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Iris Bryson, a legal assistant from St. Simons Island, Georgia, was looking forward to her upcoming retirement and the opportunity to travel the country.

Bryson worked full-time, walked two miles during her lunch breaks, cared for her three dogs and enjoyed yard work and gardening — that is, until Jan. 20, 2021, when she received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine primary series.

“Now, my hands can’t type,” Bryson, now 71, told The Defender. “I had to quit. That was a big thing. I like working in the yard and I can’t do that because of my hands and my balance.”

Bryson and her husband, Larry, recounted their experience in an exclusive interview with The Defender. They provided extensive documentation to corroborate their story.

Mayo Clinic doctors ‘scared to death’ to attribute symptoms to vaccine injury

Iris began to feel ill immediately after getting the first dose of the vaccine.

“I felt a little nauseous,” said Iris, who got the shot on a Wednesday morning. “Friday, I woke up with a sharp pain between my shoulder and legs, but it went away … Later that morning, I was getting ready to go to work. I had eaten breakfast, and I got nauseous and lost my breakfast, and I decided I’d stay home.”

She said she “crashed on the couch” and anytime she got up, she felt off balance and “couldn’t control my legs, mainly the right side.”

As her symptoms grew worse, she called her neighbor, a nurse practitioner, who said, “It sounds like a stroke, you need to get to the hospital.”

Iris spent a week in the hospital, where doctors administered intravenous fluids and performed a lumbar, or spinal tap. She was examined by a neurologist, Dr. Lori A. Trefts, of the Southeast Georgia Health System.

“Initially, Dr. Trefts diagnosed it as a spinal stroke,” Larry said. “But then two days later, she came back and said ‘no, we’ve got complete results now from all the tests, and it’s not a spinal stroke, it’s transverse myelitis brought on by the COVID shot.’”

Trefts maintains to this day that the COVID-19 vaccine caused the transverse myelitis, Larry said.

Larry described Iris’ symptoms:

“Simple tasks that she once handled with ease are now impossible. She cannot hold or carry anything and walk simultaneously, opening bottles, cans, boxes, preparing meals, feeding, walking and bathing her pets, personal hygiene, bathing herself, driving, socializing, intimacy, in addition to her gardening.

“Her favorite hobby was crocheting and needlework from her youth. Life as we knew it has certainly vanished.”

After being discharged from the hospital, Iris visited the Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus in Jacksonville, in hopes of receiving further treatment. But “they were useless,” she said.

“I had done some internet research and found a doctor down there [whose] bio said he had done research on transverse myelitis,” said Larry. “But when we actually got there and spent time with him, he was upfront and honest with us and said ‘well, you know, I did some in school, a little bit, but I’m not a specialist and I’m not involved in any studies. I’ve seen some reports, but I haven’t read them.’”

Larry added:

“Doctors at Mayo, in all honesty, we felt like they were scared to death to say that the shot might have caused this … we just felt that they were holding back from saying what this really was.

“Apparently, there’s not a lot of treatment for transverse myelitis, and what treatment there is, Iris had that while she was in the hospital, which is steroid IV [intravenous] treatment. We’re trying to do what we can to figure out what might be beneficial for her recovery.”

Iris hasn’t received any treatment since her initial hospital stay. “Apparently, they’re a little concerned about that high dose of steroids for any length of time,” Larry said.

Stem cell therapy administered by a local chiropractor appears to have provided Iris with a degree of improvement, she said:

“I saw an article in the paper about the chiropractor and stem cell freezer, so I started going to her and I have had some stem cell shots. The last one that I received may have helped, but I still can’t use my hands much.

“It has helped for what movement I do have in my hands, and they also gave me shots in my right leg, and that has helped give me more balance.”

Despite these improvements, Iris still struggles. As she tires, especially on physical therapy days, “she strains to speak,” Larry said. “The transverse myelitis has impacted her speech.”

Iris is fortunate to not be experiencing pain. “Everywhere we’ve been, they’ve asked me about pain,” Iris said. “I’ve not had any pain, so I feel fortunate with that. Just a muscle in my right leg sometimes … feels tight, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. That’s about the only uncomfortable feeling I have.”

“I think [Iris] is somewhat blessed in that she actually lost sensation,” Larry said. “She has no feeling in her back. She’s had spinal taps and didn’t feel it … so there’s certain areas of her body that there’s just no sensation.”

‘We feel like we’re just left out here alone’

Although doctors at the Mayo Clinic were reluctant to attribute Iris’ symptoms to injuries from the COVID-19 vaccine, her neurologist has been much more willing to make that connection — and go public with it.

Along with Dr. Patrick McLean, Trefts authored a journal article, “Transverse myelitis 48 hours after the administration of an mRNA COVID 19 vaccine,” published in 2021, in Neuroimmunology Reports.

Iris’ local newspaper, The Brunswick News, also published an article about her vaccine injuries and her post-vaccination experience. However, Iris said nobody else from the media or the scientific community has reached out to her.

The silence also extends to government agencies.

On March 23, 2021, Iris submitted a claim to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. This is the government body, under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where COVID-19 vaccine injury victims can submit their claims.

However, according to Larry, after a March 18, 2022, reply from HHS stating the initial application contained “insufficient information” and the subsequent provision of the requested documentation, “We have heard nothing from anyone … literally no one has contacted us at all.”

He added:

“We feel like we’re just left out here alone to handle this on a daily basis. We are feeling alone in this battle, as the government agencies and organizations set up to assist are non-responsive. It’s as if they continue to ignore us, we will go away.”

He said they’re “blessed” that they’ve been able to handle the financial fallout from the injury — now “well in excess of $100,000 out of pocket, about $150,000 right now,” Larry said.

“We can manage that. We took it out of our savings. But there are people out there who can’t, and they’re getting no assistance, no response at all.”

‘We just keep struggling forward’

Iris’ injuries have put the couple’s retirement plans on hold.

“[Iris] was very active for a 69-year-old,” Larry said. “We both still worked. Our goal was to retire at 70 … and visit as many of the 50 states as possible in our remaining healthy years. We bought a fifth-wheel travel trailer. We were going to hit the road and do some traveling.”

He said he hopes Iris will be mobile enough someday to travel, as planned.

Iris told The Defender that when she first came home from the hospital, she was confined to a wheelchair. After receiving physical therapy at home, “They got me on, I call it a ‘rollator’ — a walker with wheels.”

After beginning stem cell therapy, however, she has been able to perform a degree of movement without this device, instead using a cane.

“I just don’t feel secure enough outside to wander and wobble around without something to help me,” Iris said. “I do get out a little bit and try to do something in the yard, but it’s just out. I don’t accomplish anything.”

Larry called it a “drastic reduction of her quality of life.”

He added:

“We’ve got pets and she used to take care of them and now that’s my job … Things that she used to do, like going out and shopping on her own, she can no longer do. She’s so limited because of the lack of use of her hands. Even taking a bath and dressing is difficult … but we just keep struggling forward.”

The Brysons have received support from friends and from the members of their church.

“Friends, of course, have been very supportive, want to help, and our church family as well,” Larry said. “So I’ve gained probably 20 pounds from way too much food. But they’ve been real good and still inquire about Iris’ health and how she’s doing.”

Iris had some words of advice for vaccine injury victims in similar situations to her own:

“You just have to take the next step, whenever that is, yourself. Medical people are not going to help you. I know a lot of people don’t like chiropractors, but this lady was willing to try, and she has helped me a lot, and she wants me to get off the cane.

“So, they just need to keep working at it. And if you go into therapy, don’t just go to therapy and go home and sit down. You have to do some at home on your own. You just can’t wait for somebody else to do it for you.”