A Windsor woman who blames her paralysis on the flu vaccine says she thinks she should be compensated by the government because she can’t go back to work.
“There’s just so much I can’t do,” Marlene Turkington, 59, said. Though grateful for having come out of it with some mobility, the paralysis has drastically changed her everyday life, she said.
Without her livelihood, she doesn’t know how she and her husband, who is on a disability pension, will cope. Turkington is too young to qualify for a public pension and never earned enough to pay into a disability insurance plan, she said.
One evening last November, Turkington was at work when she felt a strange sensation in her legs. As if they were made of lead, she said. She finished up and went straight home, skipping her errands. In the morning, after taking a few steps to make her bed, her legs stopped working. She was paralyzed from the waist down.
“My legs didn’t move,” said the 59-year-old. “That was the end of it.”
She was hospitalized with what doctors suspected was transverse myelitis – a rare syndrome usually caused by a viral infection or an abnormal immune reaction which causes a section of the spinal cord to become inflamed, affecting the nerves that send signals to the rest of the body.
Turkington, who worked cleaning health clinics, said she had gotten her flu shot about two weeks before and that her doctors did not rule it out as a potential trigger.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, between zero and two cases of transverse myelitis are reported following influenza vaccination each year. In contrast, between 2,000 and 8,000 Canadians are at risk of dying from the flu each year.
A spokeswoman for the agency said there is no scientific evidence establishing a causal link between vaccination and transverse myelitis. She also stressed that the benefits of immunization far outweigh any risks associated with it.
Turkington said she spent three months in hospital and four more in outpatient physiotherapy.
She can’t go back to work because her left leg remained partially paralyzed, so she can’t bend or stretch it. She uses a walker now, can’t stand for long periods of time or lift bulky objects because her back is too weak. She can’t sense heat or cold in her feet and the paralysis has also left her incontinent.
She said her neurologist told her it’s unlikely she will make any further improvements in her strength and mobility.
In a letter to Finance Minister Dwight Duncan this past August, her husband Glenn pleaded with him to help them out.
“The amount of Canadians injured like my wife is miniscule when you look at it objectively,” her husband wrote. “Please do the Honourable thing.”
In his reply, Duncan said he had passed on the Turkingtons’ letter to the provincial Ministry of Health.
Turkington also approached the federal health minister, Leona Aglukkaq, who replied in a letter that any compensation associated with immunization is a provincial responsibility.
Ontario does not have a compensation mechanism for people who are seriously injured as a result of a vaccine. The only province in Canada that does is Quebec. The U.S. and every other G8 country except Russia also have similar compensation mechanisms.
Source: Post Media News, 9th November 2012. http://o.canada.com/2012/11/09/woman-claims-flu-shot-paralyzed-her-forced-her-out-of-work/
