It took only a couple of minutes for her to feel the waves of heat, followed by a feeling of faintness. “I immediately felt like my life was in danger, something was really wrong with me,” said Sandra Ortiz.
That’s how Ortiz described her reaction to receiving her first and only dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on May 26, 2021.
Ortiz, now 54 years old, is a mail carrier in Arlington, Texas. In an exclusive interview with The Defender, she described her initial injuries and ongoing symptoms. She provided extensive documentation to corroborate her claims.
“I felt waves of heat in my body and felt as if I was going to faint. I did not faint. But I immediately felt that my life was in danger, something was really wrong with me.”
She asked the pharmacist what would happen if she were allergic to the vaccine, and did he have an EpiPen, Ortiz said. The pharmacist said he did. “But when I was lying on the floor, all he did was call the ambulance,” she said.
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“Blood pressure spikes, elevated heartbeats, dizziness, nausea, heat on chest and pain, hot feet and cold hands, weird head pressure, shortness of breath, neck pain, back pain, extreme fatigue, a numb left hand, mild numbness on left side of face with random twitching, confusions, heart palpitations, eye blurriness, jaw tightness and gum pain.”
Her symptoms led to several visits to the emergency room and significant lost time at work, which put her career at risk.
“I missed work for over three months and ended up at the emergency room five times,” said Ortiz. “When I returned to work, I [was] approved for a very easy route at the post office. It is mostly curbside. And thank God, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to do the route.”
However, even with a less challenging route, Ortiz still faced significant difficulties, she said: “There were many times, while driving to work, that I felt sick and ended up at the hospital or going back home. It caused me to leave work many times.
“There was one time that I pushed myself to work with the weird head pressure and confusion and eye blurriness, and I ended up rear-ending a vehicle on my route.”
Similar to the experience of several other vaccine injury victims who recently spoke to The Defender, Ortiz described multiple doctors’ visits, during which doctors usually dismissed her concerns that the COVID-19 vaccination caused her health problems.
“I’ve been to many doctors but all the tests are okay,” said Ortiz. “Many doctors would insist that the vaccine does not cause what I was suffering [from].”
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Ortiz described taking a battery of exams, including “[an] EKG, CT scan, x-rays, a brain MRI, lumbar MRI, a stress test, tons of lab tests, aldosterone/renin activity, a transthoracic echocardiogram, urinary fractionated metanephrines, duplex abdomen complete, and an EEG.”
Even after all of these tests, said Ortiz, “All the doctors told me that the Pfizer vaccine” did not cause her injuries. Instead, they blamed “anxiety” for her symptoms.
She described one particularly disheartening experience with one of her doctors:
“My family doctor pretty much was annoyed with me. She refused to run any tests for me. I had to beg her to check my vitamin D levels because of the extreme fatigue. She acted as if I was not insured and was begging for free services.”
According to Ortiz, only one doctor took her vaccine-related concerns into consideration. Her functional doctor “added more vitamins to my daily routine, and advised me to purchase a sauna for sweating to detox, [in addition] vitamin infusion, massages, etc.,” she said.
Ortiz is thankful that she has overcome many of the more serious symptoms, but she said she nevertheless feels “damaged.”
“Sometimes I feel that I am damaged for life, but as long as I can work, I am okay,” she said. “My biggest fear was that I was going to stay disabled and didn’t know how I was going to pay my bills.”