12-Year-Old Suffers Severe Reaction in COVID Vaccine Clinical Trial

Maddie, a 12-year-old girl who was participating in a COVID vaccine trial in Cincinnati, Ohio became very ill shortly after the second dose of the vaccine she received January 20th.

She has had months of hospitalizations, seen specialists, had MRIs, endoscopies, ultrasounds, etc. She is currently paralyzed from the waist down, unable to keep food down, has lost 15 pounds in a month, has tremors in her arms, has up to 20 blackouts a day, chronic urinary retention, severe pain, has no leg movement and cannot feel from her hips down, nor walk.

She has been diagnosed with Functional neurological disorder, which is a medical condition where there is a problem with the functioning of the nervous system and how the brain and body sends and/or receives signals.

Vaccines have a long history of causing neurological and nervous system disorders.

Vaccine injuries are not rare

Her family wrote on March 9:

Please pray for Maddie, she has been having a long list of neurological and gastrointestinal issues from a rare adverse reaction she had to the second dose from the COVID vaccine trial she is in.

Right now she is in the hospital because of a bowel obstruction that was cleared and also being unable to swallow liquids or solids. She hasn’t been able to eat or drink without throwing up for over a week. Tomorrow she has an Upper GI scheduled that she will have to swallow 6oz of liquid which as of right now seems impossible.

We need this for the doctors to understand how her muscles are reacting. If she is unable to eat soon she will have to have an NG tube placed which she did not do well with earlier this week. I believe in prayer, please pray she is able to swallow liquids tomorrow so that her body can get the nutrients it needs and so the doctors can begin to figure out why her body is reacting this way.

On top of this she has extreme pain in her back, neck, head and abdomen along with numbness in her legs and arm. She has an MRI of her head and spine scheduled on 3/16.

Please pray for her to heal so she can be the energetic 12 year old who loves hanging with friends and learning at school. I can’t stand watching her wither away each day.

NOTE: she has not been unblinded but I am 99.99% confident she got the vaccine and not the placebo since everything started about 12 hours after she got the second dose on 1/20/21 and has gotten progressively worse since then.

After seeing different specialists and having MRIs, endoscopies, they finally got an actual diagnosis March 12:

So based on her physical symptoms and ruling out everything with all these tests, it’s safe to say her diagnosis is Functional neurological disorder (FND). This is a medical condition where there is a problem with the functioning of the nervous system and how the brain and body sends and/or receives signals. We are thankful Maddie’s team of doctors were able to give her a diagnosis with a name and a way to treat all of her symptoms. Most doctors do not even know about FND! She has a long road to fully recover but at least there are specific treatments for FND and medicine for this type of pain.

FND is usually triggered by something traumatic and most people have some pre-existing anxiety but not all do. It’s no secret she has always been a type A personality, especially with grades (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree)!

Maddie’s severe reaction to the second dose of the vaccine triggered it. We expected similar side effects to the flu shot. When she got her second dose not many people had even gotten their first dose so there wasn’t the extensive list of symptoms that there is today.

She was one of the first people in the study to have some of the symptoms she had which scared her and us. Then being told everything is normal time and time again when it clearly was not made her symptoms worse and added on even more to the point that it caused physical but thankfully reversible damage.

Her symptoms did continue and she was admitted to the hospital again. She is currently paralyzed from the waist down. The family updated on April 11:

Now for the update…Maddie was admitted to the hospital again on Friday. I’m not sure how long we will be here. She has significantly declined since she was discharged in March and is unable to eat without regurgitating her food. This caused caused her blood sugar to drop to 47 and she lost about 15 pounds in a month. Her blood sugar is stable and for now she has to be fed through an NGtube which she is having a hard time with. It was really bad for the first few hours and she threw up a bunch of stomach bile. Shes been able to tolerate it a little better throughout the day and says it hurts her throat and she hates how she can feel the cold when they do her feeds or meds plus it makes her nauseous.

Maddie was also having up to 20 blackouts/episodes a day 3 weeks ago, they decreased after we weaned her off the lyrica but she did have 2 today in the hospital. She also has tremors in her arms, especially when she is in pain and random verbal tics.

A new symptom is chronic urinary retention (can’t empty bladder). They do an ultrasound of her bladder if she hasn’t gone to the bathroom in 16+ hours or if she has severe pain in her lower abdomen. If it measures over 500ml of urine they have to use a straight catheter.

She still isn’t able to walk and she can’t feel from her lower hips down. She has no leg movement against gravity with her legs. She didn’t sleep well last night or the night before, I’m praying she sleeps better tonight since she was able to get all of her meds through the NG tube today.

This time we are on the Neurology floor so the team of doctors that do rounds in the morning are all in that group and pull the other doctors in. We have met with the nutritionist, PT/OT and Child Life. Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation will be here tomorrow, we had to postpone meeting with them due to the NG Tube. She is also seeing a Speech Therapist and they are doing a video swallow test or FEES study for her swallowing/regurgitating problems. After that we should have a better idea of what the plan is moving forward is.

Please pray that she is able to tolerate the NG tube better tomorrow and her urinary retention resolves itself. And please pray the team of doctors/nurses/therapists come up with a plan to help her eat and walk again.