My name is Ben and I am 26 years old. I’m from Boston, MA, and I’m a software engineer. Prior to the jab, I was very active and constantly working out. I was perfectly healthy despite receiving the first two Pfizer jabs in my left arm with no issues at all. I got the first two jabs because people I knew got Covid and were very sick (a family friend died and at least two others were hospitalized) and I figured getting it would keep me well and keep Long Covid away. The jab was not mandated at this time.
I had my first Pfizer jab on the 22nd of April, 2021 and it only caused shoulder pain for a few hours. I got my second Pfizer jab on the 13th of May and it knocked me out for a day. I assumed my booster wouldn’t be much worse than the second jab.
On the 14th of December, I was thriving. I was in the gym five days a week, and I was ramped up for my new job. The last time I was sick was March 2017 when I had a slight cold for two days.
When the Omicron variant was making the news, I decided I’d get a Moderna booster simply because I didn’t want to get sick. I’d heard of Long Covid and I thought I could rely on health officials to help me navigate the pandemic. I knew nothing about adverse reactions to the jab, so I figured it was just a net positive to get more protection from Covid.
The 15th of December, 2021 was the last normal day I’d have for a very long time. I worked in the morning, went to the gym, and then went and got my Moderna booster in my left arm at about 5pm. I then went to a work holiday party to see co-workers and eat pizza (I don’t drink). When I was walking home at around 9:30pm, I felt a little achy and fatigued. I was asleep by 10.15pm. At about 2:30am, I woke up and have never felt so terrible in my life. Every muscle in my body hurt, and I felt a heavy weight on my chest. I spent almost all of the 16th of December sleeping or trying to sleep. On the 17th of December, I woke up to the same chest pain I’d had during the night. I felt fine the afternoon of the 17th of December, but the pain returned in the evening. This continued until the 19th of December when a family member told me to go to the hospital.
When I went to the ER, they did a few blood tests and an EKG. The doctors didn’t seem too concerned until they discovered that my troponin-T levels were almost 90x the maximum “normal” value. They took a CAT scan to verify I didn’t have an active blockage in my heart, then they told me I needed to be admitted into the EW and kept there a few days. I walked into the hospital around 9am and wasn’t in my room until about 7pm because getting my room ready took so long. I had a few in-patient procedures during the two days I was in the hospital. They did a Covid antibody test and a bacterial antibody test to rule out other possible vectors for the cardiac inflammation (I hadn’t had Covid and the coxsackie antibody test didn’t have any interesting results). They did an ECG, and they took an X-ray of my lungs (I think as a pneumonia check? I don’t know why). I was ultimately diagnosed with “Covid-vaccine myopericarditis.” I was entered into VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, ID 1962935-1).
Once all the tests were completed, no nurse or doctor I met doubted the cause and all my paperwork makes the link to the jab clear. I’m extremely grateful everyone at MGH took my experience seriously.
I was initially prescribed aspirin for two weeks and colchicine. But when the two weeks of aspirin ended, I had a terrible pain in my back from the colchicine and I had to change my prescription to ibuprofen (taken 3 times per day). The next four-and-a-half months were incredibly difficult. I spent hundreds of hours in pain, alone on my couch. Sometimes I was in pain all day and sometimes I was in pain most of the day, but on some rare days I had almost no pain at all. I took up an art project and made a special bag for my grandmother’s 92nd birthday. I spent a lot of time with friends playing Magic: the Gathering, and cooked a lot of good food. When I started taking the ibuprofen, I gave each day a “pain scale” out of five. Over time, there were less fives and more threes, then all twos, until the twos became zeros. Despite eating ~2,000 calories per day, I lost 25 pounds between the 15th of December, 2021 and the 20th of April, 2022. By early April, the worst of the pain was over, and by the end of April, I was able to get back to lifting weights again. On the 21st of June, I had my follow-up CMRI and my cardiac ejection fraction was measured at 66, and the small fibrosis on my heart shouldn’t affect my heart’s pumping function. The total cost was a little over five thousand dollars, which is my insurance’s maximum out-of-pocket.
Finding useful information about what to expect from myocarditis was difficult. There are the Alex Jones’-tier conspiracies about myocarditis and then there are the people who think jab injuries simply don’t exist. Now that I’m recovered, I want to make my story known because it’s important that people know the truth about what it’s like to have myocarditis: it’s a lot of suffering, but you can heal from it. I recognize that not everyone is fortunate enough to actually get medical care, and to have others acknowledge that the jab caused their issue. I was also able to work remotely and not lose my job because I was injured. I was able to make a full recovery. I hope sharing my story can raise awareness that not everyone had the luck that I did as well.
I think the best thing for my health was to have a creative project to work on, to have friends to spend time with, and to budget my physical activity and get lots of rest