When Covid hit, John didn’t feel he needed to rush to get his vaccine but felt compelled because his wife gave him a look he interpreted as “you need to get this or you’ll risk killing my parents!”. Sadly, John hasn’t felt himself since. It started gradually with struggling to hear people properly, a loss of energy and strength.

 

"The side of my face wasn’t working, I couldn’t close my right eye, I had to hold it shut with my left hand to sleep. I had to brush my teeth with my left hand. And then I just got worse and worse"

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He started to lose control of different parts of his body: the back of his legs didn’t work and he couldn’t open a jar or packet of crisps. Then he fell over at work and had to accept he could no longer do the physical job he loved. He started struggling to walk and had to buy a walking frame and down-size his home as he was struggling with stairs.

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He managed to get onto a local Long Covid trial despite the fact he’d fully recovered from the Covid he had in 2020. The team there said his results were totally different to everyone else’s and told him to see a neurologist urgently.

John has since been diagnosed with Guillian-Barre syndrome which is a known rare side effect of vaccination. John is frustrated at the cloak of silence that surrounds the topic of vaccine injury: early diagnosis could have avoided his symptoms progressing.

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“There has to be recognition of everything that has happened. With the vaccine there are two camps, pro and against. It’s all black and white like Brexit. But we’re in the middle and forgotten.”

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John’s diagnosis means he finally has had access to treatment and is slowly recovering the functionality he lost.

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“I’ve gone from disabled to pretty poor. I can open a bag of crisps but I can’t go up and down stairs. I used to ski black runs.”

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He aims one day to do the Great North Run again, hopefully without the aid of his walker.