“I ran to get vaccinated,” Niva of Tel Aviv said in a telephone interview about health problems that occurred immediately after her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel. “I waited with baited breath. I came from a world in which you don’t doubt vaccines.”
She even skipped the line for her age group (40-50) to get the jab.
“Symptoms appeared already right after the vaccination,” she said. They included severe hand, neck and back pain. “From moment to moment, day to day, new symptoms came, or they got worse, or they changed …Tingling turned to numbing; numbing turned to pain. It spread to my toes, then to all of my feet.”
She hoped they would pass, since COVID vaccine symptoms were widely advertised to be “mild and temporary.” When the time came for the second dose, she went to the vaccination center, mainly to speak with the on-site physician about her suspected side effects. She noted that neither he nor the nurse reported her symptoms to the Ministry of Health. Nevertheless, the doctor made some calls.
“And he was so happy to tell me: ‘You can get another vaccine.’ I said: ‘That wasn’t my question. I wasn’t coming for permission. I wanted to know why it’s happening.’ And he said: ‘How should I know?’ And he was mean about it. And I said, ‘What should I do?’ And he said: ‘Get another vaccine.’ And I asked: ‘What if it makes my situation worse?’ And he said, ‘There’s a hospital nearby. You can go to the hospital.’ I was shocked. He didn’t care.”