COVID vaccine... Valid Concern
Hi everyone. I have a genuine concern when it comes to the vaccine. It has nothing to do with me being yay or nay about it. I'm all for anything that's good for humanity.
My main concern is that twice that I had taken the flu vaccine, I relapsed the next day which led me to having weak left leg and couldn't control my hand movement for 3 months. Other than the full tingle attack and MS Hug pain.
I finished my Mavenclad Year 1 cycle in February. My doctor wants me to wait until June for blood tests then to take the vaccine. I have explained my flu vaccine history to her but feel that she's not really looking into it or concerned about it.
Earlier if I had gotten a relapse, shit happens and I move on but now I am concerned because I have kids and work too.
What would you advice me to tell/ask the doctor? Or look into? Could it be that I had an allergic reaction to the flu vaccine that caused the relapse.
Hence, my worry on the COVID vaccine.
I too also had an attack shortly after flu vaccination (a couple weeks after in my case.) I was hesitant about the vaccine for the exact same reason. As far as I can tell there's no way to conclusively link vaccination to an attack, so I decided to just take the chance. I was vaccinated with the first jab of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine on Wednesday, and so far I feel absolutely fine. I'll try and remember to check back here if anything happens, but so far so good 😊 it's also important to remember that flu vaccine contain adjuvants that are designed to stimulate your immune system, which could be what causes the problem in an autoimmune condition. As far as I'm aware none of the Covid vaccines contain adjuvants, but the mRNA vaccines certainly don't. The mRNA is basically a line of genetic code which tells your body to make and replicate the spike protein from the surface of the virus (which on it's own is harmless) the same way the actual virus would tell your cells to replicate the full virus. What this does is allow your immune system to recognize the spike protein on the surface of the virus and stop it and kill it. These vaccines are a completely new technology that's never been used on this scale before, so even if you've had problems with vaccines, you've never had a vaccine that works the way these ones do. This is what I kind of told myself to get myself more comfortable with it, so hope that's of some help 😊 otherwise always best to voice your concerns with your MS team!
I had attack after flu vaccine too this year then got shingles same week too. Horrid it's out me off. I've had both doses of Phizer now and I've been ok. My arm hurt for 24hours but other than that I was good. I didn't have any time off work but every person is very different reactionwise. I've lost a few people (over 70) due to Covid the past year so I wanted to protect myself and everyone around me as much as possible. I'd discuss with your ms nurse. I did and she gave the vaccine facts. Good luck ✌️