Brittany Burnette was used to caring for others as the director of a nursing home until she developed a condition that caused her bones to rot after taking the Covid shot.
Mrs Burnette, 34, was working at a nursing home in her native Tennessee when the Covid pandemic hit in 2020. She watched patients die alone and missed her son’s birthday out of fear of becoming infected and bringing the virus home with her.
In January 2021, Covid vaccines became available and, feeling a sense of duty to protect her patients, she took the Pfizer vaccine.
She experienced no immediate side effects, but in July 2021, Mrs Burnette developed ‘unbearable’ pain in both of her hips. She was told she had arthritis at 31 years old and had to use a wheelchair when the pain made it too hard to walk.
Believing her pain was something else, another doctor ordered an MRI, which revealed Mrs Burnette’s hip bones were literally rotting, and she underwent her first hip replacement in December 2021. The second followed a few months later in 2022.
However, her hips were just the beginning. Over the next nearly four years – and still ongoing today – Mrs Burnette would undergo surgeries on both shoulders and knees, three surgeries on her elbow, one on her left foot and she is scheduled to have another procedure on her right foot next week.
About a year after her ordeal began, one of her doctors attributed her complications to her bout of Covid in late November 2020 and subsequent vaccines.
Brittany Burnette lives in Tennessee with her husband and two sons (pictured here)
Your browser does not support iframes.
Mrs Burnette told DailyMail.com: ‘The pain is so debilitating. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. I’ve always been trying to be the best provider I could be caring for other people.’
However, due to Mrs Burnette’s condition, she had to quit her job as a nurse and director in an elder care home and go on disability.
She continued: ‘Now I can’t even drive my kids to school in the morning anymore… it’s devastating.
‘I have really had to mourn the life that I thought I was going to have because I will no longer be able to be the same person I’ve always wanted to be because of a virus and a vaccine.
Mrs Burnette, now 34, used to be a nurse and director in a nursing home but has had to go on disability because of her medical complications
‘It’s absolutely destroyed my life, and so I’ve had to just totally sit back and reevaluate everything.’
Like thousands of Americans who suffered injuries shortly after getting their Covid vaccine, Mrs Burnette attributes her ailments to the shot. But a lack of research and evidence has left vaccine victims without answers, lacking support and being cast as anti-vaxxers.
However, last week, a small Yale University study offered some support to victims’ stories as experts discovered a previously-unknown condition – dubbed ‘post-vaccination syndrome.’
Symptoms include brain fog, dizziness, tinnitus and exercise intolerance.
The condition also appears to reawaken a dormant virus in the body called Epstein-Barr, which can cause flu-like symptoms, swollen lymph nodes and nerve issues.
While Mrs Burnette’s symptoms don’t match all of those mentioned in the research – she has experienced nerve complications – the researchers said vaccine injuries can manifest differently from patient to patient.
Mrs Burnette told DailyMail.com she remains a supporter of vaccines and she and her children have all received routine shots, but she is hesitant to get new ones going forward.
One of the hardest things about her complications is the impact it has on her as a mother.
Mrs Burnette’s pain is so severe she is often reliant on a wheelchair to get around
She told this website: ‘I worry every day that I’m going to cause [my sons] to have stress and anxiety when they’re older but they have made me feel so strong.
‘I feel like, if anything, this just made them so much more compassionate. They are always always there no matter what, at my back to take care of me.
‘My 10 year old has really stepped up and my husband, he works very hard for us, especially with me losing [my job]. He’s really been an amazing caretaker and taken over.
‘I just don’t know if I would have made it. They are the reason I keep going.’
Prior to her vaccine, Mrs Burnette had been living with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – thickening of the heart muscle – but her condition was well managed under the care of a cardiologist.
Since her new symptoms began, she has seen doctors across multiple specialties, including orthopedics and a geneticist.
She told this website her geneticist attributes her complications to a combination of her Covid infection and the vaccines.
The doctor, Mrs Burnette said, told her when she received the vaccine it prompted an immune response and her body sent out thousands of clots that cut off the blood supply to her bones and joints and cause them to collapse and die.
Some of Mrs Burnette’s other doctors believe she has the autoimmune diseases either lupus or rheumatoid arthritis but diagnostic tests have come back negative or inconclusive.
Mrs Burnette has undergone three surgeries on her elbow to remove dead bone and repair a nerve (left) and has had both of her knees replaced (right)
She has been diagnosed with multifocal avascular necrosis (AVN), also called multifocal osteonecrosis (MFON).
AVN is a condition in which bones throughout the body lose their blood supply, causing them to die. It can be caused by trauma to the body, like broken or fractured bones
A 2023 study in the journal Annals of Medicine and Surgery investigated the relationship of avascular necrosis (AVN) and Covid infection in 17 patients.
Researchers found 82 percent of patients complained of pain in both hips, leading nearly 18 percent to undergo total hip replacements and they concluded ‘there is a risk of developing AVN after Covid-19.’
There is no published research on the connection between AVN and Covid vaccines.
Dr Brandson Crawford, a functional neurologist who is not involved in Mrs Burnette’s care, told DailyMail.com AVN can be triggered by inflammation and blood clotting abnormalities.
These, Dr Crawford said, have been documented both in severe Covid cases and post-vaccination adverse reactions.
He explained: ‘Given that Covid-19 is known to affect the vascular system and trigger inflammatory responses, it is plausible that a vaccine administered soon after an infection could further exacerbate these effects, particularly in individuals with underlying predispositions.’
Mrs Burnette is pictured above receiving her Covid vaccine in January 2021
Since her hip replacements, Mrs Burnette has also undergone a partial left shoulder replacement in September 2022 and had three surgeries on her elbow to remove dead bone and repair a nerve in January 2023, August 2024 and November 2024.
She underwent a right knee replacement in August 2023, a partial right shoulder replacement in May 2023, a left knee replacement in February 2023 and in July 2023 her left heel broke and had to be surgically repaired.
Mrs Burnette will undergo surgery in the next few weeks to repair another fracture in her right foot.
She told this website: ‘Even though I have had all of these replacements and surgeries I am still in constant deep bone pain every day.
‘It isn’t as bad as bone death pain but some days are still unbearable. The pain is so bad some days it takes everything I have to get out of bed and move, let alone be a mother and wife.
‘[Doctors] think I will likely suffer with bone pain for the rest of my life.’
Not only has she had to cope with AVN, her doctors said the infection and vaccine triggered a ‘domino effect’ in her body, leading to blood clots in her lungs, declining kidney function, sepsis and pleurisy – inflammation of the lining in the lungs and chest cavity.
Above is an x-ray showing Mrs Burnette’s double hip replacements
In an alternative effort to treat her ailments, doctors have prescribed chemotherapy and immunotherapy infusions
She added: ‘I’m not going to tell you I haven’t had dark, scary days and struggle, because I have… without my family and God, I just don’t know. That’s just what kept me going.’
While Mrs Burnette believes in vaccines, when she first started speaking out about her experience with the Covid shot, she said she was met with people questioning whether she was an anti-vaxxer.
However, Mrs Burnette has always been pro-vaccine and she and her children received all the recommended shots. Now, however, she is extremely wary of new ones.
She told this website she will never get or give her children another Covid vaccine, but has no problem getting them routine vaccinations of shots that have been around and researched for decades.
Mrs Burnette said: ‘I did everything that I needed to do, vaccinating my children. I was vaccinated, but, I will never get another flu shot or COVID vaccine, and I won’t give my kids either as well.
‘They will get… the other ones that have been well studied and researched, and there’s lots of information on over the years. I just think that newer vaccines, before mandated, need to be researched because these are people’s lives that it’s destroying.’