A young Ontario mother paralyzed after receiving a Moderna COVID-19 booster shot was offered euthanasia twice in hospital, the Canadian Independent reports.Kayla Pollock, a 37-year-old from Mount Albert, ON, worked as a casual educational assistant, assisting kindergarten children in the same school her son attended. She was fit, healthy and active.Pollock was immunocompromised and a Type 1 diabetic, so she received two Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations in the middle of 2021. Her father was in a long-term care facility and vaccination was going to be a requirement for entry into the care home. Pollock suspected the care home would eventually require a booster shot, so she went to get one. When she arrived, police were present, apparently because people were upset that Moderna was being given out instead of Pfizer. Kayla had a gut feeling something was wrong, but took the booster shot anyway on January 11 2022.Four days later, Pollock's legs gave out, causing her to collapse. Nine days later, it happened again. She called her doctor and asked to see a neurologist.When Pollock awoke on February 22 2022, she realized she couldn't move her body. She yelled for help and her boyfriend called 911.Pollock was taken to Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket. She said the attending physician in the emergency department initially dismissed her symptoms. The doctor suggested her condition was all in her head, portrayed her as a "crazy person," and ordered a psychiatric consult.Later, another doctor whispered in Pollock's ear and said, "I think there's something seriously wrong with you. I don't think you're faking." He arranged for a radiologist to give Pollock an MRI. The scan revealed a massive legion on her spine.Pollock asked the neurologist if the lesion could be a tumour. The neurologist replied, “it's less likely a tumour” and said his “gut impression it was caused by the vaccine.” When Pollock asked if this was common, the doctor, said it had happened to “many" people.Transverse myelitis was diagnosed, a condition that interrupts the transmission of messages along the spinal cord nerves throughout the body. During several months in the hospital, she was offered MAiD, but refused after considering it.Pollock said steroid treatments allowed her to regain very slight movement in her arms, hands and fingers. However, she still lacks feeling from the neck down. Her fingernails have decayed due to the lack of nerve function. She believes if the MRI had been promptly ordered in emergency, her health would not have declined so irreversibly.Later, Pollock had several months of intensive rehabilitation at Lyndhurst Rehabilitation Centre in Toronto. She said it did not help.Pollock takes a long list of drugs daily. She lost her home, her job and the ability to co-raise her son. She was placed on provincial disability and had to move away from the town where her son lives into an apartment with wheelchair accessibility in another community.It has taken some diligence to get Pollock the amount of in-home care she was promised. A personal support worker helps her out of bed each morning, another organization assists with meal preparation. In the evenings, a friend comes over to manually extract feces from her bowel and helps get her into bed.Securing compensation through the federal government’s Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) has been difficult. Pollock submitted her application in July of 2022. When she followed up six months later, her application was still under review. After another six months elapsed, she sought an update, but the program informed her that they had never received her initial application. Pollock reapplied to the program and was recently assigned a case worker.Pollock faces challenges in performing simple tasks both at home and in the community and has financial difficulties. She is trying to get a service dog to help her with daily tasks and be a companion. Veterans 4 Freedom has set up a GiveSendGo campaign to help her raise funds for a service dog.These circumstances were not the first difficult ones Pollock has faced. As a child, abuse from her parents left her with bruises, broken bones, and cigarette burns. Family and child services intervened and placed her in a loving home.As of December 1 2023, VISP had received 2,233 claims, approved 138, and paid out $11,236,314 in compensation.
