Chris Taylor and her husband, Travis, fully intended to make the best of their 24th anniversary trip to Florida in mid-October. What they experienced instead was a nightmare.
“That’s our time away from the kids every year, so every year, we try to go somewhere,” Taylor explained.
After getting off work early on a Friday, the pair drove straight through to Panama City, with several stops along the way.
“We got up Saturday morning and went fishing for eight hours, and the next day we went to the beach,” Taylor recalled.
On their third day in Florida, the pair went fishing again — and then things went south.
“I woke up Tuesday morning about 3 a.m. and I couldn’t hardly breathe. I was struggling,” she said.
Taylor, a first-term city councilwoman in Poplar Bluff, moved to the couch for more comfort and to allow her husband, a city firefighter, to sleep, but only got worse.
“When Travis got up, he asked if I wanted to go to the beach, and I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds really, really good.’ I didn’t make it 20 minutes and we were at the ER,” Taylor said.
“I didn’t have any cough, I didn’t have any of the signals. I didn’t have any of that. I just had a lot of heaviness in my chest, and I felt like I was suffocating,” she added.
A CT scan at the emergency room told the tale — Taylor was suffering from two pulmonary embolisms, or blood clots, one in each lung. Plus, each was infiltrated with pneumonia.
“They didn’t admit me,” Taylor said, speaking of the emergency room’s policy. “Instead, they sent me home with a blood thiner and antibiotic.
“The next day, I came back and my oxygen was around 83%, so they immediately admitted me.”
Two days later, doctors discovered an infection in Taylor’s blood, complicating her issues even more.
“Things just seemed to get worse and worse,” said Taylor, who was on oxygen the entire time.
The whole episode, she said, was terrifying.
“I was scared to death. There was one day I looked at Travis and said ‘I don’t think I’m leaving here’ because it took everything I had to say words. I couldn’t catch my breath,” Taylor recalled.
“One of the doctors said to me, ‘if you hadn’t come in the second time, I believe we’d be looking at a different scenario,’” she added.
The question which kept nagging at Taylor was how could such a thing happen? Was it because of the long travel time, or something else?
Now she feels confident in the answer.
“The one thing that stands out to me the most is the doctors confirmed to me the pulmonary embolisms did not come from my legs or my pelvis, which would be normal for a long car ride,” she said. “I asked them, ‘could it be possible that it came from the (COVID) vaccine,’ and they winked at me. That’s all they did. They didn’t say yes or no.”
Taylor had received her second dose of the Pfizer vaccination on Aug. 19. Her primary care doctor in Poplar Bluff was more direct, later telling her it was the vaccine. (See sidebar for information from the CDC regarding vaccine safety and side effects.)
Because Taylor could not lay down flat to have an MRI test done, she was shipped to another hospital in Pensacola, Florida, where they had a machine which could do the test.
Doctors worked to ensure the infection in her blood wasn’t also in her spine, and they “also did a thoracic heart ultrasound to look at the back of the heart to make sure there was no infection there,” she said.
Adding to the medical problems, Taylor noted, was the fact both hospitals and the original emergency room demanded payment up front, which put the pair in a bind.
They were out of cash and had exhausted their savings account, causing more stress.
“Let me tell you, I am very stubborn about asking for help at all, but we reached a point where they requested all this money up front,” Taylor said, “so I convinced Travis to start a Go-Fund-Me.
“We are not askers. We are very stubborn that way, but at some point, you have to be humble and say ‘I need help.’”
And help came in a big way.
“The money kept coming and I thought ‘what a blessing,’” Taylor said.
The donations allowed Travis to rent a room close to the hospital and helped offset medical expenses.
“We found out one of the medicines I have to take is $175 a day out of my pocket, and this is going to help offset that immensely,” she said.
“I am very gracious and overwhelmed,” she added while trying to hold back tears.
Taylor slowly began feeling better, and on Oct. 21, she left the Pensacola hospital. The next day, she and Travis made the long journey back home to Poplar Bluff.
“I am on the mend. Everything is looking bright, and I feel better than I did a week ago,” she said, giving full credit to God and her medical team.
Medical tests will continue for the foreseeable future, including visits to a cardiologist, pulmonologist and hematologist to ensure she’s mending well and the blood clots are dissolving.
“I still have pneumonia, and my doctor said I’m probably looking at about six weeks to get back to normal conditioning. It takes a while for lungs to heal,” she said.
A “lack of energy” remains, said Taylor, who is spending her days at home recovering.
“I’ve really slept a lot,” she said, “and I’m still short of breath. To walk from the door to my car, I have to stop to catch my breath.”
Taylor, who is in her late 40s, noted a big lesson from her whole ordeal is to pay attention to what your body is telling you.
“I knew there was something wrong. I just had that sense,” said Taylor, who is a medical professional herself.
“Definitely don’t wait,” she insisted. “At the first sense of heaviness in your chest, don’t ignore it because it could be something more.”