Sheila Bath, a 60-something chef and life coach from Connecticut, first suspected she'd been injured by the single-dose Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine on April 11, 2021 — exactly 14 days after she got the vaccine.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Bath said her initial symptoms included a burning sensation running from her legs to her spine and numbness in her feet. The symptoms lasted for two months.

"My legs were burning from my ankle all the way up to my lower spine on both sides. Burning, burning, burning," Bath said. "My feet were numb. It was burning out the nerves in my legs and in my spine."

She said she also sustained "terrible bruising" on her extremities, dry mouth, worsening vision, inability to walk, cysts on her kidneys, gallstones in her bladder, calf cramps, muscle spasms, depression, brain fog and 20 lbs. of water-weight gain.

These are "classical Guillain-Barré Syndrome symptoms," Bath said.

Bath suspected the vaccine triggered the symptoms, but doctors were initially reluctant to draw the same conclusion.

Bath told The Defender:

"I didn't know what Guillain-Barré was, but it's a very well-known thing that you have to go directly to the hospital. And [my neurologist] could have sent me directly to the hospital. The neurologist neglected to follow the protocol of getting me into hospital when they could have cured it."