All of those referred to in this post have given me their permission to write this.
This morning I sat with a client of mine who was crying. She is 34 and trying to get pregnant. This young woman has lived through Lyme disease, autoimmune disease (which she believes was triggered by the guardasil vaccine) and the death of her father due to an anaphylactic reaction after a medical procedure. Years ago she was told by her allopathic (ie. standard medicine) doctor not to get the flu shots because he was afraid she would have a severe reaction due to her immune system not functioning properly and felt the risk wasn’t worth it.
She is now with a new allopathic doctor due to a change in her health plan and he has pushed her to get the mRNA vaccine even with her health history. For the past two months she has researched everything she can to see if taking this vaccine could cause her her to have severe reactions and what the risk is based on her condition. Her research has come up with a possible (50/50 it seems as no one will take a side on this) poor outcome from the vaccine due to her underlying conditions and nothing on how she could be helped if something did happen. This hasn’t offered her much hope and yet her doctor feels she should just try and see what happens. As she and I have spent the past two years getting her system balanced to help her get pregnant and she’s feeling better for the first time in 15 years, she’s terrified to do this and she feels very alone that so many people are pushing her to get the vaccine without knowing whether or not this is going to cost her harm.
This one of the faces of what people are at times, unfortunately, calling anti-vaxxers and I feel that this designation in these situations is deeply inappropriate. These people are not anti-vaccine, not that there would be a problem if they were since we live in a country where people should be given the choice of what to do for their own health, they are cautious about any medicine that could potentially have adverse affects for their unique health situation and are terrified of being forced to do something that may backtrack their health after years of fighting to save it.
It’s sometimes hard to understand chronic illness if you haven’t been through it. Many people who are afraid of the vaccines have been sick enough from Lyme disease, autoimmune disorders, cancer, etc. that they have had experiences where the illness takes over the body and then spent years trying to find practitioners to help them often spending thousands of dollars, sometimes losing jobs/relationships and spending years recovering. They’ve drastically changed their lives and carefully/systematically worked to get their health back finding themselves sensitive in ways they never were before and needing to be extremely careful of what they put in their body for fear of what will happen. Those who haven’t had these experiences may not always understand the fear so many people are going through regarding these vaccines. There are message boards dedicated to those with sensitive immune systems terrified to take a vaccine that can’t be backtracked out of their system if something goes wrong.
Which brings me to my next client.
Last week I was on the phone with someone’s doctor about getting the vaccine. He wanted information on how I’d treated her over the years and to better understand her sensitivities. I was very impressed he requested this and at the end of the conversation he said he understood why she wouldn’t want to get the vaccine and he wouldn’t either with her history. As she has a compromised immune system that’s very sensitive to standard medicine, she and this doctor agreed she would not get any vaccine right now. She also tested positive for antibodies due to having covid recently so they also discussed that she did not need to get the vaccine right now. (This brings up another topic for another article on natural, active immunity and vaccine induced immunity).
Monday of this week I got a call from my client’s sister saying she was in the hospital after getting the first dose of an mRNA vaccine. Apparently after our conversation her doctor changed his mind and according to her and her sister who was with her, ‘pushed her into getting it anyway’ and she had a severe reaction and with her body swelling up, her throat swelling and ended up in the hospital. It’s Wednesday now and she’s improving and hopefully will be out of the hospital this weekend. We don’t know the long term affects to her system or the cost she’s going to have to pay financially for having been in the ER and in the hospital all week.
I realize most people have symptoms for a few days and then feel ok and I’m so glad about that. I also realize that isn’t everyone and that doesn’t make people anti-vaxxers, it makes them humans with different immune systems that may require a different approach.
I’m not writing this to scare anyone. I am writing this hoping it may trigger compassion for the fact this situation isn’t black and white. It’s not vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, it’s human beings doing the best they can to make choices that affect their health. We need to stop demonizing people for making personal decisions and as a society recognize that there is so much data we don’t have and saying ‘just do it’ to someone who may not be able to recover from a vaccine the same way you can is bullying behavior and a form of psychological gas lighting. Let’s stop polarizing this topic and honor one another’s choices for their unique health situation that we may know nothing about.
Bottom line: Let’s stop the judgments of being right or wrong and recognize we are all doing the best we can in a crazy situation that often makes no sense where the rules change constantly. It’s so much kinder to choose compassion, hear someone’s story as their truth and see the world as a beautiful mess we are all in together.
Blessings, Satya
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