Ashley, 14, New Zealand

Pfizer x 2

Diagnosed with vaccine induced pericarditis. Ashley took the jabs in order to get her vaccine pass to have a normal life. After her second shot she suffered chronic heart pain for more than 10 weeks. She spent most of Term 1 at home, unable to hang out with her friends and complete normal daily activities which has caused Ashley a lot of mental anguish.

My name is Paula, and this is my daughters true story.

Our 14yr old daughter Ashley has sadly become one of the unfortunate ones to suffer an adverse reaction to the P jab.

This is our story…..

Ashley started becoming unwell after her second vx which was administered on the 18th February 2022. Within 24hrs she was suffering from fatigue, headache, body soreness and most concerning chest pain which she described like having the stitch, especially when she breathed inwards. This chest pain progressively got worse over the next couple of days, where it started to radiate up into her shoulder and jaw.

On Monday 21/02/2022 I took her to our GP who straight away reported it to CARM that she was experiencing side effects from the vx. He organised an ecg and blood tests. The ECG was normal but her blood test came back with raised CRP levels so this was retested 3 days later and her inflammatory markers were then back to normal.

The following weekend after she had tried going out for her first outing all week, after not being able to go to school due to the fatigue and her continued pain, her chest pain started to get worse and continued to get significantly worse once she got home and lay down on her bed. That evening, Sunday 27/02/2022, I rang our local After Hour doctors service and at their advice I took her down to the Emergency Department. They performed another ECG, did more blood tests and a chest x-ray. Again, the ECG and chest x-ray came back normal, however her blood tests showed a slightly elevated white cell count. She was sent home with instructions to take regular pain relief and advised they would expect her symptoms to improve in a few days but to not hesitate to bring her back if we had any concerns or her condition was to get worse.

After 3 weeks of Ashley experiencing this chest pain, which ranged from 4/10-8/10 most days and her not being able to attend school due to there being little improvement in her condition, our GP send away a referral to see a Cardiologist privately, as we were in a fortunate position of having health insurance and we wanted answers to what was causing her chest pain. We are very thankful to him for being willing to do this.

Ashley ended up having an echocardiogram performed at the Southern Heart Centre on Wednesday 16th March 2022 and we received a phone call from the cardiologist the next day informing us the echocardiogram showed her pericardium shining nice and bright, meaning inflammation, so was officially diagnosed with Pericarditis, despite all her other tests being reasonably normal up till this point. The cardiologists report supported a diagnosis of vaccine related Pericarditis, as seen below.

‘The symptomatology and the timing of onset of symptoms close to the second P vx are compatible with vaccine related pericarditis. The persisting symptomatology for a number of weeks is also consistent with this.’ (Statement from Cardiologist Report)

We were very fortunate to get this diagnosis so quickly as I know many have not been that fortunate and there are many who still do not have answers for their chest pains experienced after the vx. We are very thankful to our GP, our cardiologist and all the people who have been praying for Ashley.

Of course, we are not happy this has happened to our daughter. This has had quite a significant effect on her life and caused her to be absent from school for most of Term 1, and she missed her friends terribly because of this. She is still experiencing daily chest pain 10 weeks later, which gets worse with any form of stress or exertion, especially if she gets herself upset, but she has made significant improvement over the last couple of weeks and is back to normal daily activities and hanging out with her friends as the pain now sits at around 2/10 going up to a 6/10 if she gets upset or exerts herself too much.

Ashley had been very unhappy with missing out on participating in her summer sports and being able to join her friends going out over the holidays due to not being vxd, so made the decision that she wanted to get the vx so she could get her vx passport. We decided to respect her choice and hoped she would be ok….unfortunately she wasn’t

Leading up to this, I had been hesitant from the start of the vx rollout mainly due to the research I had done on adverse effects and wanted myself and our two children to wait for an alternative with lesser side effects or none at all. I had made this decision based on much research from medical professionals and had read about a lot of people’s experience. I did not like what I was finding out, especially regarding heart effects, and for me 2 confirmed deaths from myocarditis set off an alarm bell. This led me to conclude that for us and our 2 children, the risks from the vx outweighed the risk from C19 especially for our children, considering many scientific experts and data stated that covid was less serious in young people especially in the under 18 age group. We had lots of discussions with both of our children and explained to them why we wanted them to wait. Our 16yr old son was very much on board with this and Ashley was to begin with, that was until the vx passes started being used. My husband also supported the decision to wait, however he ended up having to get the vx due to it being mandated for his job, thankfully he was ok, unfortunately Ashley was not so fortunate

I am angry that the 12-18yr old age group were mandated and included in the vaccine passports. I am angry that so many people lost their jobs. I am angry that so many have been impacted by this vx when we were told that it is safe and effective. If a vx is truly safe, I believe the only Adverse Reaction that we should see from it is Anaphylaxis. I am angry that so many of the vx affected are struggling to get support and have their claims accepted by ACC. I am angry that we were not told about the high number of cases of Myocarditis and Pericarditis from this vx. The Ministry of Health and media keep stating that these heart conditions from the vx are RARE, however I really question this and want to see the confirmed data of actual numbers.

We have shared our story to raise awareness, and to help those who may be going through this themselves or know and love someone who is.

Also to note, something we discovered after reaching out to another lady from Dunedin who had also shared her vx impact, was that both her and Ashley had their vx on the same day, at the same Pharmacy, one after another and both their vxs were from the same batch number which was FK9707-D0025 Exp 4/03/2022. If anyone else also had a vaccine with this batch number and suffered an adverse reaction, I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading our story.

Take care, Paula