Delayed Pfizer side effects?

[Osakasunset]

Wondering if anyone has some wise words re. my current dilemma. I usually take up vaccines without any hesitancy. I get my flu vaccine annually (already booked in for this) and, so far, I’ve had 4 x covid vaccinations – all Pfizer.

I will be eligible for the next booster, but feel in two minds about having it, especially if it will be Pfizer again, due to strange episodes of illness that may (or may not) have been delayed reactions to the two previous boosters. My primary doses were both totally fine except for a slightly painful arm and some tiredness.

For both boosters, 2-3 weeks after I had the jab I became really quite ill. On both occasions I was practically bedbound for about a week, with symptoms such as constant nausea, dizziness, and some gastro issues. Both times felt really strange, and like nothing I’d experienced before. I did do LFTs in case it was covid but these were negative (though of course may have been false negatives). I was working from home FT with very limited mixing when I had them.

The first time, I assumed I must have caught something around the same time or shortly after the booster date, but then when it happened like clockwork the second time I started to wonder if it could be my body reacting to the vaccine itself.

For context, I coincidentally had both boosters early on in my menstrual cycle and then the symptoms coincided with my next period. The second time it happened was much worse than the first, which makes me worried that it could happen again and I’d have an even worse reaction (which I can't quite imagine as the second time was so awful).

Has anyone else experienced or heard about anything like this?

Yesterday I had my latest booster for covid /flu and I feel awful today - full body aches, flu symptoms etc.

I had the same reaction with my initial vaccine, but have completely fine (apart from sore arm) with all other boosters. Not sure what the difference is this year, but definitely feeling it this time

I've to go for mine soon. Is it Pfizer this year then?

I have no idea if your symptoms are related to the vaccine. It could just be a coincidence. I have mine this week and am a bit nervous as my colleague had "the new vaccine" (he doesn't remember the name) and felt really ill for a week!

After my 3rd Pfizer I ended up with bad palpitations for a number of months after, even though my first 2 were perfectly fine. I have auto immune issues and what I have read up on since suggests that my negative side effects may be linked to that. If you are needing to get the vaccine for health reasons then perhaps worth discussing with your GP to see what vaccine is being supplied?

Ps. I also (like a lot of women )had menstrual bleeding following my jabs (I don’t normally bleed due to the coil)….Tim Spector from ZOE had a good explanation on his website at 1 point as to why the jabs can affect menstrual cycles but the evidence says that any impact will be short lived, so it could just be to do with this for you?

I went for my last Covid booster (Pfizer) this time last year. DH was supposed to go with me but had a splitting headache. He struggled for 24hrs with it and only Ibuprofen helped. It the dawned on me that the Covid strain that was going round often started with a headache. So I tested us all and both DH and I were positive. To be honest apart from the headache neither of us had any other symptoms other than mild cold.
There are always lots of viruses doing the rounds at this time of the year so picking up a cold is statistically very likely which may explain your periods of ill health post vaccine.
The first vaccines were given when people were still sticking to the social distancing rules so not many other viruses were around.
Foreign travel tends to spread new strains of colds so we had a bit of a quiet time when travel was limited.
I’ve had Covid at least 3x and it has never been serious. I will have flu vacc this year since we haven't had a lot of exposure to flu for a few years and flu is 10x worse than any of the Covid infections I’ve had.
Im fairly certain I’ve had Covid recently but so mild it hardly registered. The only symptom I’ve had is loss of sense of smell which I’ve had with every other episode.
Unless a strain develops that is significantly different I’m not going to bother.

I would not touch it with a barge pole. Many people have reported issues after.

Indeed. OP, you were lucky to have gotten away with those effects and nothing more.

And most people have not.

I'm not having mine as I had awful side effects with the booster, I had the 3 first ones but no more, I just fall into the categories that can have it as I was 65 this year.

What is the reason you are eligible for it, is it because you are very vulnerable, it's obviously not age as you mention periods. I think you have to weigh up whether it's important that you have it. I did this and on balance if I had been 6 months younger I wouldn't have been eligible anyway so have decided not too.

I am not eligible for boosters so only had my initial vaccines years ago which were Pfizer.

I had no ill effects other than a random bleed each time which shouldn't happen as I take the pill back to back.

So I do think there's definitely something weird around the menstruel cycle and the vaccine and the timing of the booster may well make a difference.

Thanks so much for all the thoughts so far. It's really interesting to hear other people's experiences.
Someone asked about my eligibility and age - I'm in my 30s and have an underlying health condition on the "at risk" list in the green book.

Still feeling conflicted. My gut instinct if I had to choose right now would be to not have it and just take steps like making sure I'm only going to supermarkets at the quietest times etc. I work from home FT so the amount and type of mixing I do is relatively controllable.

However, the idea of "declining a vaccine" feels very strange as I'm usually so pro-vaccine and have always had everything I've been offered - like I even got asked to be the first person at my school to have whichever of the meningitis vaccines got rolled out in the late 90s because lots of my classmates were scared of needles so ended up having it in front of a crowd etc.!

Could be purely coincidence but so far no other explanation.

I felt horrendous, sharp pain down my side and back, a cough, chills. Turned out I had 2 large blood clots in my lungs.

Obviously can't say it was that though.

BTW I didn't conclude this. Just comments from the hospital.

Had the two jabs Saturday, been feeling rough. Woke this morning with severe diarrhoea, is this another after effect?

I am pro vaccine, but had a severe reaction to the MRNA jab. Acute heart inflammation, bad enough to go to hospital so at least it was fully diagnosed and reported to the health authorities. Main symptom before it escalated was a pain like heart burn. A lot of palpitations showed on ECG, but I was too ill to be aware of them. I know (not from my original friends, met through treatment - say this to not exaggerate the numbers) other women who had similar issues. I don’t write this to spread fear, but to say women have been impacted by this, it is not just young men. Many have struggled to get diagnosis and treatment, sometimes having to pay privately for an MRI.

These cases need to be fully and transparently investigated, to understand who it is happening to, what happens, what the risk factors are and best treatment options. Instead there are sides - safe and effective versus conspiracy theories. So frustrating and it has created an environment where it is difficult to have a balanced discussion about side effects and to be able to make informed decisions.

Apologies for the essay. Can you write out a list of side effects on a time line and take it to the Dr. Also ask about the options of steroids or Paxlovid if you did get Covid and struggle.

Yes and if I were to list everything I had wrong, I’d be here about 6 hours. I had the first vaccine and the only thing I noticed was that I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest, I was really scared. I went and had my second vaccine in the December and within two weeks, I’d developed so many weird and unusual side effects. The scariest thing was when was in hospital for something entirely different, I had a heart attack. I thought I was a gonner. The dr asked me if I’d had the vaccine and I told him about what the first one was like and he went “well if your heart reacted like that, why did you have a second vaccine?”. I then did a bit of research and found my batch number in the Pfizer trial data. In my batch there were 900 or so participants and 35 died! I’m now watching all the stuff in parliament which is all very new to me but I am glad they are talking about it as we deserve to know. My dad received a payout due to the reaction he had but he’s signed something where he’s not allowed to talk about it to anyone, nor how much he got. What I don’t like is if you bring it up just to have a normal conversation about, people call you an antivaxer or conspiracy theorist! I’ve had Covid vaccine!!

Please spread your COVID and flu shots - do not get them both at once, preferably leave a 14 day gap. There has been shown to be a minimal increase in stroke risk in older males when both are administered at once. It's definitely advisable to get both shots, but not at the same time.

Stroke risk aside, both shots can leave you feeling ill for a day after, so why double the effect?

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/25/health/covid-flu-vaccine-stroke-risk-study/index.html

PS the slightly elevated risk of stroke is apparently linked to certain flu vaccines, not the COVID ones.

@Osakasunset did you report your reaction to the previous jabs via the yellow card system/ have you discussed with a medical professional?

Did discuss with a medical professional and they felt that side effects from the booster would have occurred within a couple of days rather than after a delay so it must have been coincidence. This was back in 2022 though so perhaps there is more info now that would suggest otherwise.
I didn't yellowcard as I was so unsure if it was the vaccine because I couldn't find anything about delayed effects so I think I assumed I must be wrong!
Then started this thread when roll out of this year's boosters started and I didn't know what to do!

Did discuss with a medical professional and they felt that side effects from the booster would have occurred within a couple of days rather than after a delay so it must have been coincidence.

The medical professional must be living under a rock. Even back in 2022 there was common knowledge that a lot of side effects begin to affect people weeks and months after the vaccine.

It could easily be nothing to do with the vaccine, but just wanted to say that you aren't only meant to report things you think could be caused by the vaccine via the yellow card system. You can use it for anything out of the (your) ordinary even if you can't yourself see how it would be causally linked. Then researchers crunch the numbers to see if overall some symptom or other is happening more to vaccinated people than the background normal rate at which that thing happens to people who haven't just had that vaccine (or a medication or whatever), and that's how it gets into package inserts as a side effect warning or whatever (or is the reason why a particular medication might stop being used for some people). So it's always worth reporting things.

But what is the point of the vaccine anyway? Even the manufacturer no longer claims that it will prevent you from contracting the virus, instead there is some vague waffle about not being as ill when you get it as you would have been without the jab. Horrendously, the NHS is claiming that this has ‘always’ been the case with vaccines. Absolute rubbish…..if you had the smallpox jab, you didn’t get smallpox, if you had the TB jab, you didn’t get TB, that is why these diseases were until recently extinct in most of Europe.

And this claim is not susceptible to proof. If Covid ( like some diseases) followed a defined path, with similar symptoms amongst all the sufferers, then it would be possible to monitor effectiveness, controlling for other common variables such as age, ethnicity , sex and co-morbidities. But it doesn’t. So it is impossible to prove or even demonstrate that claim, because there is no control group.