The GP thought I must have anxiety and prescribed me Valium, which I took as prescribed over the following week, but it didn’t affect my symptoms.
I returned to Homebush 6th of October 2021 for my second Pfizer vaccination, once again in my left arm. Just like the first time, I felt fine immediately afterwards, except for the ongoing chest pain that I had had for the past month. However, about a week after, this all changed. The manageable chest pain that I already had, became unbearable. I was lying on the couch with a bag of frozen peas and corn on my chest to try to help with the pain. I was confused, wondering if I really had chronic anxiety. It just didn’t make sense, because I had no history of anxiety and I couldn’t think of anything that I was anxious about.
We were in lockdown during this time, so luckily I was working from home and didn’t have to leave my bed. But even still, I couldn’t get through the day without a couple of hours of resting in between. Obviously I was not able to do any workouts at all. I was actually too terrified, because I didn’t know what was going on with my heart. I was making about 15 minutes of walking each day, but my heart would race so intensely and be so painful, that I had to stop.
To my GP’s credit, he called me just before I got my second jab to see how I was doing. Because I hadn’t improved, he referred me for an echocardiogram. The appointment was at the Sydney Cardiology Centre on 20th October, 2021, which was perfect timing because by now I was debilitated. This is when I finally got an inkling what was going on. The practitioner told me that I was the fourth young man to come in that day, with heart problems after the vaccination. He told me that I had fluid build-up around my heart. He said he’d seen so many cases like mine. He suspected it was pericarditis caused by the vaccine, but I would need to see the cardiologist for an official diagnosis. I imagine he was so frank with me because this information was only just starting to come out and the suppression campaign had not yet begun. I was devastated. I was in total disbelief that at the age of 38 and with my history of health and fitness, I might have significant heart damage, caused by the very treatment that I was told was ‘safe and effective’.
The Cardiology Centre sent my echocardiogram results back to my GP. Based on those results, the GP told me that I had pericarditis. He prescribed me anti-inflammatory medication, colchicine, and said not to exercise at all.
He advised that at this stage I would not need to see a cardiologist. He said that if the pain got worse, I should go straight to emergency. I still could not believe what was happening. I keep coming back to the word ‘violated’. I felt like I’d been tricked. No one ever warned me that this was a potential side effect. In fact, we were constantly told the opposite in all the government and health advice.
I started on the medication straight away. I had been taking it for about a week when on 4th November 2021, while working from home, I started having uncontrollable chest pain. It was on a level that I hadn’t experienced before and it really frightened me. I thought I might be having a heart attack. I was home alone, so I drove myself to emergency, as I thought this would be faster than waiting for an ambulance. I only live a five-minute drive from Westmead Hospital. On arrival, the hospital staff put me in a bed immediately. I was seen by a senior doctor who was accompanied by a junior doctor. They conducted a heart ultrasound and confirmed that I had pericarditis, with significant fluid build-up around my heart.
They admitted me overnight for observation. The next day I was discharged with a prescription for pain killers, prednisone and more colchicine. I was also told to book in with a cardiologist as soon as possible.
The first appointment I could get with a cardiologist was 17th November, 2021. In the time between hospital and the cardiologist, I just took the medication as directed and did my best to work on my laptop from my bed. I started feeling depressed for the first time in my life. I’d never not exercised for this long and my mental health was really suffering. I was also gaining weight from being in bed all the time. I felt distant and kind of detached. My relationship with my partner started to crack. We couldn’t even have sex because it felt like I was having a heart attack if we tried. It was demoralising.
The cardiologist arranged for a lot of different tests and I was again diagnosed with pericarditis. He stopped short of linking pericarditis with the vaccine because he said I could have got it from COVID. The thing is, I hadn’t had COVID. He insisted that maybe I had had COVID and not even known about it. Unfortunately, I was not aware at this time that you can do antibody tests to find out if you’ve had it or not and the cardiologist never suggested any way of confirming it.
Essentially, he knew I’d had the vaccine and knew I had no symptoms or record of having COVID. Instead, he insisted that there was no way that he’d link my condition to the vaccine. He also mentioned that he’d seen a lot of young men lately with ‘anxiety’. To be honest, I felt dismissed and humiliated. He tested my resting heart rate, which was at 140 beats per minute, when my normal range is 60-80 beats per minute. He adjusted my medication and sent me for more testing.
I have seen this cardiologist many times since then, at $250 per visit. He eventually changed his position on the cause of my pericarditis and it is now formally documented as being caused by the Pfizer vaccine. As far as I can tell, he changed on this because medical professionals started to receive confirmation via studies, that in fact the Pfizer jab can and does cause pericarditis, especially in men of my age.
The diagnosis is important because it means I can now apply for compensation from the national claims scheme. I’m out of pocket on medical bills by over $5,500 so far. I also lost tens of thousands of dollars in earnings. I lost my job in February 2022 because I was so depressed and physically debilitated, that I couldn’t manage the workload.
The diagnosis linking my pericarditis to the vaccine is important because I want the truth to be acknowledged. I had to go to hospital for a month, over April to May, to manage my depression. Thankfully this was covered by my healthcare plan. I also lost my relationship over this. I couldn’t show up as a dad, partner, or friend. It was too much pressure, and the relationship broke. I lost everything that mattered to me because I believed the lie, ‘safe and effective’.
I wrote this to the government when I submitted my compensation claim. My claim has been under review since January 2022. It is now October 2022. I keep following up, but keep getting an auto-responder, saying that my claim is still under review. It’s maddening. I just think, ‘You did this to me so you should help me. Is that not fair?’
In Sydney we had flooding recently. The government sent those of us who were affected $1000 within 24 hours of the flooding. How come they can help people who get flooded in 24 hours, but they can’t help people who are devastatingly injured by their ‘safe and effective’ vaccine after 10 months?