We have all lived through a hellish nightmare for the past two years. We lost relatives and close friends. Many of us have endured sickness like nothing we have ever experienced. People have suffered financially. We have been unable to do the things we have been accustomed to. Others have lost their jobs and their careers upended by this epidemic.

I decided to explain to my friends what I have personally gone through. Not as a way to garner sympathy, but hopefully give certain people some level of comfort. I’ll explain what I mean as we go along.

First off I’ve had COVID. In the middle of March of 2021 I came down with it and for three weeks I seldom left my bed. Twice I went to the ER at Cedar Park Hospital and received good care and was able to return home both times. There is a bit of irony in the fact that I was due for my first vaccination the day after I tested positive.

During that three week time, I’m not sure if I ever ate anything. If I drank anything, it was sips of water, mostly when swallowing pills. I lost 30 lbs. It took another 3 weeks after I realized I was going to live before I could get a negative test. At that time I was told that I wasn’t eligible to get a COVID vaccination for 60 days after testing negative.

I read and tried to study up on everything connected to COVID and the vaccines. It was an absolute ordeal getting consistent information on anything. Every day we were being told something different about what you should do or not do. Besides being in a fragile state with having COVID, it was a psychological roller coaster. I know many others were on that roller coaster with me.

We were being told that if you had the disease, you had antibodies that were as effective as the vaccination. Some doctors were saying those antibodies provided even better protection. Not wanting to go against the “science” on the matter. I started going and getting antibodies testing, a blood test that Medicare wouldn’t cover for some reason. Now that’s beside the point. After a couple of those tests my count started to decline, so I decided to get the vaccination. We had a trip planned to ride several trains in Colorado over a couple of week period. That was to happen in late September and early October. After mostly staying cooped up for the whole year of 2020, that was our first trip in awhile. We were prepared to mask up and figured having a vaccination card was a good idea.

In preparation for that trip I got my first “jab” around the middle of July 2021, with the second one 3 weeks later.

I have had 3 surgeries on the cervical portion of my spine, the first one in 1985, then 2005 and the last one in 2010. So I wasn’t surprised that when I once again started having pain and numbness in my neck and shoulder. I’ve been there and done that. This time it all happen suddenly, whereas in the past, it was more of a progression of pain each time until finally nothing would work except going under knife.

I awaken in the middle of the night back in July of 2021. The pain was so horrendous that nothing would work. It was on a weekend and COVID had caused getting anything done almost impossible. I knew the South Texas Spine and Surgical Hospital had an Emergency Room Facility so I got my wife to drive me to San Antonio. That’s where the last surgeries had been performed. We arrive and they did X-rays, but couldn’t see anything so he gave me strong enough drugs so I could make it until I could get an appointment with the spine surgeon that had done the last 2 surgeries.

Over the next months there were a series of more X-rays, a MRI and Myelogram to try to see what was happening. All the time I was getting epidural spinal injections at various locations, from a pain management doc just trying to find the sweet spot. Both doctors kept saying that overall my spine looked pretty good with nothing narrowed enough to cause a pinched nerve. With each injection and nothing changed. I can’t even count how many trips we made to San Antonio in the last last year.

With COVID help is hard to get, I guess. The pain management people regularly screwed up my appointments, but I was able to insist that my injection times was that day, being able to pull the reminder card out to show them. The last straw was in January when I got there, only to be told that I was mixed up, that my appointment was in February. In late December I called them and changed a February appointment to January date, because being in dire pain I needed juiced up as soon as possible to hopefully find relief. They girl said “our records show that you had an appointment in January and switched it to February because you didn’t like coming back so soon”. The doctor wasn’t even there that day.

That was the last trip I’m making to San Antonio for this malady! Of course it wasn’t just my time wasted, as I had to have a driver that also lost a day of her life as well.

But back in December I decided to write out a narrative chronicling everything that happened, to hopefully discover when and how this pain started. Within a day or so of getting my first vaccination, it actually could have been within hours, I started experiencing pains like I had never felt before. Meds were the only thing that gave me relief. At that time the pains were mostly in my left shoulder blade with limit aches in my left arm and neck.

After the holidays I started getting pains going down my leg and into my left knee and some days into foot. All on my left side, the arm the vaccine was administered in.

I’ve tried several things, but meds taken orally several times a day seem to be the only thing that works. But I continue trying alternative means, too numerous to go into. But I have a new pain management doctor I’ll be going to soon, that appears to understand what is happening.

No this is not something that if I go to your to chiropractor, he’ll be able to fix.

Like I said earlier there is a reason for all this whole essay about my health, aches and pains. I will tell you that if you have people you know and they are holdouts on getting vaccinations, there may be good reasons for it. I can’t tell you for sure that if I knew then what I know now that I’d take the jab. I do know that I don’t want to go through having another serious case of COVID again.

Everything about COVID and the vaccines are serious business and it should be everyone’s own choice with the best information they they get when making the determination. So please don’t look down on people choice rather way. In fact, I wish more people could just say, “this is a private matter, and leave it with that”.

For those of you that took the shots and have been able to not get COVID and didn’t have any bad effects, you are a genius. The ones that have refused to take the shots and are still here to tell about it, you may have made a great call.

Wishing you all a great day and good health. That’s the least we should be able to expect.