I kept getting sicker. But you won’t catch me reaching for a tin foil hat

I had a suspected mild heart attack just over two years ago.

“Probably just a reaction to the COVID vaccine,” a series of medicos cheerfully informed me, as some nurse grimaced while shaving away swathes of my matted chest hair to attach “stickers” for an ECG.

While my “near-death experience” may have only lasted 10 minutes, it must’ve been chaotically unnerving because I vaguely remember asking one of the staff if she knew of any reasonably priced funeral directors.

Within a few days, I was shunted out of the hospital with some meds, and pamphlets and told by a cardiologist who looked and sounded like Irish actor Paul Mescal, that it was a case of myocarditis, which was inflammation of the heart muscle.

The medical condition was of unknown origin, but it might’ve been triggered by a recent COVID jab.

The doctor gave me a stern warning to come back to the emergency department if my heart went boing again, but assured me it was unlikely.

Whatever caused that coronary blip, I had no regrets about getting vaccinated. I haven’t wavered. There have been no urges since to look up flat earth theory.

A month later, I was swilling the odd G&T while watching Dave Warner peel off a lazy 200 against an insipid South African attack. The everydayness of life had resumed.

Or so I thought.

I have been back to the ED five times since with heart issues. Each time thinking that fist-sized muscle, the engine of the human body, was about to crash.

My reactions follow a similar pattern. I panic. Briefly curate a series of Brechtian-type texts to friends and family informing them of my looming demise, and try to remember the prayers of the more popular monotheistic religions.

Even though I possess all the spirituality of someone whose beliefs extend to worshipping the West Coast Eagles and the books of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

After getting zipped and zapped in the hospital, the diagnosis is always the same: pericarditis. I’ll spare you the medical mumbo jumbo, but it’s swelling of the tissue surrounding the heart.

Both myocarditis and pericarditis have been linked to the COVID vaccine and the virus itself.For the record, I’ve had COVID once and am fully vaccinated.

To make the bold claim that cardiovascular conditions could be caused by one or more of the potions to prevent the virus isn’t some crazed, anti-vax conspiracy theory – as the Albanese government has a website dedicated to exactly that.

According to the federal government, myocarditis has been reported in approximately four in every 100,000 doses (mRNA) in Australia. Pericarditis in 13 in every 100,000 doses, but is more common in men aged 18-49 with a rate of 270 per million doses.

However, several medical institutes, including the British Heart Foundation, have conducted research showing that COVID can also increase the risk of heart and circulatory issues.

Maybe both have caused my cardiovascular complaints. However, no one in the medical fraternity can confidently say which one.

I know several friends and family who have suffered similar disorders.

Like me, none of them previously had any issues with their old tickers. And while I might not be a paragon of fitness, I’ve kept myself in decent shape.

Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth is on record claiming people who experienced adverse heart conditions after getting the jab should have been treated better.

“I think that there were significant numbers of people, particularly with heart inflammation from the mRNA vaccines, who were likely dismissed when they should have been heard,” he told the ABC back in November.

“I don’t think there was any deliberate conspiracy … but because [vaccination] was the way out of the restrictions and the lockdowns, you can see how there could have been a tendency across the whole of the medical community to underestimate the side effects that were occurring.”

I was more than OK being one of the walking “vaccine injured,” convincing myself I was part of that glum utilitarian idiom: the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

But now I’m getting sicker. I was recently diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called hemolytic anemia. It’s a disorder in which red blood cells are destroyed faster than they can be made.

It can be fatal if undiagnosed but very curable if caught early.

There is evidence to suggest both COVID and the vaccine can cause hemolytic anemia.

One of the main symptoms is fatigue and brain fog. I’ve found myself pointing the TV remote at the fridge and pouring myself a bowl of cat biscuits thinking it’s cereal.

My relentless health hiccups could be unrelated to getting immunised, but I’m starting to have some doubts.

Just to be abundantly clear: I am pro-vax. I didn’t have one nanosecond of doubt about the importance of getting the jab, not only for myself but for my loved ones.

History is littered with illogical moments, but folk refusing to get inoculated against COVID would be one of humanity’s dumber choices.

Without the vaccine, it’s estimated another 20 million people would’ve died. More than 7 million have already perished because of the virus.

There is no denying the COVID-19 vaccine is one of the greatest achievements in medical science that substantially altered the course of the pandemic.

But I think we need to acknowledge that it’s just possible that thousands of us are still battling serious health issues because of the jab.

I can assure you that I wear no tin foil hat.

The Australian government has paid more than $32 million in compensation to people who had adverse reactions to COVID vaccines. However, they stopped accepting new claims in September.

There have been calls from academics and medical professionals for Australia to develop a permanent vaccine compensation scheme.

Given no one seems to understand the long-term impacts of subjecting our bodies to a quick succession of jabs, it might not be a bad idea.

But I guess like me, we may never know what is making us sick.

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