Monday, July 31, 2023

Surviving A System Designed That You Don't Survive

The longer this "pandemic" lasts, the more we hear of its horrors.  Not just that people died - we accept that no one lives forever.  It's how they died, and why.  

An eerie recounting of one woman's experience was published in The Defense (The Children's Defense online newsletter) and no doubt experienced by tens of thousands (if not more) of people here in the US and around the world.  When hospitals decide that the Covid unvaccinated deserve to die but not before making as much money as possible, there's almost no way to survive.  This woman did and this is her story.

Exclusive: Survivor of CDC COVID Protocols Says She Was ‘Just a Paycheck’

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Gail Seiler describes how she was treated at a Texas hospital after they asked — and she told them — she wasn’t vaccinated.

In late 2021, Gail Seiler was enjoying life with her husband, adult children and her grandchildren. She was happily employed as a technology manager near Dallas after spending several years living in Europe.

All this changed in December 2021, however, when Seiler said her “nightmare began.” On Dec. 3, 2021, two days after testing positive for COVID-19, low oxygen levels led her to go to her local hospital, Medical City of Plano, Texas, for treatment.

Unbeknownst to Seiler or her family, this would mark the beginning of a 13-day ordeal  of being subjected to what she described as “cruel and inhuman” treatment. Seiler was denied nutrition and medications and was listed as “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) — despite repeated insistence to the contrary by her and her family.

In an interview with The Defender, Seiler, now 55, said the hostile treatment at the hospital began when doctors there learned that she had not received a COVID-19 vaccine. It culminated when her family, following a “standoff” in her hospital room, succeeded in removing her from the hospital and taking her home, which Seiler said saved her life.

Despite her doctors’ insistence that she would die if she left the hospital, Seiler says she has fully recovered. She credits medications such as ivermectin in helping to save her.

Seiler’s experience motivated her to get involved with a nonprofit group, the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation, campaigning to raise awareness about COVID-19 protocols sanctioned by the Centers for Disease Control and prevention and the harms they caused.

Seiler shared extensive documentation with The Defender to corroborate her story.

‘The first question he asked me was if I was vaccinated’ 

Seiler told The Defender she went to the Medical City of Plano because it was the closest hospital to their home and also where prominent Texas politician and former gubernatorial candidate, Col. Allen West and his wife had received the America’s Frontline Doctors treatment protocol there.

The protocol included “hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and budesonide along with vitamins,” she said. West was not vaccinated for COVID-19, and Seiler said his illness received extensive media coverage connecting his illness and hospitalization to his unvaccinated status.

Intending to receive the same treatment, Seiler said her husband printed out a couple of copies of the Frontline Doctor protocol and took them to the hospital with her.

With her oxygen level at 77, Seiler was taken to the emergency room, but was not seen for at least an hour. When examined, Seiler gave the nurse a copy of the protocol and was told “yes, we’ve done this protocol, we can do this protocol.”

Instead, “They just put me on some oxygen,” she said.

Seiler spent 26 hours in the ER before being admitted to an ICU on Dec. 5, 2021, where she was examined by Dr. Giang Quash. “The first question he asked me was if I was vaccinated,” she said.

Quash responded by telling her, “I’m so sorry Mrs. Seiler, but you are going to die,” and that her only options were to receive remdesivir and be placed on a ventilator — although even with that treatment, he said she was going to die anyway.

Seiler told Quash he was fired, but since he gave her a terminal diagnosis, she wanted her priest and she cited the Right to Try Act — and demanded she wanted to try Ivermectin and Budesonide.”

Seiler said her husband, a former military nurse, “was very well informed about the mRNA technology and what it can do, and he questioned the speed to deliver [the COVID-19 vaccines] and the lack of informed consent obtained from patients.”

Seiler also had already had COVID-19 and “recovered fairly quickly” from it without hospitalization, and that as a result, she “wasn’t afraid of it.”

‘Cruel and inhuman’ treatment

Seiler said she knew Quash was “gaslighting me,” and immediately delegated all decision-making responsibility regarding her health to her husband, who was also “shocked” that she had been told she would die.

“I didn’t want them to say to my family, if they killed me, ‘Oh, she agreed to this’ or that ‘she agreed to death’ or ‘she agreed to be put on a ventilator.’ I didn’t want that to happen.”

Instead, Seiler and her husband insisted on receiving hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and budesonide, as well as vitamins. However, “They said no to everything,” she said, ignoring her requests even when she referenced the Right to Try Act or requested a copy of her rights as a patient.

Seiler said that what followed instead was “cruel and inhuman treatment” with numerous examples of abuse.

Seiler said that the doctors and nurses claimed they were unfamiliar with the Frontline Doctors protocol and “would demonize ivermectin.” Instead, she was placed on a BiPAP machine, which Seiler said “blows hot air, forced air, into your lungs,” which she described as “excruciating and unnecessary.”

She also was denied basic nutrition, water and personal care.

“Even though I was more than capable of drinking,” Seiler was denied water for seven days and received “no nutrients for the first 11 days,” after which she “finally got a banana bag as per my daughter’s persistence.”

Seiler said her husband was able to bring her Ensure, but that it was placed “out of my reach” in the hospital room.

After receiving no mouth care for 13 days, “I was developing thrush,” Seiler said, , “and was starting to get worse,” having developed a film covering her teeth that “required medication to clear up.”

In addition, Seiler said she was forced to have a catheter on her first day in the ICU, which was subsequently never cleaned, leading to an infection. Doctors also “started loading me up with diuretics, so that I could not control my bladder or bowels,” she said, also described receiving “very little cleaning up,” leading to matted and lost hair.

She also was denied physical therapy.

Some nurses were also particularly harsh in their treatment toward her because of her unvaccinated status, according to Seiler, sharing one example of an “nurse who was literally very cruel” The nurse did not respond to Seiler’s calls for over 20 minutes after a cord connected to her oxygen machine came loose. She was forced to hold it in manually so it would work.

According to Seiler, when the nurse finally came in, “she hit me, slapped me on the shoulder, grabbed the cord, and said ‘I can’t come in here very much because you’re unvaccinated and you have COVID.’” Seiler said her response literally was, “If you’ve gotten the shot [but] are too afraid to come in my room, it reinforces why it was right for me to refuse to get the shot.”

Seiler also said she was administered insulin, despite not being a diabetic, and that she wasn’t told if there was a medical reason for this. When administering the insulin, the nurse “would plunge the needle into my stomach,” recounted Siler “I had so many bruises all over my stomach. It was horrific. My husband was livid when he saw it.”

“She was very aggressively harmful,” Seiler said. “I call it medical battery.”

After two evenings of this, Seiler said she could take no more. “The third night she came in, I thought, ‘dear God, I can’t do this. This woman’s going to kill me.’” Seiler texted her daughter, telling her she was “terrified” of her nurse and worried “she’s going to kill me.”

After her daughter submitted a complaint, the individual in question, a travel nurse, was switched out with no explanation.

At one point Seiler and her daughter requested high-dose vitamin C, only to be told there was a “national shortage.” The hospital would not let her daughter bring Seiler’s vitamins from home, instead only giving her “a kind of a child vitamin. “A high dose alone makes a huge difference — it saves lives, Seiler said.

Even when Seiler was eventually granted vitamin C, she said the dose administered was lower than recommended.

“Protocol is one milligram every four hours through a nebulizer,” Seiler said. “And they would only do one milligram every 10 hours,” noting that the hospital pharmacist overruled the protocol and “would not allow it,” despite not having examined her.

Even with such a reduced dose though, Seiler began to show signs of recovery and was told by Quash “I’ve never seen this before.”

“I thought, well, he’s seeing the light,” Seiler said. But when she asked him if her Vitamin C dose could be increased to protocol levels, her request was denied, as were her requests for “medications that I needed to fight pneumonia.” Seiler said these requests were denied “with no explanation” even for medications “they promised to give.”

Seiler said that her medical charts listed her as a “DNR” despite repeated insistence by her and her family members to the contrary. Even after her attorney intervened, “They wouldn’t change it,” Seiler said, although in notes accompanying her medical chart, “they acknowledged that I’m saying I’m a full code.” Yet, “on the chart, which is what they’re going to look at if something happens, it says ‘DNR.’”

Instead of her requested treatment, Seiler was told that if she agreed to take remdesivir, she would be permitted visitation from her priest.

“Our faith is very important to us,” Seiler said, “and so we agreed.” However, when her priest was called away to an emergency on the night of his scheduled visit, the doctors administered the remdesivir anyway, she said.

“So, they got one round, which you know, we knew about the hospital bonuses,” Seiler said, referring to bonuses given to hospitals which administered the COVID protocol, including remdesivir, to COVID-19 patients. “They got their 30 pieces of silver, right?”

‘If I stay here, they’re going to murder me’

After 13 days, Seiler said her husband and daughter “made the bold decision” to remove me into home hospice care so that I would have a chance to live,” adding that they had made arrangements with a private company “to set up a 7-day support and care plan.”

“The hospital made this very difficult for us to do,” Seider said. “They tried to deny it, block it, scare me into staying … I asked many times if I was a prisoner or a patient.”

“I knew that I wasn’t going to die of COVID,” Seiler said. “I felt I was going to be murdered in this hospital. … I wanted to go home, even if I died.”

On Dec. 14, 2021, Seiler’s husband arrived at the hospital with copies of two Texas laws, House Bill 2211 (“Relating to in-person visitation with hospital patients during certain periods of disaster”) and Senate Bill 572, which includes provisions allowing clergy to visit hospital patients. However, “they would not let him in,” she said.

Following this, the local sheriff and police were called, but according to Seiler, “They wouldn’t enforce the legislation.” Instead, officers stood guard at the door to her hospital room. Seiler said she told the officer “If I stay here, they’re going to murder me,” but that in response, the officer left without taking any action.

Early in the morning on Dec. 15, 2021, Seiler’s husband called her and asked if anyone was in the room. Hearing there wasn’t, he said he was going to “come to save my life.”

In a stroke of good fortune, Seiler’s husband encountered open doors and no security upon arrival at the hospital. Dropping off a cease-and-desist letter and copies of the two Texas laws at the entrance, her husband was able to make it all the way to the ICU unit. “They couldn’t stop him,” she said.

Hospital personnel soon arrived and informed her husband that he “needed to leave, to get out.” However, his response was “I’m not leaving this hospital without her. You’re not going to murder my wife. She’s not your guinea pig. I’m taking her home today.” Following this, a “standoff” began, as Seiler described it.

Eventually, the hospital and police offered to allow Seiler release “against medical advice” (AMA) instead of home hospice — which Seiler refused. There were legal distinctions at play here, according to Seiler, since if an AMA form is signed, insurers can deny payment for treatment.

Seiler recalled telling hospital personnel that she did have medical advice from outside doctors advising her to leave, noting that the hospital itself had said she “was terminal.”

According to Seiler, her husband was able to alter the release forms the hospital provided, “crossing out things,” and she signed it. Her husband also furnished a small bottle of oxygen to sustain her for the trip home.

‘As soon as you walk in the hospital, you are a paycheck’

Despite her ordeal at the hospital and her poor physical state upon leaving the hospital, Seiler said she did eventually recovered fully. She began taking ivermectin and budesonide and was connected to a larger oxygen tank at home, in “a scary 72 hours getting me titrated off the oxygen.”

“When my husband drove away from the hospital, that was the first time I felt I was going to live during the whole experience,” Seiler said. “And it wasn’t easy. I was a mess … I couldn’t walk. We had to have a wheelchair and walker … I couldn’t eat … I lost a lot of hair.”

She said it took months to recover but she has no lingering physical aftereffects from her hospital experience. “Just yesterday, I did … elliptical and swam,” she said. However, she noted that from an emotional perspective, she was obliged to start counseling and therapy for the effects of PTSD.

Seiler explained why, in her view, she received the treatment that she did:

“Had I been given the ivermectin and budesonide at the hospital instead of them pushing only the harmful option of remdesivir and ventilation, my stay would have been very short. Instead, the doctors and the hospital administration made an early decision that I was going to die.

“They get a lot of money from the CARES Act if they give you remdesivir and more if they ventilate you. That combination gives you a 12% chance to survive!

“But they also get more money if they can put COVID-19 on your death certificate. It’s very lucrative for them. The bonus of killing the unvaccinated is in driving up the statistics. You can’t prove a pandemic of the unvaxxed unless you can drive the death count up by killing the unvaxxed.”

For Seiler, a silver lining in this experience is the advocacy work she now performs on behalf of hospital protocol victims and their families.

In March 2022, Seiler joined the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation, which had launched a citizen task force and the COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project (CHBMP), which describes itself as an effort to build “a living archive of ongoing Crimes Against Humanity.”

Through this organization, Seiler said “we have heard from tons of people” and “have documented many stories,” over 1,200 in all, although “most are not survivors” but instead, family members of those who didn’t survive.

CHBMP has compiled a list of 25 commonalities shared by many of the victims whose stories the organization has documented. According to CHBMP, commonalities include isolation of the victim, denial of informed consent and alternative treatments, gaslighting, removal of communication devices, discrimination against the unvaccinated, dehumanization, dehydration and starvation, non-emergency ventilation, refusal of transfer and strict adherence to Emergency Use Authorization protocols.

Citing CDC statistics, Seiler said 1.6 million people are listed as having died of COVID-19, influenza or pneumonia — out of which only 167,000 died at home.

“The rest of them died in facilities, hospitals, some type of inpatient setting,” Seiler said. “And so, that’s where you start looking. … That tells you, look at the protocol,” along with “the isolation, the overall treatment. … They’re kind of thrown into these units like animals. It’s just incredible.”

“As soon as you walk in the hospital, you are a paycheck,” Seiler said. “You have a target on your head from these bonuses. So … you’ve just walked into basically a prison … and they’re not letting go.”

FormerFedsGroup also launched a public awareness campaign, according to Seiler, with billboards placed in Michigan and New Jersey, asking people to question the deaths of loved ones attributed to COVID-19 and directing them to the CHBMP website.

Seiler said that the FormerFedsGroup’s citizen task force has approximately 125 volunteers, who are “mostly victims turned advocates fighting for justice and change.” She described them as “eyewitnesses to crimes against humanity” who “lived through it and are not going to sit down and take it” and are instead sharing their stories.

Support groups for victims and their family members have also been organized. “It’s empowering” to connect with others who “have said the same thing” and who “see that they’re not alone,” Seiler said.

Seiler advised victims and their relatives to “not let anyone else silence you. Tell your story as much as you know it and connect with others. Don’t just take this. Be brave. We can help you.”

 Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV's "Good Morning CHD."

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

When Your Own Politics Bites You In The Ass

If this story wasn't so typical - the left eating its own.  Let the author/victim describe in his own words what happened.  A lesson to us all.


David Volodzko criticized Lenin in ‘The Seattle Times.’ Now he is without a job. A story of profound intolerance in our country’s most “tolerant” city.


I was just fired from my job at The Seattle Times after defending Hitler. The only problem is, I never defended Hitler. In fact, my family was hunted by the Nazis; my grandfather was a Nazi killer who later almost died in a concentration camp; and some of my best journalistic work has been exposing neo-Nazi lies. But if you want to hear a story about the intolerance in our country’s “most tolerant” city and the erosion of civil discourse in American life, read on.


I began my career as a university lecturer of English and logic. Then, drawn by the need to tell stories of structural oppression, I switched to journalism. I have been a journalist for the past 15 years and have spent almost all of my adult life in Asia—four years in Japan, six in South Korea, three in China, one year traveling Southeast Asia, and two in Nepal and India, where for a short period I was homeless in Mumbai. But that’s another story.

My work has largely focused on East Asian politics and culture—everything from sexism in South Korea to the terrifying rise of Nazi chic in Mongolia. I wrote about North Korean refugees and Europe’s racist opposition to the Syrian refugee crisis. While living in Israel, I wrote about Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was held by Hamas for five years until he was released in a prisoner exchange in 2011.


Perhaps the reason I am drawn to hard stories in far-flung places is because of my family background. After Vladimir Lenin turned Russia into one giant gulag, my family was scattered like leaves. My grandparents became refugees—they settled in Paterson, New Jersey—and for the rest of his life my grandfather sent boxes of whole cloth, candles, paper, and other essentials to his beloved family whom he could never see again.

So when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, I flew to Eastern Europe to cover the war.


My work on Ukrainian refugees resulted in more than one story, including a piece for New York magazine about a therapist who helped a woman find the strength to flee her home amid explosions, saving her life and the life of her mother and daughter. I was never prouder of the work I’d done.

About one year later, having recently moved to rural Georgia from my wife’s native Peru, I received a job offer from The Seattle Times to be an editorial board member and columnist. Our entire family had moved to Georgia together—including my parents, my brother, and his wife—so it was a tough call. But after consideration, we sold our house. My wife and baby daughter flew to Seattle. I drove the moving truck.


I knew Seattle only by reputation. The great outdoors of the Pacific Northwest, a vibrant Asian community—a strong Latino community too, so our daughter could grow up with Spanish-speaking friends—and residents who routinely approved tax hikes to ensure those in need of help received it. I should mention that our politics fit the bill: I am a democratic socialist and my wife is a DEI trainer. Suffice it to say, the city felt like a great fit.


The job was rewarding. From the first day, I found myself reporting on the protection of orcas and efforts to improve the level of civil discourse in Congress. When Pride Month came, my family proudly marched with The Seattle Times. What a beautiful new home, I thought to myself. How inclusive. How tolerant.

How naive.

Earlier this month, for my first official column, my boss urged me to write about the local statue of Vladimir Lenin that stands in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. The good people of Fremont enjoy dressing him up in tutus, Halloween costumes, and the like. 


I was more interested in writing about the astronomical cost of childcare in the city, but it wasn’t hard to make the column all my own. I simply had to talk about my refugee grandparents, making pelmeni with my babushka, and my grandfather Josef, the Nazi killer after whom I am named. I noted Lenin’s secret police raids, mass torture, forced resettlements, and genocidal killings.


The column began by reflecting on Karl Marx’s last words as a London-based correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune, in which he “attacked the hypocrisy of Westerners who defend sacred values only when it suits them.” In other words, it was about selective outrage rather than the statue itself. I concluded by saying I am a democratic proceduralist who supports the community’s decision to keep the statue, even if it deeply offends me.


Readers thanked me. Some shared stories of their own families fleeing Russia, or told me how their grandmothers broke down weeping when they reached America only to find Lenin staring down at them in the land of the free. Many critics claimed I had advocated for tearing the statue down. Perhaps the most common criticism I received was that no one takes the statue seriously.


Oh, but they do. They admire it.


The day after my column was published, I received my first response. “The Seattle Times is so desperate for new staff they hire folks from rural Georgia for their editorial board?” Another wrote, “We don’t need more faux outrage.” Another reminded me it was the Soviets who “single-handedly defeated Nazi Germany” and that the statue was “simply a funky piece of art.” Still another, “You miss the point. It is a JOKE.”


I also received a flood of positive responses. People shared family stories and photos. A retired high school history teacher said my piece was “excellent.” Someone else called the column “an exemplar of reporting as civic leadership. Every touch is perfect.” 


One letter came from a descendant of Western Ukrainian stock who said the statue should stay “as a testament to the failure of Communism.” A Lithuanian refugee recalled living long enough to see statues of Lenin fall in Vilnius and sadly pondered whether she would live long enough to see them fall in America. 

I responded to almost every email, and tried to be gracious, even to the nasty ones. A few I even won over.


But I made a mistake when I posted the column on Twitter and compared Lenin and Hitler. Here’s what I wrote: “In fact, while Hitler has become the great symbol of evil in history books, he too was less evil than Lenin because Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself didn’t believe were harmful in any way.”


I was only speaking in terms of intention—of who wanted to kill more, not who actually did, and in a follow-up tweet I explained: “Hitler was more evil than Lenin if we’re looking at what they did to people and that’s a pretty important metric for assessing evil!”

Let me be absolutely clear: actually killing more people, which Hitler did, is more evil. Lenin killed 4 million people, possibly up to 8 million, whereas Hitler killed roughly 20 million, including 6 million Jews. “In terms of death and destruction, the Nazis were more evil,” I wrote on Twitter. I also wrote, “Hitler was more evil in terms of how many he killed.”


It’s the kind of topic that you can debate among trusted friends over drinks or dinner. But Twitter is very much not that kind of place. And the argument I was making is a fraught one even under the best of circumstances—you don’t need to compare anyone to Hitler to argue that they are evil—and my delivery was poor, to say the least. Four days after I started making these points on Twitter, I deleted the thread.


That said, I do believe that in our culture many people have very little conception that communist leaders—Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot—have a far higher body count than fascists. Nor do they appreciate that Lenin was more ambitious in this regard than Hitler: his aim was to kill as many people as he possibly could. All ages, classes, faiths, ethnicities, regions.


Nevertheless, people insisted I was “defending” Hitler. They called me a Nazi. They told me to kill myself—or suggested they’d do it for me. A local journalist claimed my ancestors were Nazis who “slaughtered Ukrainian Jews by the tens of thousands.”

I have been targeted by tankies and neo-Nazis on Twitter before. But this felt different, more widespread. It also seemed a number of my Seattle-based critics were using my words to go after the editorial board, which is viewed by some as overly conservative. A University of Washington professor told me, after I mentioned I was on the board and writing my first column about the Lenin statue: “I certainly loathe the editorials,” citing their “arch-conservative and often Trumpist line.”


I reject his criticism. I sat on the board. I was part of its arguments and conversations. Board members thought deeply, and were open to new ideas and counterarguments. These were thoughtful people and I imagined that they—often unfairly mischaracterized by ideologues— would surely stand by me as I was being smeared.


Six days after my piece was published, I was relieved when my boss told me she had reviewed the Twitter conversation and concluded I had obviously not “defended” Hitler. I was told the company had my back. I was told the paper would not stand for a lying Twitter mob coming after one of its own.

But then, just a few hours later, my boss called me and told me I was fired. 


The official reason for firing me was “poor judgment” and “continuing to engage online.” I shouldn’t have “engaged,” but I admit it was hard not to defend my family against the baseless accusation they were Nazis who had killed more than 10,000 Jews.


In a statement the day after I was fired, the paper tweeted that “[an] editorial writer engaged in Twitter recently in a way that is inconsistent with our company values.” The statement added: “We apologize for any pain we have caused our readers, our employees and the community.”


I’m well aware, as I explained in a subsequent apology, that my comparison of Lenin to Hitler was not only pointless but potentially dangerous: white supremacists could conceivably use my words to minimize Hitler’s atrocities—at a time when Pew research shows most Americans are clueless about the Holocaust, and the number of antisemitic attacks is rising. The thought of neo-Nazis weaponizing anything I said makes me sick. 

But if I’m honest, I don’t think neo-Nazis follow the internecine battles of leftist Twitter. This wasn’t about actual violence or actual Nazis. This was about punishing a person who, however sloppily, pointed out that evil can also emanate from those who claim to be ushering in good.


I had many defenders, especially within journalism. As soon as the Times issued its statement, the paper’s Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Dominic Gates expressed his anger in a since-deleted Twitter post, saying I did not deserve this. The paper’s former political editor Joni Balter, speaking on Seattle’s NPR member station KUOW, said the decision was an overreaction and that I “deserved another shot.” I appreciated those statements more than I can say.


I considered going silent, hoping one day to find work again once my fifteen minutes of infamy had passed and my reputation as the unhirable Hitler guy had faded. But staying silent won’t help me pay rent and childcare, or salvage my ability to continue doing journalistic work. It also won’t repair my good name or provide me with a clean Google search.


What kind of journalist would I be if fear made me shy away from discussing my experience of viciousness masquerading as social justice? What would it say about my devotion to injustice if I remain silent when it is visited upon my family? This is not an abstract problem. I am now jobless, living in downtown Seattle, which is costly, and unable to help support my family, including my baby daughter. We can no longer afford our apartment, but neither can we afford the fee to break our lease.


It was Lenin who said that a lie told often enough becomes the truth. I wish I could say he was wrong. But I am comforted by the words of one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote, “Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

David Josef Volodzko is a writer and journalist. His Substack, The Radicalist, covers communism, fascism, and other types of political extremism. 

Monday, April 3, 2023

When Your Life Changes . . .

 
In the beginning of May, 2022, I contracted Covid 19 from a triple-vaxxed coworker.  I was a little shocked - I had gone two years into the p(l)andemic, following the Zelenko protocol, both Covid free and vaccine free.  Not to mention flu and cold free.  Whatever.  I felt healthy and excited for the future.

That future included attending the "Today's Dietitian" Spring Symposium in Florida.  It took 10 days to finally get a negative test result, but I had plenty of time since I wasn't going to the symposium until late May.

But somehow I wasn't feeling healthy and I couldn't put my finger on the problem.  I went to Florida, and once there, chalked up my exhaustion to the heat.  I was losing my ability to focus and by the final day, I felt completely done in.  I couldn't wait to get home.

The flight landed at LAX at night (never fly in during daylight - LA is an ugly city.  It's the lights at night that make the magic!) and I hung in there long enough to get home.  I actually went to work the next day, and went the distance (8 hours).  But something was wrong and I knew it.  I had my CBC panel drawn (white and red blood cell levels) and much to my horror, had a Hgb (hemoglobin) of 5.3.  I needed a blood transfusion ASAP.

Two bags of blood infusion later, I was on the road to recovery.  But was I?  Long story short, I went from the frying plan into the fryer.  Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a really bad version of the blood cancer, had set in after years of suffering from polycythemia vera (creation of excess platelets). The response: Chemo.

I began this medication regime (chemo in pill and IV form) at 170 lbs.   That was August, 2022.  By November, 2022, I was just below 100 lbs.  No appetite and nausea non-stop.  Then I went into remission and a suspicious shadow on the CT scan made my oncologist fear the AML had centered in the spleen.  That meant the spleen had to go and once out, revealed that repeated blood transfusions had led to a build up of iron in the spleen.  No cancer, thank G-d, but a setback towards the ultimate goal: Bone Marrow Transplant.

It's all lined up - City of Hope, bone marrow donor (anonymous) and believe or or not, an improved appetite and no nausea.  Guess what - the spleen was holding me back and now I can't eat enough.  Just in time for Passover.  Oy vey.

The Bone Marrow Transplant is set for May (G-d willing and the creek don't rise!), a year after this madness started.   Now I am gaining weight and trying to regain my strength (I walk with a cherry red walker, complete with seat and storage compartment) from an overall weakness.  I fainted twice and collapsed twice as well.  My oncologists were starting to question if I would survive the treatment and encouraged me to get stronger fast.  Like yesterday.  

To be continued.