Up until the fall of 2020, Cathy Nagy’s 84-year-old mother-in-law, Marilyn, was living independently when she began “showing signs of early mild dementia,” Nagy told The Defender. As a result, Marilyn — whose husband only recently had died — started taking turns living in her children’s homes.
In April 2021, Marilyn received her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. According to Nagy, “about a week-and-a-half later, Marilyn experienced an episode of hallucinations, seeing people outside who were not there.” Nagy told The Defender: “Marilyn’s family attributed [the episode] to her dementia, even though she had not had any prior episodes … [They] did not make a connection to the vaccination.”
But the family’s opinion changed a few weeks later, after Marilyn got her second Pfizer shot and “had a more dramatic reaction,” experiencing “another episode of hallucinations that same day, extreme weakness and pain in her leg,” Nagy said. “She could barely crawl up the stairs to her bedroom. Marilyn seemed to recover from the adverse reaction, but over the coming weeks, she continued to experience occasional hallucinations, and an increased decline in her cognition, Nagy said. “Because of these symptoms, her family made an appointment for a brain scan in preparation for a visit with a neurologist,” Nagy said.