dear reader, this post contains a loaded topic. whatever your feelings towards the covid vaccine, i invite you to acknowledge them now, and set them aside as you read the story of this dear friend of mine. she is on the journey towards an MD degree. like me, she felt strongly about getting vaccinated for COVID-19 because she cared about keeping patients safe, and trusted recommendations. i want you to know, dear reader, that this person who became so sick from this vaccine was the picture of health - a former competitive college athlete, extremely thoughtful with her nutrition, and on point with sleep and rest and strong social and spiritual connections.
if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that my perspective on this topic has shifted greatly over time. i felt so strongly about the covid vaccine, and developed so much anger towards those who were hesitant. i had to release this anger with conscious intention. i had to soften. had i not, it would have ruined me, and ruined my ability to hold space and heal others. our anger and fear burn us the most (even if we think the problem is other people).
my friend's story contains neither anger nor self-righteousness. she does feel that the vaccine isn't necessarily safe for everyone - and her story is a big reason for that. her story has changed the way i think about vaccination, and i hope it changes you, too. for there is no benign intervention. every action you take has risk and benefit. similar to the concept of yin and yang in traditional chinese medicine, it is up to us to know our bodies well enough to know what we need, and when. this doesn't absolve us, though, of the responsibility to keep our communities safe in times of need, like the pandemic. it might mean that those of us who cannot or will not become vaccinated need to do extra homework to keep others safe (at least temporarily). below is my favorite quote from this whole interview.
My experience of POTS and healing makes me think big picture. There are so many things that can affect our health. I try to make sure I fully listen to every patient. I’m open to what they have to say, and new ideas. I’m open to learning things differently from the ways I was taught in medical school. I’m willing to be humble and learn.
it is such a privilege to hear and share these stories. enjoy.
tell me about the process of becoming vaccinated and how you developed POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome).
I was really excited to get my first dose of COVID because I was in medical school. But after my first dose I had some big menstrual cycle changes - I bled for two weeks straight with huge clots. My hemoglobin dropped to 7 or 8 in those two weeks. I could not stop bleeding. I used to walk to campus, about a 30 minute walk -- and I could not walk to campus because I was so out of breath and weak. I didn’t put it together with the vaccine until after the fact when others started talking about it also affecting their menses.
Despite this, I finished my first two doses. But I didn't want to get my booster dose in late 2021. It was required by the school to return for the semester. I put it off as much as possible but got it in December 2021, just after Christmas.
Two weeks after the booster, I was 6 months into CrossFit and loving it. I decided to start doing olympic weightlifting to improve my strength, too. I had started working with a coach, and I knew something was off when I started to feel so exhausted, so quickly. On the rower, during warm-ups, my heart rate would jump to 180. On January 11, a few weeks into lifting, I laid down to sleep and started having a panic attack. I felt like I was dying. My heart was racing; I couldn’t breathe; my body felt heavy like lead. I ended up falling asleep sitting up because it was easier to breathe like this. The morning after, I woke up and could barely stand up. I felt exhausted, and like my muscles didn’t work. I didn’t know what was going on. It was really scary.
COVID cases were increasing at this time (Jan/Feb 2022), so we had switched back to virtual for the rest of the year. This was good because I could be in class with my camera off. I spent most of the day in bed, crying. I didn’t know what was going on with my body and I was so afraid. I started looking online to find out what might be happening, and I chalked it up to stress - that I was training too much while studying for STEP and in medical school. But I knew something was more seriously wrong - I know my body, and I know the difference between soreness and stress and true illness and injury. I started learning about people who had bad reactions to the COVID vaccine, and I was afraid I wouldn’t ever get better.
from her photo gallery - word medicine for the tough days.
you were diagnosed on February 10, just a month after your panic attack. What was the process of getting to this diagnosis?
I saw someone online (a primary care doctor) and they said “I think you’re just sore.” I knew it wasn't just this - I'm an athlete! But I wondered if it was rhabdo, and we did labs for that, which were normal. I went to a different primary care doctor who heard me a little bit more, but she thought I had anxiety or an adjustment disorder.
A few days after that appointment, I decided I couldn’t wait anymore and made my own appointment with a neurologist at the top research hospital in my area. He had a long COVID and a POTS clinic. I literally trudged through a snowstorm to get to my appointment, even though they offered to cancel because most people weren't braving the roads.
The diagnosis for POTS involves at least a 30 bpm increase going from lying to standing. Blood pressure can drop, increase, or stay the same when you change position. And there are different types of POTS, some are more autonomic, some are more adrenergic. Based on my symptoms and the results of the testing, he diagnosed me with POTS.
He wrote it down on a piece of paper, which I remember: “P O T S.” My jaw dropped. I’d heard of this before, because I was actually writing a clinical trial proposal for patients with POTS, using IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin - this is just a mixture of antibodies, non-MDs) as treatment. The proposal was just for practice - but it was ironic because that project was why I knew about the diagnosis.
He explained: “Your heart and your autonomic nervous system circulate blood to your body. You’re not getting enough to your brain or your muscles, which is why you feel tired and have brain fog. Your heart tries to compensate by beating faster, but it can’t quite make it up.”
I learned it can be caused by viruses or other inflammatory triggers, but they had been seeing a lot of patients who developed this from the COVID vaccine.
how did you feel about your diagnosis?
The diagnosis was comforting. I could name it, and I had an explanation for what was happening to my body. I started doing things to support myself based on what I learned from others on the internet and my own research, and listening to my body: I wore compression socks, and drank a ton of salt. I also started the Levine Protocol, an exercise regimen for POTS patients. I’d sit on the rower in my apartment and barely move - it felt pathetic - and I’d just try to be consistent.
Exercise is a huge stress relief for me, and has been my whole life. I couldn’t use this tool anymore. I was in my apartment by myself, in winter, and it was really hard and isolating. It was also scary - in my thoughts - I was always scared to have more panic attacks. Scripture is always really comforting for me, and I’d recite psalms out lout, and sometimes I couldn’t get words out or see the words on the page.
how did your diagnosis, and having POTS, affect your quality of life? what was it like at your worst?
It felt like I went down to 1% of my functioning. I didn’t even want to be in medicine anymore, or in med school. Everything was gone - it felt stripped from me. I felt gross in my body, and a lot of this was because I couldn’t move my body.
[dear reader, this dear friend of mine shares what so many women and athletes do - we both are on a constant journey of healing from body dysmorphia, given to us by those who trained us when we were young, and the attitues of society towards what our bodies "should" look like. the battle between nourishing sufficiently for rigorous training, and also trying to look a certain "way" is not easy. especially when you can't trust what you see in the mirror as an objective perspective.]
I had to do a LOT of sleeping. In third year of medical school, I would come home and sleep for three hours straight. In retrospect, this was sort of a blessing, because I thought I was supposed to pursue surgery as my career. It wasn't scheduled first in my rotations for third year. If it was, I do not think I would have been able to do it. I started on ambulatory block, in outpatient primary care family medicine. I feel the Lord had a hand in this and knew what I needed, and what wasn't for me. When I did eventually do my surgery rotation, which was much later in the year, I literally looked like I was pregnant because I was so inflamed. It was so hard on my body. This diagnosis has made me realize what is and isn't for me, and I can't live like that.
There was a mental component too. I became very depressed, and so anxious. One morning I was scheduled to give a presentation to our class, and I just could not do it. I skipped class and called the school health clinic to get on the schedule as soon as possible. I knew I had to take something so I could get through this. I tried Zoloft first, which made some of my symptoms better but made me tired. Then I switched to buproprion, which I took for about 7 months. It helped a lot. It was very dark. I got to the point where, while I didn’t want to commit suicide, I understood why people felt that way. If I didn’t have Jesus in my life, I don’t know what I would have done. It was the darkest thing I’ve ever had to go through. But I’m so grateful for the way the Lord has brought me through it and the ways that this has helped me relate to my patients.
dear reader, how beautiful to know that western medicine has tools to help us through darkness - and that they need not be permanent interventions. the ways this girl has healed using multiple modalities - spirituality and relationships being central - is key to long-term wellness.
I’ve heard from other physicians who have been on the receiving end of autoimmune or cancer diagnoses that if you ask about lifestyle changes or self-healing practices, you may be laughed out of the office.
Did you experience this? Did you ask about what you might do to heal yourself?
Yes, I did experience this. I didn’t get much direction after my diagnosis. I was recommended to go to cardiac rehab, but that was when I looked into the Levine Protocol (which I found on my own and could do for free). I knew a lot of what to do for POTS already because I’d been researching it.
today, you’ve returned to training at your fullest capacity. how did you accomplish this?
I was able to start exercising again really in June 2023 (about six months after my diagnosis). It was a slow process, and I had to be really patient with myself. My weightlifting coach was actually really helpful; they’d encourage me to cut the volume or weight in half, and they were so supportive if I developed symptoms and had to back off more on training.
I officially switched my training in April 2023 from CrossFit to solely weightlifting, which was hard at first because I felt so light headed after just a single squat. But my WHOOP (which I had purchased right before my diagnosis) actually showed that my HRV improved with lifting. This was evidence that I was taxing my nervous system just enough to help it heal and get stronger. Sitting down in between weightlifting sets really helped, too. But it was a big change from CrossFit, and I did miss the intensity of those workouts sometimes.
I was finally able to do a lifting competition at the end of December 2023, about one year after my diagnosis.
What did you do to heal yourself?
I started to learn a lot more about detoxing things - I thought, if my body has been poisoned by this vaccine, how can I heal it?
I started to learn about how using the sauna can heal the nervous system, and I’d cold shower after and focus on my spine and back. I’d alternate between the two. I would do these more or less depending on how my symptoms were. Sauna was really hard for me to build tolerance to, because it’s tough for people with POTS to tolerate heat. I kept it up because when I got out of the sauna I would feel better.
I also did an elimination diet. I had done one with Dr. B (an esteemed academic functional medicine physician). For my first two years of medical school, before my diagnosis, I’d met with her because of my interests in functional medicine. We had done an elimination diet together before, which I wanted to do so I knew what it would be like for my future patients. When I first tried it in my first year of medical school, I don’t think I ate enough on it. I had also picked the most extreme version.
But this second time around, I did a better job getting enough nutrition into my body, and after that I stuck with gluten and dairy free for a long time. Now I eat dairy, but I eat pretty mostly gluten free. What else helped is being more specific and intentional about nutrients. I use a lot of supplements. I was hesitant about this previously, but now I use them regularly.
For example, I remember that after my diagnosis, my labs showed elevated liver enzymes, and I started supplementing to support that. The liver has three phases of detoxification, and we don’t learn about any of this in medical school! Glutathione, for example, is something I supplement, along with other nutrients to support the detoxification pathway.
In retrospect, I also wondered if some of my inflammation and the fact that I developed POTS and an abnormal immune response to the vaccine could have been be due to mold; I lived in a moldy house during my gap year.
What is life like for you now? What’s your daily routine?
I still can’t do everything at the gym I want to do, which is disappointing - but to everyone else, it looks like I’m doing a lot.
dear reader, i can attest to this; i've seen videos of this girl making an obstacle course out of plates, cones, and dumbbells and doing handstand walks through it all. she definitely does look like she's doing a lot!!
Today, I have kept up a lot of the dietary things and the supplement support. I take a lot of supplements: inositol, NAC, quercitin, fish oil with vitamin D, glutathione, zinc, elderberry, vitamin C. I adjust this based on how I feel - if I think I need more immune support or detox support.
At night I take magnesium glycinate (that’s the relaxing kind), and if I need more calming down at night, I use L-theonine. If I need nervous system support, I take ALA. Curcumin is great for liver GI detox, as is eating plant based with lots of cruciferous vegetables.
Something I want to say explicitly is that salt is so demonized by our medical system. So when I tried to start taking it, I was nervous about it. I started small, with Noom tablets because there's only 300 mg of salt. I took 3-4 of those a day.
When I switched to LMNT it was so much better (each packet contains 1000 mg Na, 200 mg K, 60 mg Mg). I drink 2-3 a day now! (dear reader, that's THREE additional grams of salt each day! and her blood pressure has not gone up! because this girl is NOT insulin resistant, which is what causes hypertension in the first place, and worsens salt-retention).
My sister, who has a similar condition, also struggled to get used to LMNT because it tasted weird and felt like too much salt. She had used Liquid IV before, but could tell a huge difference from LMNT. Her brain worked so much better and she had energy. Recently, she ran out of LMNT, and had to use liquid IV. She didn't have the energy to study! The kind you use really does make a difference.
what did this experience change for you, if anything, about how you will discuss vaccination with your future patients?
It definitely made me think a lot about how I will counsel patients. I feel like I have PTSD about vaccines. I’ve done nasal flu vaccines for the past two years, which means I’m more sick afterwards, but also more protected, and I don’t have to get the shots.
I want people to know that it’s not the vaccine itself, it’s the carriers they use that are toxins that our body accumulates and then reacts to. For the flu vaccine, you can find mercury free versions but you might have to call around to find them. Alternate vaccine schedules for children are an option for families who are anxious about doing so many vaccines in a short period of time.
Right now, it's tricky for me to communicate this to patients. In clinic, we’re expected to ask patients about vaccination. I also felt like we were supposed to do a lot of coercing to push patients to get the vaccine. When I would be required to ask, I’d say “are you interested in the COVID vaccine?” And if they said no, I wouldn’t push it. But then our preceptors would come in and try to convince the patient.
what is the most frustrating thing to you about the conversations regarding COVID vaccination today? What about vaccination in general? To you, is there a big difference between the COVID vaccine and other conventional vaccines?
Yes there is a big difference, it’s an mRNA vaccine. mRNA is different because it’s more like a gene therapy. It’s altering what our cells are producing. We’ve tried and developed vaccines for Zika and others that used mRNA technology that weren’t successful. We are seeing long term effects from COVID vaccines.
But ultimately, a big problem is that doctors are being ridiculed, fired, and losing licensure for trying different things, when in any other circumstance they are supposed to do whatever they think is best for their patients.
Do you think it is important for physicians themselves to experience illness and the difficulties of navigating our healthcare system, and the (often nonlinear) journey of healing? How has this experience affected the way you will care for your own patients?
I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it provides a powerful lens and insight. Every person will probably in their lives have this journey even if it’s through a family member or friend who falls ill. You can learn a lot from them. It adds something really special and valuable to your practice.
When I was on my functional medicine rotation, I saw firsthand how my experience can help to heal others. I got to tell a patient who was in a similar situation to me that I knew she wasn't making symptoms up, and that she wasn't crazy - that I knew exactly how she felt, because I had been there too. It was so validating for her, and felt so powerful for me to be able to share that with her. It was also so inspiring and wonderful to be on a rotation where the things that had helped me were being officially recommended to patients, from other doctors!
My experience of POTS and healing makes me think big picture. There are so many things that can affect our health. I try to make sure I fully listen to every patient. I’m open to what they have to say, and new ideas. I’m open to learning things differently from the ways I was taught in medical school. I’m willing to be humble and learn.
