I am 48, I have three adult sons and three grandchildren. I lived in Lennox Head/Lismore my entire life and moved up to Haliday Bay, Queensland in January 2021 to start fresh as my husband (together for three years) is in the mining Industry and we’d spent a lot of time separated from each other with border closures.
I decided on a change of career and also went into mining. I finally received notice in September 2021, then went through the required medicals having every test under the sun. I was given a clean bill of health from my doctor late last year (2021), with the only issue being an upgraded glasses prescription.
I had my first two vaccines with no issue. The first Astra Zeneca jab was on 11 August 2021 and I was happy to get it as we were fearful of Covid. I got the second Astra Zeneca jab on 3 November so that I could cross the border to see my kids, and for my job.
I started work on 12 January 2022 as a heavy machinery operator driving large trucks in the coal mines. It’s a huge job. Our shifts are 90 hours of work in seven days. When I started work the government changed the regulations for the booster to three months instead of four. It wasn’t mandated through work but the word going around was that if you didn’t get it, you’d be let go and I didn’t want to risk that being so new. There was lots of talk about Pfizer in the lunchrooms with people feeling apprehensive about it. The mine was paranoid about being shut as COVID was sweeping through, even with all the precautions of having to wear masks onsite and in the trucks, plus a face shield if we had anyone in the truck with us We were already operating on minimal staff.
I finished my shift cycle on 1 February 2022 and had my booster appointment on 3 February. The doctor took me through the pros and cons of the jab and said the regulations stipulated Pfizer after Astra Zeneca. I mentioned I was wary about it.
I yelped when the nurse administered it. It instantly hurt as it touched my skin, something which hadn’t happened before. On the 40-minute drive home my arm was like a dead weight and I couldn’t lift it. I put it in a sling as I couldn’t move it that night. I just had a sore arm on the Friday, but on the Saturday I woke up feeling very strange. I can’t describe it other than to say I felt very odd in my body. We went out for dinner with friends. I had two drinks and didn’t feel right, so I didn’t have any more and didn’t want to stay. I would normally kick my heels up with a few drinks, so it was unlike me.
On the Sunday morning, I woke up feeling a tingling and numbness in my body. My eyes were swollen and burning. They felt like ping pong balls in my head and were red hot. I was short of breath, I felt highly strung, I was emotional (even crying) and felt like I hadn’t slept for days. I did a RAT test as I thought I had COVID, but it was negative.
On Monday when I woke up, I felt like I was dying. I couldn’t do anything for the entire day. As I was going to bed that night, I started getting chest pain and collapsed on the bed. I passed out and couldn’t move my limbs or get up. My husband wanted to take me to hospital, but I refused. I didn’t want to be exposed to COVID at Mackay Hospital (it was a hotspot) and I thought I’d wait it out and go to the doctor the next day.
I woke up Tuesday with a swollen face, burning eyes, heavy numb limbs like dead weights, and chest pain again. My appointment was at 1pm and on the 40-minute drive in, I went downhill. As I was walking into the surgery, I collapsed. They put me on an ECG, which showed abnormal readings. My heart-rate was 145bpm and they thought I was having a heart attack, so they rang an ambulance. I was there for two hours before the ambulance came and I asked to go to the private hospital in Mackay as I had private health insurance.
They did blood tests and a D-dimer that showed up positive for a blood clot. The CT scan and chest X-ray were both clear. After four hours I was still going downhill. They couldn’t get a catheter in and I ended up with bruises all over me. The emergency doctor told me I could go home, yet they had to wheelchair me to the toilet! I was dizzy and nauseated, and my limbs were so heavy I couldn’t walk. The ER doctor got angry with me and told me, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you!’ One of the nurses came to my side after she heard the doctor say this and told me the doctor can’t send me home if I don’t want to leave. A cardiologist was contacted and agreed to admit me for observation.
I was put in a room and left to my own devices. I overheard the ER doctor tell the nurse upon handover, ‘She’s tired, she hasn’t had enough sleep and she’s having a nervous breakdown. Just put her in overnight and she’ll be fine’. This was the same doctor who was trying to make me go home. I wasn’t on any monitors or anything, just put into a room, given Panadol and Nurofen and was shaken awake in the night by the nurse a couple of times doing observations. The nurse was also annoyed when I requested help to go to the toilet.
In the morning when the cardiologist came, he took one look at me and said, ‘You look gravely ill’. I was no better than the day before and had all the same symptoms. He got my ECG and called the head nurse and told her, ‘This ECG is abnormal. She has pericarditis’. The nurses came running then! I spent five days in hospital, and they started me on colchicine and ibuprofen. On the last day I was there, they couldn’t read my blood pressure and my was heart rate was 125bpm. I had MRIs on the brain and abdomen, each looking for a clot. I had an echocardiogram and CT scan. Both came back clear but they could hear that I had a pericardial rub (it’s the sound from the friction of the heart and the sack).
I was discharged on the Saturday with six weeks rest, a prescription for metoprolol (a beta blocker). I started feeling a whole lot better but was in and out of doctors’ clinics for a few days and on the third day out, I ended up collapsing at the doctor’s surgery again! It was like déjà vu. The ambulance came and the paramedics again suspected a heart attack. This time I was taken to Mackay Base Hospital and was in ER for 17 hours where I was diagnosed with pericarditis post-vaccine.
The next morning, they were going to admit me but as they were full of COVID patients I pushed to be discharged under the care of my GP. I went home and continued to take the medication. I was wheelchair-bound (I’d hired one) as I was breathless, weak, and dizzy. It was then that the flooding happened in Lismore and my family lost everything, so we drove down to be with them for three days (I wasn’t driving). I was ok down there; I took it easy. My sister drove us back, but it took three days to get home because I was fatigued and couldn’t handle it and we had to keep stopping.
I got back on 15 March and went straight to my six week follow up appointment with the cardiologist at 1pm. He did an ECG that day and it was slightly abnormal. My blood pressure was high and he could also hear I was wheezy something I thought was from pericarditis. He said it wasn’t and believed I’d developed asthma as a reaction to metoprolol. He took me off that and put me on a Cordilox (verapamil) which slows the heart rate. He said it would put me in bed for five days as it was a very heavy-duty drug. I delayed taking it for a couple of days as we were moving house the next day. I started taking it on the Friday and on Saturday morning I could barely move and barely breathe. I was on the lounge all day and continued getting worse. My husband called an ambulance when he got home and they thought I was having a heart attack.
In the hospital I had a morphine drip in my arm for 24 hours as they were so busy. While lying there, I heard at least five or six young people coming in with heart and chest pain post vaccine, and I could hear them all being told they had anxiety and they could go home. They didn’t test me for anything, just gave me a chest X-ray and had me on the monitor. The cardiologist was appalled at my treatment and transferred me back to the private hospital, into the High Dependency/Coronary Care Unit where I was on the ECG for seven days’ monitoring.
On the second day I had an echocardiogram, which discovered a pericardial effusion (fluid built up). The echo was extremely painful, afterwards I was in intense pain in and under the left side of my breast, constrictive pain across my chest, and chest wall pain. I also had vertigo, asthma, and pins and needles. They put me on the highest dose of prednisone (50mg), but my body wasn’t responding and my condition was getting worse. They took me off the Cordilox as they discovered I was allergic to it and put me on diltiazem. I also had an allergic reaction to Endone and codeine which caused my heart rate to increase to 180 bpm and caused hot and cold sweats and nausea. I’m now allergic to five different drugs. I never had any issues prior to the jab.
My current diagnoses are: acute recurring pericarditis, costochondritis, sinus tachycardia, shortness of breath, acute asthma, hypertension, vertigo, chest pain, positive to an autoimmune disease (yet to be diagnosed and which they believe was lying dormant until the Pfizer jab kicked it off and which they think might be attacking my heart). My liver is also starting to fail because of all the medication. I now also have post vaccine PTSD where I wake up every night at 1.30am thinking I’m in a coffin and can’t get back to sleep. To top it all off, I’ve had two positive and one negative tests in the past eight weeks for pheochromocytoma – a very rare adrenal cancer, so I now have to go through some extremely invasive testing for the next two weeks.
I’ve been told by the doctors I’ll never be able to work in the mines again. My career is over before it began, and we bought a house using all our savings just two days before I had the vaccine which caused all of this. My husband has just gone back to work today after helping me for the last eight weeks. We’ve had no income as we are casuals so don’t get any sick pay. I won’t be able to do any job for at least 6-12 months. As soon as I stand up, I get breathless and my heart rate shoots up to 135 bpm, even while on medication.
I can’t do anything without being in pain and have no quality of life at all. I need to sleep sitting up (I get a crushing feeling in my chest if I lie down), I can’t walk my dog, I can’t drive, I can’t shop, and I can’t hold my grandchildren. I’m on 24 tablets a day to keep my body going, four lots of pain medication, plus a preventative asthma puffer (I can’t have Ventolin as that sets off my heart). All this just to be able to see my kids and keep my job. I have a carer now for 12 hours a week to do the cooking, cleaning, and shopping while my husband has returned to the mines, because I’m unable to any of that.
My condition is ongoing and changing by the week, with no end in sight. My expenses in the last eight weeks are already $65,000. I am seeing a personal injury lawyer and I have a good case for a claim against the government scheme, because there’s no doubt from the doctors that the pericarditis is from the vaccine. They tell me that it’s like the vaccine has set off a bomb in my body.
Ive been suffering nearly a year drs gaslight me Mackay Base is a joke