I was, like, wait, what’s going on here?”īrann isn’t the only one who’s experienced something like this. “So the fact that I, like, suddenly noticed bleeding … it was bizarre. “I’m on the birth control pill, so my cycle is incredibly structured - it hasn’t deviated ever,” Brann said. She had irregular menstrual bleeding a few days after receiving her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine last week. What about menstruation-related side effects? They were also determined to be not life-threatening - unlike severe and immediate allergic reactions, which occur within the first few hours of vaccination - and study participants recovered well. The responses described often started a day or so after the shot but could appear up to seven or eight days later.
WHYY’s reporters found one study that mentioned delayed skin responses like itchy skin and a measles-like rash after vaccination. And it happened very soon after that shot, I just wondered if other people had reported anything like that.” “But it was such a bizarre response, something I’ve never had in my life. She isn’t even sure it was from the vaccine. “I had itching in my left eye … it wasn’t just my eye, my face itched, my cheek itched, my head itched,” Guth said. But a couple of days after recovering from those, she started getting really itchy on the same side where she’d gotten the injection. And if it progresses, or it doesn’t get better, get back in contact with your doctor.”Ī listener from Abington, 67-year-old Lisa Guth, said she had typical side effects after her second shot: fever, chills, fatigue. “The ‘I was OK, and then several days later, I just felt wiped out’… so I think the common sense is, respect what your body’s telling you. “The fatigue, that’s a common one I hear from patients and colleagues,” he added. They mean your immune system is working and building protection, with antibodies and T cells that defend you against the coronavirus. “ many patients have had to stay home from work for a day, because they feel like they’ve gotten hit by a truck.”Įven though they’re not much fun, these side effects are a good sign. “I’m not aware of people needing to be hospitalized because of the side effects, you know, routinely,” Chambers told WHYY News.
But all of them tend to go away after a couple of days, and they’re nothing to be concerned about. Side effects from the second shot tend to be worse than the first. The CDC’s guidance on common vaccine side effects lists many of the same ones Chambers mentioned: fever, chills, headaches, nausea, and muscle pain or exhaustion.
Others could be more systemic, such as low-grade fever, achiness, or fatigue that ranges from mild to severe. He said many of his patients “have no side effects at all.”įor those that do experience side effects, the majority are mild and localized, like soreness or swelling in the arm where the shot was given. Christopher Chambers works in family medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and is the clinical director of Jefferson’s vaccine center.
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