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Q&A: Family Impact and Vaccine Injury Support Program Ordeal

Day 3 · 1:15:49 · Carol Messenger · Dean Allison

  • 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Husband, four adult children and grandchildren offered remote support after the family relocated; some friends quietly doubted the vaccine link.
  • 📁 VISP application dragged years: ignored filings, lost records, a letter declaring her deceased, and ultimate denial of catheters, counselling and most expenses.
  • 💰 Only a small award reached her among 250 recipients while thousands in rehab and supplies remain uncovered.

Chair probes relational fallout and the bureaucratic nightmare of seeking compensation.

← Intimacy, Identity and Emotional Trauma After Injury | Q&A: Recovery Progress and Courage to Speak Publicly →

Transcript

Carol Messenger · 1:15:49

Yes, yes.

Dean Allison · 1:15:50

So I just, just talk to me, uh, you know, I'm always asking people about how it's affected the relationships with the immediate family and spouses, etc., etc. Just, you talk to me a little bit, uh, about, about that. Well, you're injured in general, not specifically.

Carol Messenger · 1:16:08

Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, no, um, a husband and my— we have four children who are amazing, two grandchildren, so supportive as much as they could be, as we literally left our community and moved to the island and no one was traveling and A lot of it was FaceTimes. There were some, you know, I think challenges. There were, I think, things through family or close friends. People were like, you know, I don't know if they— I didn't feel gaslit to my face, but I think there was times where people were like, oh, really? You know, and not very believed. Sometimes it was just a feeling. You just knew. I never really thought about the me being affected, I had thought about the vaccine, but it wasn't until my neurologist at UBC says, you have to apply to the Vaccine Injury Support Program. You had a very, very significant spinal cord injury and it's incomplete and you're damaged and you need to do that. And I didn't even know it existed.

Carol Messenger · 1:17:08

And that was a whole journey of just— it's been terrible.

Dean Allison · 1:17:12

Do you mind talking about— because that's part of what we're talking about is how difficult the Injury Support Program is to access those lost files, the refiling of files, etc., etc.?

Carol Messenger · 1:17:23

Yes. When I applied in the fall of 2023, first off, I never heard anything for about four months and they were saying the lead time was about two weeks at that point. So I started to follow up with emails and escalate. I finally was assigned a caseworker after I escalated and the caseworker didn't know my name, called the wrong file up. Um, I was at— I was like, I said, are you new? I'm sorry. It didn't leave me with a lot of confidence. Um, turned out I didn't hear anything for another 4 or 5 months. That person was either let go or fired, and then my file was misplaced. Took another close to a year before I got another case manager. And then when they started to move things along, one of the worst things— well, first off, they wouldn't— would never answer your call, wouldn't reply back in a timely manner, like weeks and months Don't even bother leaving a voicemail. And then my neurologist, one of my neurologists in Nanaimo says, we have a letter here saying that you have been declared dead by the Vaccine Injury Support Program and they haven't responded to our request to— in fact, you aren't deceased, so we would just like you to change the letter to get the records.

Carol Messenger · 1:18:35

And that took another 4 or 5 months and I had to do it. The case manager asked me to do it and then asked me to follow up on other people who weren't getting them files and then eventually move forward. And I still have some appeals in. I did— I'm one of the lucky over 250 people, if I can call that even lucky, that have received a small award. I have no expenses covered. We're out thousands of dollars. I just retired and didn't draw my pension. I had no benefits. I couldn't be on my husband's benefits because Blue Cross in retirement's really not great. It would have been better to be employed and had stayed and had that support. I didn't have any counseling covered. They denied it. They said I would— they wouldn't even pay for the catheters that I had to use because I would have had to have a prosthetic urethra to qualify to get those medical supplies that I had to have.

Dean Allison · 1:19:30

You know, did you retire early then?

Carol Messenger · 1:19:33

I did.

Carol Messenger · 1:19:33

I retired about a year and a half early. Before my 80 formula, and I was—.

Dean Allison · 1:19:38

As a result, as a result of the injury?

Carol Messenger · 1:19:40

No, actually, the injury happened right after I had left in retirement.

Dean Allison · 1:19:44

Okay. And so a lot of people talk about the cost. People don't understand that, you know, provincial, federal programs— talk a bit about additional costs that, you know, you, you have to incur as a result of the injury.