Meet Laura

Team Humanity’s Globe-Trotter

Meet Laura

Team Humanity’s Globe Trotter

Prior to February 2021, Laura was an outgoing, adventure seeker who loved to travel the world, move her body and spend time with friends.  

Laura was a self-described “gym rat”.  She spent 7 days a week at her local Barre studio. She played outdoor soccer, biked with friends, and was a skier and swimmer.

Laura had that innate wanderlust-the desire to see the world, experience different cultures and sample exotic foods.  She had a yearly goal: to leave the country at least twice.  She has traveled across our globe.  Her favorite excursions include Africa, Italy, and the Caribbean; and her most treasured city trips were to London and New York City.

All of these dreams, destinations and discoveries came to a screeching halt in February 2021 when Laura received her second vaccine.  Within 5 minutes Laura’s hips, legs and feet were numb.  She wasn’t immobile, but she couldn’t feel anything from her waist down-as if she didn’t know if her legs would hold her upright let alone propel her forward.  Laura instantly felt terrified.  These legs that had run around the soccer field, hiked mountains and deserts, and kept her afloat in the stunning turquoise Caribbean water were not functioning.  

Over the next 72 hours this feeling progressed into throbbing pain in her feet; and her lower half felt like it was getting pricked.  Other symptoms followed.  Laura developed severe mouth lesions and gastrointestinal issues that remain two years later.  Her heart was fluttering. It felt as if her whole body was shutting down-it was systemic-every part of her was having a negative reaction.

At the time of her injury Laura was working in long range strategic planning for a large healthcare system.  This same system had promised employees like Laura that the vaccine was “safe and effective”; that “side effects were rare”; and that “they would take care of her if something happened”.

Unfortunately, this was not the case for Laura.  Even though a paramedic had witnessed Laura’s injuries with his very own eyes at the employer vaccination clinic nothing was documented in her medical record. The doctors at her healthcare system attempted to blame her injuries on anxiety.

Laura had never felt so alone.  She had gone from being in the “best shape of her life” and a social butterfly who loved to try new restaurants with her friends to someone she hardly recognized-down 35 pounds because her mouth lesions were so excruciatingly painful that she struggled to eat.

In late 2021, early 2022 Laura saw Suzanna’s speech at the Minnesota capitol on her Facebook account.

Laura sat there glued to her computer monitor watching Suzanna share her traumatic vaccine injury story; and at the same time having the courage to ask for help and to seek out others like her.  

Laura started to feel a little glimmer of hope, to see a little flicker of light among all of the darkness.  She reached out to Suzanna.  They shared their heart wrenching, forever altering stories. They could truly understand what it felt like to be ignored by most of America and abandoned by most medical doctors.  It is a bond neither of them wanted to share, but at the same time they were relieved to know there were others like them. 

Suzanna connected Laura with a neurologist from a different health system who acknowledged Laura’s vaccine injuries and diagnosed her with small fiber neuropathy and early symptoms of large fiber neuropathy; and POTS that is secondary to another illness.  Laura has also been diagnosed with tinnitus and a heart arrhythmia.

Medical professionals consistently and constantly state that vaccine injuries are “rare”.  

But, we need to remember that these “rare” injuries are “real” people.  Real people who had a life, a life filled with travel, work, friends, and loved ones.  A life outside of their house, their bed and their pain.

This is why Team Humanity is sharing these stories.  Somehow in the midst of all that has happened in the last few years people who have been injured have become “acceptable collateral damage”.  When did this become ok?  How is this ok?  

Team Humanity believes that we are called to speak for the weak and the voiceless.  We are called to tell our stories, gather those who are struggling, and offer them hope and help.  We are called to pull those who are stuck in the shadows and darkness into the light.  

All stories are edited and approved by the participant before the story is published.