Australian Actress Melle Stewart Suffers Stroke After First Dose Of AstraZeneca Vaccine

Australian actress Melle Stewart, 40, ended up having a stroke after her first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine, and now she is learning how to talk and walk again.

On May 24, the actress, who lives in London with her actor husband, Ben Lewis, got her first dose of the vaccine. She suffered a stroke two weeks after getting vaccinated against COVID-19. She was hospitalized, but her condition deteriorated. She lost her ability to speak and all movement in the right side of her body, reported Yahoo!News.

While she almost died from the rare complication, Lewis said that his wife wants everyone to take the jab if they haven't already, according to 9news.com.au. He said that if you're going to win a lottery you'd prefer it was the other one, and said that his wife "wants people to know that she still supports vaccination."

Lewis recalled what happened when his wife, who has appeared in several stage shows in the UK and Australia, including "Mamma Mia!" realized something was wrong. That night after they went to bed, Stewart woke up at midnight feeling funny, but Lewis thought maybe she'd just laid funny that gave herself a "dead" right arm. It wasn't just the arm that was affected as when she got up, she couldn't put any weight on her right leg then she was rushed to a hospital.

Initial tests were clear, but her condition quickly worsened and she lost her ability to move her right side of her body and speak. After she was transferred to a bigger hospital, doctors said that she had a stroke due to Vaccine-Induced Thrombocytopenic Thrombosis (VITT). To save her life, doctors operated on her and removed part of her skull. Lewis said that if it wasn't done, the pressure would have killed her.

For almost four weeks, she was put into an induced coma. She is now in a rehab hospital in London's south west, and her husband is hopeful that she'll make a full recovery. He said that the signs are good as she is walking and sense is coming back to her muscles in her right leg, which he thinks is amazing. He added, "The end game is always difficult. With brain injuries, recovery is so dependent on an individual."

Stewart's family is grateful as she understands everything. She can't speak in sentences, but she knows what she wants to say.