Pussycat Dolls alum Jessica Sutta sustained a debilitating injury after getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
The singer, 42, said she began experiencing horrific symptoms just days after receiving her second dose of the Moderna vaccine in 2021.
“I woke up with a muscle spasm in my right rib that just would not get out,” she recalled during an interview with Daily Mail published Tuesday.
“It felt like a knife inside was burning. It wrapped around my rib cage and up and down my spine, and it felt like I was on the brink of death.”
Sutta, who started experiencing spasms and tremors in her legs, said that she feels like her body has been “completely hijacked.”
The pop star shared that she was left bed-bound and unable to dance for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Any physical activity I pay for the next day, and my body just flares, and it’s very disappointing because I love to dance. It’s who I am,” she said.
Sutta struggled with chronic fatigue, muscle pain and extreme weight loss, dropping a staggering 50 pounds.
“It felt like my body was eating itself,” she said. “And you can imagine living in Hollywood, you lose a lot of weight after you have a baby, and it’s, like, the best thing to everyone.”
Her symptoms took a toll on her personal life and she had trouble caring for her 3-year-old son M.J.
“There’s times where I can’t lift him. I can’t put him in the car, I need someone to help me,” she said of her son, who was just a newborn when she started feeling symptoms. “There’s days that I can’t get out of bed, and I’m on the heating pad, and there’s so much mom guilt that just overflows from my entire being.”
Seeking answers, Sutta attended a roundtable discussion where other people expressed having similar symptoms. She also connected with anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., during his 2024 presidential campaign and spoke out about her symptoms on her own platform.
“I’m willing to risk my reputation so this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Sutta said. “There are many people in the industry way, bigger than me with a bigger outreach, with vaccine injuries. But they won’t speak out. And for me, I just couldn’t hold my tongue.”
Sutta emphasized that she does believe in the technology but will no longer “blindly trust” the medical system after what she has gone through.
“I’m not ‘anti’ anything. I’m just anti being sick,” she said.
While doctors initially thought Sutta had multiple sclerosis and dismissed concerns that her pain was caused by the vaccine, she finally got some answers seven months ago when she was diagnosed with vaccine-induced lupus.
The autoimmune condition is caused by the body’s response to a vaccine going rogue and producing cells that attack healthy tissue. The subsequent inflammation explained Sutta’s skin rashes, joint pain, muscle soreness and fatigue.
The diagnosis helped Sutta’s doctors figure out a more effective treatment and she now uses steroids to control her flareups.
“I still get the muscle spasms here and there,’” Sutta said. “Things have gotten a little bit better through therapies and steroids, but I don’t want to live my life like that. I just want my body back. I want to be able to dance again.”
The “Don’t Cha” artist also takes a lupus medication called hydroxychloroquine and she monitors her diet by avoiding gluten and sugar.
“But even after all of this, even though I’m having a better day today, I don’t feel like myself anymore,” she said. “My heart just breaks for everyone who has suffered long COVID because they understand. You’re just not yourself anymore.”
Suttan, who believes she was going to die within the first six months of her health struggles, said she is more optimistic these days that she will “persevere through this.”
“I am going to conquer this. And that’s my message to other vaccine-injured [people] going through what I’m going through: don’t give up,” she said.
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