My Experience with the J&J Vaccine

This past weekend, I was able to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I had initially chosen to get this vaccine instead of the Pfizer and Moderna ones simply because it only required one dose. I had heard of many nasty side effects to all of the vaccines, so I thought that it’d be best to go through the experience only one time instead of twice. 

The following Tuesday, the CDC and FDA have recommended a pause on the J&J vaccine after reports came in of rare blood clots appearing in those who have gotten the vaccine. This came as a shock to me, especially since I had just received it. Most of all, it made me worried about if I would develop this rare blood clot condition since all of the six individuals who had gotten it were young women. 

However, it’s been around five days since I’ve received this vaccine, and so far I’m showing no worrying symptoms. The worst of my symptoms only came after I first got the vaccine.

After I received the vaccine, the first thing I did was take Tylenol since I had heard of people getting high-temperature fever after getting the vaccine. I also made sure to do the windmill arm exercise that my “For You Page” on TikTok had shown me. A few hours later, I was feeling fine except for some soreness. 

Once the Tylenol wore off, all hell broke loose. At the end of the night, I was shivering in chills but I felt incredibly hot at the same time. I had a fever of 100 degrees Fahrenheit and, at 5 AM the next morning, a fever of 101 degrees Fahrenheit, despite taking Tylenol before. Especially since it had been so long since I had gotten sick, the whole experience was unpleasant, to say the least. But as many had told me, 24 hours after receiving the vaccine, I was back to normal. 

Another weird thing that had happened was how that night, I got a random nosebleed out of nowhere. My mother and I related it to stress and maybe leftover side effects of the vaccine–nothing too serious. 

But ever since the J&J news had come out, I began to think differently. What if my bloody nose was related to a blood clot like the other six people? They are all young women, so that means one of them could easily be me, right? For the rest of the week, I was waiting for my body to tell me a sign, one last trigger to push me toward the hospital. But it never came–I was as normal as ever. This made me wonder if my paranoia was really freaking me out for no reason since the chance of developing this rare blood clot is less than one in a million. 

So this is a message to people like me who are likely just as paranoid as I am, especially in the sensitive times we are in today: stay calm. Listen to what your body tells you. If you feel like something is genuinely wrong, don’t hesitate to go to the hospital. In reality, the chances of such severe cases occurring to you are extremely rare–all vaccines have side effects, so don’t get too paranoid over it as I did. 

• Coronavirus
• COVID-19
• j&j
• vaccine