Debra Vallee of Cambridge says after getting a flu shot she developed pneumonia, her hair fell out, and her hands and feet became numb.

WATERLOO REGION -- When Debra Vallee rolled up her sleeve for a flu shot last October, she didn't think twice about getting the routine immunization.

But just days after receiving the injection to combat the influenza virus, the 39-year-old Cambridge woman suddenly became ill.

"Everything just went downhill," Vallee said.

Pneumonia gripped both her lungs, her hair began falling out, aches seized her body, and her hands and feet became numb and tingly.

Her weakened health meant Vallee couldn't do her job in the laundry room of a Cambridge retirement home, and she moved between her sister's and daughter's homes because she often needed help with simple daily chores like dressing and eating.

"It just turned my life all around," she said. "Over the last six months I've lost everything."

"She just gradually, progressively got worse," her physician Dr. Brian Bloomfield said.

The Kitchener doctor was baffled by Vallee's unusual symptoms.

"It was strange watching Debbie go through this and initially not find anything wrong," Bloomfield said in an interview.

Vallee underwent a battery of tests, including ultrasounds, X-rays and an electromyograph to measure the functioning of her nervous system, and visited a London neurologist in March.

Months after she became sick, Vallee finally had a diagnosis for her mysterious ailments, and some peace of mind.

"I didn't know until a month ago what's wrong with me. I didn't know if I was dying or what," she said.

The diagnosis was immune mediated sensory neuropathy. Basically, her immune system began attacking her nervous system.

Although there are no direct tests to prove the connection, her doctors pinpointed the cause to be the flu shot.

"The only stimulus she had to her immune system in the recent past is the flu shot," Bloomfield said. "For some reason her immune system just got carried away."

But Bloomfield stressed that Vallee's terrible reaction to the influenza vaccine is "phenomenally rare," and it shouldn't stop anyone in the region from getting an annual shot.

"The potential benefit of the flu shot certainly outweighs the minute risk," he said.

According to Health Canada, between 500 and 1,500 Canadians die of influenza or its complications each year.

Karen Quigley-Hobbs, the region's manager of immunization and vaccine-preventable disease, agreed such a severe reaction to the flu shot as Vallee's is rare.

She would not comment specifically about Vallee's case.

"Reactions generally to this vaccine are infrequent and mild," Quigley-Hobbs said.

"What we most commonly see is a local reaction," she said. That may include soreness, redness and swelling at the injection site that disappears within a few days.

Because the flu shot isn't a live vaccine, it can't cause influenza.

Rarely, she said, a person can suffer an allergic reaction to the vaccine, which would cause hives, itchiness and swelling particularly in the mouth. But that is a risk with any medication, Quigley-Hobbs said.

Vallee is beginning to feel better and has returned to work and her own apartment. But she worries that her ordeal may not be over.

"They don't know if I'm going to have a relapse," she said.

Bloomfield suspects that because the flu shot only lasts up to eight months, Vallee will continue to improve without treatment.

 

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