by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
Emily Edwards, a 72-year-old grandmother and active member of her Texas community, spent over a year in the hospital with complications from Guillain-Barré syndrome after getting the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Now pain and restricted mobility are “pretty much a forever deal” for her. But she hopes her story can help others.
Emily Edwards lived an active, happy and “normal everyday life” for 72 years, raising children and grandchildren and attending events in her Texas community.
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She and her husband both became ill with COVID-19 early in the pandemic. Edwards’ case was mild, but her husband was hospitalized for nearly a week.
“They didn’t give him a very good chance of surviving,” Edwards told The Defender in an interview, “but he did.”
When the COVID-19 vaccine became available for people over 65, they rushed to get it.
“Being that sick or seeing someone that sick scares you to death,” she said. “And they were saying, ‘If you go get this vaccine, then you won’t ever have a chance of getting COVID again.’”
Edwards got her first Pfizer shot on April 11, 2021, and her second on May 2, 2021.
Within a few weeks, “strange things started to happen,” she said.
Edwards told The Defender:
“My hearing was not good, and my balance was off. My taste buds were crazy because everything I put in my mouth, even water tasted like I was trying to chew aluminum foil. It was this horrible metal taste. And then the imbalance became really difficult to handle.”
An ear, nose and throat doctor diagnosed Edwards with vertigo and treated her. When her symptoms failed to resolve, he sent her to an audiologist. That was frustrating, she said, because it was clear they had no idea what was causing her symptoms.
Then one night, as she was walking through the house, she said, “My legs just gave out from beneath me. I just went down like a rock. No notice, no warning, nothing.”
They went to the emergency room “out of desperation.” After four days, unable to determine the cause of her symptoms, the doctors sent her home. But a few nights later, she was back in a different hospital, where she underwent four more days of testing — again with no diagnosis.
At that point, Edwards was wheelchair-bound, couldn’t hear the conversations going on around her and had nearly lost her vision.
One of the nurses gave her the name of a neurologist who she said was extremely well-versed in unusual neurological diseases. “If he sees you, you might be able to get some answers, and it would be a gift,” the nurse told Edwards.
That neurologist immediately suspected Edwards had Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder where the immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system.
He said there had been some cases linked to the COVID-19 vaccine and he wanted to hospitalize her and test her.
Tests revealed Edwards suffered from a rare sub-variant of the disease, Miller Fisher syndrome, that also affects vision, hearing and coordination.
“And from then on,” she said, “it was rough.”
Edwards spent more than six months moving between a rehab facility and a hospital. Her “normal, active, everyday” life became a thing of the past. She was too sick to be at her mother’s bedside when she passed away.
Intravenous immunoglobulin treatments — plasma infusions often used to treat autoimmune disorders — didn’t help. Edwards’ neurologist reluctantly offered her an intervention called plasmapheresis, which consists of removing blood and plasma from the body, treating and returning it.
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