I think that my wife and I are pretty objective. We want to make the right decision. I think the average person would have NOT have the second series in our situation. We were hoping that it was either a coincidence or something specific to Moderna. And St. Ward is right that women have experienced menstrual irregularities after COVID itself. We rationalized the crap out of the situation before she decided to get the second series, this time with Pfizer.
But with the same reaction, severe life-altering symptoms, a second time with a different vaccine? It’s always cost benefit analysis, and in the particular situation the cost is too high. She doesn’t regret getting the complete series, it seemed like the right thing to do. But at this point, it’s simply the wrong clinical decision. We still recommend vaccination in adults to our patients because we acknowledge that this was likely not a common severe reaction.
But this needs to be studied. Not to scare people away from being vaccinated but to hopefully help determine if there is a subset of the population that are prone to these reactions and hopefully develop other vaccine options. My wife would like an option in the future that didn’t provoke significant health concerns.