Within 15 minutes she had a tight throat but she was sent home to sleep it off. Over the next few days she developed flu like symptoms which she assumed were a normal response to the vaccine. What happened next was however far from normal.

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“I became confused, I became anxious and my brain seemed to go into overdrive. I was incoherent which totally out of character, I no history of anything like that. To cut a long story short I was sectioned.”

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Thankfully, Chrissy was able to recover using self-help techniques, but the experience was deeply disturbing and she found herself desperately asking questions her GP couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.

Her voice remains weak and she suffers from PTSD from the experience of being sectioned. She also struggles with the realisation that when she needed help for a very real, physical reaction to the vaccine there was no help available.

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“The consent was on the assumption that if the worst came to worst, if you came to harm that you’d be looked after , helped and believed. It didn’t happen and that was such a shock.”

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While her husband and many in their circle have been supportive, Chrissy feels there is a general lack of empathy for those who have suffered adverse reactions to the vaccine.

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“It was like being in a shambolically organised mass parachute jump with no emergency plan. I was free-falling and hit the ground hard. Everyone else gets up and you can’t so you’re left lying there and other people say “I’ve jumped lots of times, my parachute is ok it must be your fault!” You are ridiculed while coping with the catastrophic injury.”

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Finding and joining UKCVFamily has helped her make sense of her terrible experience, and use that to help others.