A MUM-of-two with a pre-existing health condition has died from a brain bleed 10 days after getting the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Kimberley Lockwood, 34, who lives in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, died from a “catastrophic brain bleed”.
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She suffered from idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) – a disorder which causes increased pressure around the brain, caused by fluid.
There has been no official link between the Covid vaccine and her death.
Kimberley’s husband Damien, 41, said she had been managing her condition with medicine and regular hospital visits.
He said her condition got worse just days after she got the vaccine.
Her devastated family are waiting for a post-mortem examination to be carried out.
Mr Lockwood said his wife received a Covid vaccine on March 14.
He said: “On March 22 she went to work as normal… but I got a phone call and was told she was getting really bad headaches and her vision was going blurred.”
He added that those symptoms were common for people who had IIH, and that Kimberley needed a lumbar puncture, something she’d had before.
However, her condition rapidly worsened and she decided to go to A&E.
FINAL DAYS
Her brother took her to hospital so that Mr Lockwood could look after the couple’s children Jayden, 13 and Jax, six.
Kimberley decided to come home soon after as she wasn’t able to cope with being alone.
Mr Lockwood said: “They said it was a two-hour wait and she also suffered anxiety.
“I’d thought that she might be OK [after coming home] as she’d had some sleep but she phoned me around 7am to say she had to go back to A&E as she was now vomiting.”
A blood test discovered that Kimberley suffered from a low platelet count and needed a vitamin K transfusion.
On March 24, Mr Lockwood received a heartbreaking phone call from hospital – saying he needed to say goodbye to his wife as she had suffered a “catastrophic” bleed on the brain, and that she wouldn’t survive.
Mr Lockwood said: “The night before I was telling Jayden that she was just having a lumbar puncture and I said: ‘Don’t worry, she’s had it plenty of times before and she’ll be out tomorrow’.
“And then the next day I had to tell him [that she wouldn’t be coming home].”
Mr Lockwood said he had to go back to work just days after his wife’s death.
He said: “I’m self-employed so if I don’t work I don’t make money. Some days it’s not too bad and then some days you realise she isn’t coming home, which gets you. It’s hit everybody hard, it’s unbelievable.”
He described his wife as someone that “everybody loved”, and that she had the ability to “light up a room”.
The couple had been together for 12 years.
An online fundraiser has been set up to support Mr Lockwood.
For the most of the population, the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine, created by Oxford University, still outweigh any risks or side effects.
Brits have been urged to keep getting jabbed after a review gave just a 0.000095 per cent chance of a blood clot from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
