I would just have to pick his son up from school and give him lessons on a neighborhood park. I did this through the next 2 years, and unbeknownst to me, this was the beginning of my journey into becoming a professional tennis coach. So, after a semester of rehab and volunteering all over Atlanta, I started back to school during that Summer. Coincidentally, I had an economics class where I happened to sit down beside a Ukrainian girl who was always wearing tennis clothes. She looked so much like a tennis player that I finally got up the courage to ask her if she played. I later found out that she was my school’s #1 singles player, but at the time my naivety played to my favor. She said “Yes”, and after becoming friends and hitting all summer, I asked if there was a walk-on position for the school’s team.
I really felt like playing tennis matches again, so I tried out and the rest is history. In this weird sequence of events, I guess you could say that, without dropping out of school, going to rehab, volunteering everywhere possible, and joining the tennis team, I’d never have gotten healthy again, never had cared about healthcare, and would never have become a tennis pro. Teaching tennis eventually funded my ability to come to Pittsburgh and go to Grad-School for Healthcare Management. So, was it worth it, all of this (and I’ve only shared a very small amount of the story)? I don’t think a question like that even matters.Continuing on, around the time I tried out for the tennis team, I started really looking into my medical records.
I wanted to know what had happened to me and I wanted to free myself of my fear of going to sleep (I have always only had seizures during my sleep). I requested all my medical records for the time around when I had my first seizure. When I looked through the records, I discovered I had taken the TDaP vaccine on August 3rd, precluding the event that happened the night of August 5th/6th, as well as the doctor’s appointment I had on August 9th. By the time I made this discovery, it was already late into Summer 2007.
Now having this information, I confronted my mother who remembered those days even better than I did. She recounted how I felt sick after taking the TDaP vaccine while still in the doctor’s office, how my skin became jaundice, and how I thought I had come down with a small virus. After confirming what I saw on the medical records, I began looking into the history of the TDaP booster shot. That is how I discovered the truth about the controversial Pertussis vaccination.I learned that it had been re-released to the market earlier in 2006 after being re-manufactured in a safer way than its previous version. The previous vaccine had been taken off the market for allegations of SIDs, Seizures, Brain Damage, Coma and maybe even Autism.
From there, I went to the CDC website to find the current listed adverse reactions for the new version of the Pertussis vaccine. At that time, however, there was none listed because there still wasn’t enough statistically significant number of cases recorded to make any valid assertions. However, by 2008, the CDC listed depression, seizures, coma, uncontrolled crying, and anorexia adverse reactions, all of which I had manifested in various forms (except coma), after having taken the vaccine. Knowing this, I started looking for some type of legal retaliation. This is how I discovered the Vaccination Compensation Fund.
