My mother in law is OMS. She was a very young at heart 81 year old from Glendene West Auckland. She was a retired nurse of 40 years so took good care of herself and her health. She had no major pre existing conditions. She had a ulcer which she took meds for only when needed and pain killers for arthritis when needed too. She was also on a cholesterol tablet but had no blood pressure or diabetes. She was very active and walked wherever she needed to be.
She received her first COVID vaccine on 15th June 2021 at Henderson Medical Centre. She was then immediately booked for the second vaccine 3 weeks later on 6 July 2021. She had mild side effects from the first vaccine which was pain in her arm and back but her health deteriorated rapidly after the second vaccine. She became short of breath, had a heaviness on her chest that she said went into her legs and was very tired. The week before she passed she was struggling to get up one flight of stairs at home which was so unusual.
She saw her GP at Henderson Medical centre on Wednesday 28th July 2021. She advised them of the above symptoms and was told that it was a side effect of the vaccine. They prescribed her a sleeping tablet and told her that they would contact her to arrange an appointment to have bloods taken and an x-ray done which did not happen.
On Friday 30th July, my husband and I arrived arrived home to find Mom sitting on her bed. Her breathing was laboured and she asked us to take her to hospital. She told us she had blacked out earlier during the day and could not remember how long she was out for. We took her to the Emergency Department at Waitakere Hospital immediately where we explained to them what had happened since she had the vaccine and what had happened that day. She was booked into Adult Emergency immediately where they hooked her up for an ECG, took her blood pressure and oxygen levels. When a doctor came in to take her bloods I asked if they had picked up anything from the tests they did thus far. He said that her blood pressure and oxygen levels were good but there appears to be a difference in one of the ECG readings compared to one they already had on file. He said they were looking into this further. He said they would do an X-ray and CT scan as well which was completed during the course of the night and were all clear.
The Doctor then said they wanted to keep her overnight for observation and were moving her to the Assessment and Diagnostic Unit. After 10pm we were told by the nurse that it was okay for us to leave after Mom was settled into bed as they would check on her and do tests during the night. He recommended we come back in the morning and speak to the Doctors after they did their rounds between 8am and 10.30am to discuss next steps.
We were on our way to the hospital just after 9am on Saturday morning when we received a call from a nurse asking us to come to the hospital immediately. She advised that Mom had another blackout, that her blood pressure dropped considerably but that they managed to get it back up again. She advised that they are transferring her to “Re-Sus”. We said we were 2-3 minutes away and rushed their immediately. We went to ADU where we left Mom the night before and were taken to “Re-Sus” by a nurse where we walked into them trying to resuscitate her as she lost consciousness again. After watching them performing CPR for the next few minutes we were told by the doctors that they had done everything to try to bring Mom back and that there was nothing else they could do.
We were later advised by an ADU doctor that the case has been referred to the Coroner as they were unable to establish a cause of death. We then spent the next 4 hours with Police who were acting on behalf of the Coroner going over the events leading up to Mom’s passing.
We have received a pathologist report from the Coroner’s Office stating the preliminary cause of death as a “Pulmonary embolism, pending further investigation”. It also stated that they have taken further samples from Mom for testing.
We know that nothing will be able to bring Mom back but we truly feel that the community need all the information about the side effects to make informed decisions before taking the vaccine. We would be happy if we could achieve this out of the trauma and loss we went through over the last week.
Could you please advise how I go about registering Mom’s death with CARM?
Please let me know of you require any additional information.
Is This NZ Based or Overseas? : NZ