SPOKANE, Wash. – The FDA and CDC are asking all states to pause the use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine after six people out of seven million doses administered reported issues with blood clotting.
A team of experts continues to further review the vaccine, there are a lot of questions. We are hearing from many in our community who were supposed to get the J&J vaccine in the near future. The pause has led to a scramble for local health providers and pharmacies.
We’re also getting questions from viewers who have gotten it. One woman who received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine said she suffered a stroke a week later.
At this point, there is no way of knowing if one had to do with the other, but experts said if you are going to have a rare complication, it will be within a two-week window.
Jewels Dietrich said she had no pre-existing conditions that would lead to a stroke. She said it was all very sudden and terrifying.
“I was sitting down at my art desk starting to draw,” she said.
An ordinary day for Jewels turned into a nightmare in mere seconds.
“I started moving my arm weirdly and it wasn’t connecting with my fingers,” she said.
Her condition rapidly declining from there.
“I felt my face drop,” she said. “I’ve worked in assisted living facilities and group homes, and I just knew I was having a stroke. I was like we need to go to the hospital.”
It’s where she would stay for the next three days.
“I went through all these tests and things like that,” she said.
And finally, she said she received confirmation of what she already feared.
“(My doctor) was like ‘you’ve had a stroke. It’s not a normal kind of stroke’” she said. “They were like ‘we think it’s really an anomaly. We don’t know what it was.’ … It was creepy.”
Jewels is open about being under a lot of stress in the days leading up to her stroke, but the 41-year-old said she was steady on a healthy path.
“I’ve lost a lot of weight, almost 100 pounds this past year,” she said. “I’ve been doing pretty great.”
She was also excited after recently getting the Johnson and Johnson vaccine just over a week prior to her stroke.
“It was like this doesn’t make sense,” she said.
She’s now recovering at home.
“Certain things are still difficult, but not too crazy,” she said.
And while she has her suspicions, she’s still no closer to concrete answers on how or why this happened.
“It came out of left field,” she said.
KHQ reached out to SRHD and asked what Jewels should do and who she should contact. A spokesperson said she should notify her health provider and they will get the information to the right people to see if there was any connection at all to the J&J vaccine. The CDC has recently given guidelines to help medical professionals spot these rare complications.
