Allison Inquiry | Carrie Sakamoto | Day 1 September 8th, 2026

Carrie Sakamoto, the Inquiry's first vaccine-injured witness, was raising three sons on a 28-acre farm and seed business outside Lethbridge, Alberta, with no health concerns. She received AstraZeneca in April 2021 and Pfizer on June 18, 2021. She says flu-like symptoms turned into swollen lymph nodes, high fever and, after a phone-only doctor visit that diagnosed tonsil stones, what she calls fire in her brain, with vomiting.

She describes being sent home from the hospital three times, once with a migraine diagnosis and once after her face dropped, before she was admitted for 17 days with facial paralysis, an eye that would not close, hearing loss, balance problems, and loss of the ability to swallow that required a feeding tube. Her children could not visit because of COVID restrictions. She lives with synkinesis, double vision, constant burning head pain, memory loss, and two types of vertigo. She says her doctors identified a vaccine injury and reported it to Ottawa, and that the Vaccine Injury Support Program approved the injury but paid only partially and denied medications, therapies, a hearing aid and glasses, leaving her in appeals and relying on donations.

She describes the effect on her family, including selling their home and farm, and her husband joins her at the end to describe what the family has lost.

Recorded at the Allison Inquiry, Day 1, September 8th, 2026. For more information, including the full list of witnesses and experts, go to allisoninquiry.com.

0:00 Welcome and swearing in
0:48 Why she came to testify
1:46 Life before: acreage and seed farm
4:13 AstraZeneca then Pfizer
5:50 Swollen lymph nodes, fever and a phone diagnosis
6:56 Burning pain in the brain
9:27 Bell's palsy and being sent home
11:22 Losing the ability to swallow
12:51 Synkinesis and facial pulling
14:30 Memory loss and medication
16:00 Vertigo and doctors who believed her
18:44 Vaccine Injury Support Program: partial payout and appeals
22:24 Impact on her family
27:47 Her husband speaks
31:54 Closing"