What does awareness mean to you?

 Today marks the start of Vaccine Injury Awareness Month and it felt right to write about why awareness is so important, especially for those affected. 

When I was faced with the sudden change in my health, and life, following vaccine injury I felt incredibly isolated. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t do things anymore, I couldn’t work, couldn’t train or walk my dog. I didn’t get to spend that summer of 2021 making memories with my friends and family. The isolation went much deeper than that, because not only was I stuck inside alone, there was no one that understood what I was going through. 

I was fortunate that my family and most friends were supportive and helping in any way they could, they really carried me for a very long time. But they couldn’t truly understand what I was going through. The pain, the grief, the gaslighting, the constant lack of answers and help.

To any normal person with an ailment, telling them to go to the doctors isn’t triggering. But when you’ve been to the doctors 6 times in a month with no results, it soon becomes a traumatic experience. It’s not traumatic because you didn’t get answers or help, that’s just frustrating. The trauma comes from the ridicule, the eye rolling, the laughing at you, the pointed and uncompassionate questions about your mental health - because of course your sudden and extreme ill health is because you have therapy. 

It’s lonely believing you must be the only person in the world having the experience that you are following the covid vaccines. I figured I was one of the people who also shouldn’t have survived the vaccine, but down to my sheer stubbornness I did. For over a year this went on, losing all my savings to seek help and treatment, while slowing losing control of my mental health. Perhaps the doctors were right?

In March 2023, after nearly 2 years of searching for others like me, I found UKCVFamily. Had they not managed to raise awareness and get an article in the Express I don’t know where I would be right now. It doesn’t bear thinking about, because I did find them and I’ve felt whole ever since. The relief of knowing you haven’t lost your mind, that what you are experiencing is real is something I can’t put in words.

Raising awareness is vital, to ensure no one else has to endure any more time alone, but it is also bigger than that. Covid vaccine boosters are still being rolled out, people are still being injured and awareness ensures they know where they can get support. Treatment pathways are virtually nonexistent and this is down to a lack of awareness. Without awareness, research doesn’t happen and without research the treatment pathways will never come to fruition. Without awareness we can never be understood, we can’t get the help we need, both medically and financially. The VDPS is so narrow minded that most people whose lives have been ripped from under their feet get denied. You haven’t grown an extra head? Denied. 

That’s what awareness can do for us - those who are sick, those who have lost loved ones, those who are now our caregivers. But Vaccine Injury Awareness Month can help those not affected as well - knowledge is power, after all. Tomorrow, next week, or even next year you might meet someone who has been impacted. You might have already met someone impacted. Having an understanding and awareness of what this community has and continues to experience helps others meet us with compassion and kindness. 

We are normal people from all walks of life - professionals, athletes, coaches, teachers, farmers, therapists and doctors. We didn’t choose this path, the same way someone stricken with cancer didn’t choose theirs. Through awareness they are only met with compassion, and with awareness the world can become a much safer place for us to exist too.  

October is Vaccine Injury Awareness Month!

Join us in the month of October, and 'Purple Out' your social media profile pictures to show support for all those who have been directly, or indirectly, adversely affected. Get your profile frames HERE

There is should be no shame in being vaccine-injured or bereaved, lets remove the stigma!!!

Family call for urgent reform of the government's vaccine damage payment scheme

The family of John Cross, former NHS Pharmacist are calling for the urgent reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme. In an interview by reporter Thomas Moore of Sky News, the family stress that the scheme is not fit for purpose and is failing families affected.

John sadly took his life after the medical assessors rejected his claim stating that he didn't meet the 60% disablement threshold criteria of the out-dated scheme. UKCVFamily support the Cross family, in a call for urgent reform.

In a poll of UKCVFamily members we conducted, 73% of those polled said that they had considered suicide at some point since they had become ill. Sadly, UKCVFamily are aware of others affected who have taken their own lives.

UKCVFamily Statement

The inadequacies of the vaccine damage payment scheme, and the lack of support for those adversely affected by vaccination, has been brought to light through the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out and is now resulting in serious mistrust of British institutions.

In order to rebuild this from the general public--which is vital in the event of future health crisis--this country urgently needs to have an effective and compassionate means of medically, financially and emotionally supporting the vaccine injured and bereaved.