My COVID Vaccine Experience

The decision to have the vaccine

I’m not a big fan of vaccines. I strongly suspect that a Hepatitis B vaccine was involved in the original onset of my ME, and I usually don’t have the flu jab, fearful that it could knock me back almost as much as the flu itself could. If you’d asked me a year ago whether I’d eventually have the COVID vaccine I probably would have said no. When they started the vaccine programme here in the UK, I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do and I was sitting in the wait and see camp. In fact, recently the ME Association made this letter template for people to send to their GP to ask to be made a priority for the vaccine, but I still decided to wait. And to be honest, I was expecting to wait for longer before having to decide.

Then last week I got an invite, earlier than I expected, as in this area they haven’t reached my age range yet. I’m left to assume that I my GP put me forward as a priority anyway. In the end I decided to go ahead, partly based on the fact that it isn’t a live vaccine, and partly based on the fact that I’ve heard from many people with ME who had had it and most had suffered only a very temporary set-backs. In fact, many had only had after effects for the same amount of time expected in a healthy person. I can’t deny either, that my desires to visit my friends in Spain later in the year, played a part in the decision! A final factor, was how big a knock back I had in my health last year from an unknown virus. I didn’t want that to happen again, and I was concerned that catching Covid would probably do that.

Preparation

I got the invite on Wednesday only offering appointments on the Thursday or the Saturday. I decided on the Thursday because it would give me longer to get over it before having a client coaching session on Monday. But that didn’t give me as much time as I was hoping to prepare with a couple of quiet days and some extra supplements. (See Dr Nancy Klimas’ recommendations in this article). However, I did cut back what I’d planned to do on Wednesday. And cleared my schedule for Thursday and Friday also knowing I could take it easy at the weekend. (See below for a list of the extra supplements I took to help me through the experience).

Having the vaccination

The vaccination centre was really well organised and the staff were great. However, it was very, very noisy. I’m very susceptible to noise stimulation so once I’d had the vaccination (Pfizer), I asked the staff if they could find me somewhere quiet to wait out the 15-mins you have to stay to make sure you don’t have a serious adverse reaction. They found me a quiet room to wait in and came and got me when my time was up. They couldn’t have been more considerate. A big thanks to the lovely people of the NHS!

The after effects

My after effects have been very minor, just 3 days after the vaccine and I feel as well as I did before it, well enough to sit down and write this! Some of the after effects could even have had more to do with the noisy environment than the vaccine itself but who knows?

I immediately had a sore throat like I get when I’m fighting off an infection. In the first couple of hours, I had a few weird muscle spasms in various places around my body, and I felt tired. I rested the rest of the day though, and really didn’t feel too bad.

The next morning, I woke up feeling tired and achy, but the muscle aches responded well to my daily anti-inflammatory. Again, I had a really quiet day, and by the end of the day I wasn’t feeling too bad at all. I would probably describe it as slightly below baseline.

Yesterday I was pretty much back to baseline, but I wanted to be cautious. I did go for a very short walk but again, I chose to do less than I would normally do and rest a lot more.

Today I’m pretty sure I’m back to my normal. I even spent a bit of extra energy getting the breakfast together for my Mum. (It’s mother’s day here in the UK). I still plan on taking it easy today but I’m pretty confident that all is going to be well!

The extra supplements I chose to take

The following are the additions to my normal supplement routine, my decision was based mainly on trying to boost my levels of antioxidants with whatever vitamins I had to hand.

The day before: