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She says 10 days after getting a flu shot at a Reston grocery store in August and on her second wedding anniversary she got sick. First, she came down with flu like symptoms, then convulsions and blacking out.
She's seen more than 60 doctors. She says all of them were stumped until Johns Hopkins diagnosed her with dystonia. She believes her flu shot triggered it.
Jennings says, "Nothing else explains such a fast moving neurological damage. The medical hospitals ruled out everything, CAT scans normal, blood normal, MRI normal. The only thing that explains it is the shot caused the neurologic damage."
She says it is a strange disorder where muscles work against each other. She can't walk forward, only backwards. She can run but she can't stop without help. She can whisper but has difficulty speaking. Noises can cause convulsions. Her resting heart rate is 90. When she runs her blood pressure dips to 58. She gets exhausted walking a few steps but she could run for hours.
Drugs such as valium and klonopin that make you sleepy give her energy for hours.
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Jennings says the disease is irreversible. Once she loses an ability it doesn't come back. Jennings says there are only three ways you can get dystonia as an adult and they include head trauma, drugs use and poisoning. She says she has not experiences any of that.
There is no cure. One in a million are diagnosed with the disease. She says she just want's healthy people to talk to their doctor and weigh the risk.
While the Centers for Disease Control cannot comment directly on this case, they say they have no knowledge of a link between the flu shot and dystonia.
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