Gardasil: The Decision We Will Always Regret

SaneVax, Inc

By all accounts, our daughter was normal before receiving the HPV vaccine.  Katie performed very well in school.  She was conscientious, hard-working and took pride in getting good grades.  She loved dancing having taken dance classes since she was 3 years old.  Katie always danced and twirled throughout our home and anywhere else she happened to be.  When Katie was 10, she joined cheerleading and became involved in competition cheerleading.  She was very active, taking four hours of dance class every week plus spending many more hours practicing with her competition cheer team.  Katie was healthy and vibrant.

We were very diligent with our children’s health.  We never missed an annual check-up and we also followed the pediatrician’s recommended vaccine schedule including annual flu shots.  Our pediatrician recommended the Gardasil vaccine.  The Gardasil vaccine was heavily advertised on TV.  We read the vaccine Disclosure.  It said that the vaccine should not be given to those with HIV.  Katie did not have HIV so we signed the Consent.

On September 2, 2010 at the age of 11, Katie received the first Gardasil vaccine.  Katie’s first day of middle school was September 7, 2010.  Initially, we believed that her fatigue and headaches were being caused by having to get up much earlier in the morning for middle school.  However, she never adjusted to the new schedule and soon her symptoms began exploding.

Katie would often tell us “I don’t know what’s wrong, I just don’t feel good.”  She began sleeping a lot – over 12 hours a day and even more on the weekends, which would allow her gather enough energy to go to school a few days before she crashed again.  She missed days at school, dance lessons and cheer practices.  Soon her illness was visible on the outside too.  Katie didn’t look good – constant dark circles under her eyes, her skin color was ashen and she appeared listless.

To us, it seemed that her symptoms must be related to the Gardasil vaccine.  Katie’s earliest symptoms began after receiving this vaccine.  We searched the internet but only found vague information – nothing that matched our daughter’s symptoms.  We asked Katie’s pediatrician and other specialists if the Gardasil vaccine could be related to her symptoms but our inquiries were quickly dismissed as not having any correlation to her illness.

Katie’s earliest symptoms were a constant headache or migraine that did not respond to pain relievers, stabbing 24/7 bilateral ear pain, fatigue not relieved by sleep, abdominal pain, nausea and joint pain.  We called and visited her pediatrician repeatedly.  We began taking Katie to specialists including Neurologists, ENT’s, GI, and an OBGYN and made several visits to the Emergency Room.  Katie also received many blood tests, CAT scans and an MRI.  Nothing any of the doctors did relieved Katie’s symptoms.  As a matter of fact, the drugs prescribed to alleviate her symptoms only made her feel worse.  Our pediatrician and other doctors involved with Katie’s care began suggesting that her illness was psychosomatic and recommended that we take her to a psychologist.  We soon found that we were on our own, dealing with a medical issue we did not understand but trying desperately to help our daughter.

When searching the internet with Katie’s symptoms, Lyme disease would always come up as the search result.  In addition to asking all of Katie’s doctors if the Gardasil vaccine was the cause of Katie’s illness, we also began asking if Lyme disease could be the culprit.  In October 2010, Katie was first tested for Lyme disease.  The results were negative as were two later rounds of testing.  We read on the internet that ELISA and Western Blot tests for Lyme disease are unreliable and that many people who actually had Lyme disease tested negative.  Since this information is all over the internet, we thought it was common knowledge to doctors as well.   Instead, we were emphatically told by doctor after doctor that this was not true, that the testing for Lyme disease is highly reliable and that there was no way Katie had Lyme disease.  In April 2011, Katie could no longer go to school or participate in dance or cheerleading – the pain and fatigue was all consuming.  Nothing any of the doctors did provided any relief yet every doctor refused to consider Lyme disease or that the Gardasil vaccine was related to her illness.

Katie’s list of symptoms included the following:  24/7 headaches and migraines, 24/7 stabbing ear pain, hyperacusis, fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea, all over joint pain, constant sore throat, visual disturbances, light sensitivity, cognitive issues such as memory and severe comprehension problems, random numbness and tingling, weird “bug crawling” skin sensations, generalized weakness throughout her body (it was difficult for Katie to just sit in the shower to bathe), dizziness, fainting and heart palpitations.  She slept long hours and stayed in her bedroom shielding herself from the noise of everyday living.

In May, we requested testing through a lab specializing in tick-borne disease testing.  Katie’s pediatrician reluctantly signed the lab Requisition Form.  This time the test results showed that Katie was highly positive for Bartonella Henselae, a tick-borne disease also known as a co-infection to Lyme disease.  She was also highly positive for Mycoplasma Pneumonia andthe testing showed that her immune system was struggling.  Katie’s Western Blot for Lyme disease was negative.