In recent days, Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert announced she had emergency surgery for a blood clot and was diagnosed with an iliac vein problem called May-Thurner syndrome. Though it’s impossible to know the root cause, we’ve been reporting on a notable uptick in this very disorder, as reported by independent physicians treating thousands of patients. It’s one of many illnesses they say could be caused by, or worsened by, COVID or COVID vaccines. One estimate from a National Institutes of Health study implies up to one in four adults may be afflicted with long-term problems. Today, the latest on what cutting-edge doctors are learning.
The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
At a recent medical conference in Phoenix, Arizona, we caught up with Dr. Vaughn, CEO of MedHelp Clinics in Birmingham, Alabama, and Dr. Pierre Kory, co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and medical director of the Leading Edge Clinic.
Dr. Pierre Kory: It’s my belief that the medical system has essentially failed. It’s collapsed. It does not serve the patient. It serves numerous interests. Generally they’re financial. And I think it’s a model where it really benefits from patients staying ill and being chronically ill.
Together, doctors Vaughn and Kory have treated thousands of patients with long COVID or long vax. We met a few of them last year.
Andy Sink: Andy Sink, 55. Had acute COVID that required hospitalization.
Phil Williams: Phil Williams, 58. He’s treating my wife for blood-clotting.
Mibi Bailey: I have congestive heart failure as a result of it.
Corey Kekler: I had GI symptoms and heart issues.
Henry Ray: Mini blood clots in my lungs.
According to an ongoing National Institutes of Health study, up to 25% of adults are stricken with long COVID six months after infection, which could also be long vax, if they were vaccinated. Symptoms include mood problems, retina detachment, atrial fibrillation and other heart problems, blood issues, weakness, muscle disorder, nerve pain, and more.
Sharyl: What is happening — for people who may not see patterns or what’s going on?
Dr. Jordan Vaughn: One of the things I always think about, the physicians that are probably in the places that aren’t seeing it, is that they don’t have the lens to understand that there’s a pathogen, spike protein itself, causing all of these multi-systems issues. And if you don’t ever have that lens, instead, you’re going to basically kind of jump over yourself to try to find a way to explain these multi-systems issues that really aren’t explainable previously in our textbooks in a sense. And it’s just gonna be frustrating.
Sharyl: Describe what you see happening to people.
Vaughn: So in many ways, I mean, it is very young people that were otherwise athletic and living their life. And then they go from that to being debilitated. And then on top of that, as Pierre said, I mean the kind of increase in the type of cancer diagnosis that I even have in my, you know, primary care practice, to neurological diseases that I never thought would happen, to things like systemic amyloidosis that I would’ve never, you know, seen in some of these patients, or may have seen once in a lifetime.
Sharyl: Dr. Kory, what are you seeing?
Kory: I kind of differentiate vaccine injury and vaccine syndrome. The vaccine syndrome is a chronic illness. The vaccines we know can cause a lot of acute issues. So heart attacks, myocarditis, strokes, anaphylaxis, various rashes, things like that. But what Jordan and I specialize in is what we call long vax. Same thing as long COVID; only real difference is long vax is on average sicker than long COVID. I also will say that long vax is far more prevalent. So in my practice where we’ve evaluated over 1,200 patients, 70% were long vax. It was triggered by the vaccine, temporally associated. And although we give it this new name, “long COVID,” “long vax,” it’s not a new disease. It’s an old disease that was called myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS. And that disease has been around for decades, always associated with infections. But with SARS-CoV-2, the incidence of ME/CFS, or what we call long COVID, is so high. And the vaccines use the spike protein, which is the main pathogen on the virus. And that’s exploded ME/CFS.
Sharyl: What are you finding in terms of treatment, in simple terms?
Kory: Sometimes, if I’ll address one mechanism, I can hit a home run with a patient. Like sometimes, one medicine: boom. They’re like, “Oh my god, I feel better.” The vast majority, it’s more iterative. I go after this one — this is just my approach. And I’ll find iterative improvements, like, some symptoms will disappear when I address mast cells. Others, when I address anticoagulation. Others when I address sort of macrophage activation. And so, it’s kind of like, sometimes I feel like I’m putting Humpty Dumpty together.
Vaughn: It affects every system, and it takes a long time to sit there and balance where you’re going to focus. Because usually they’re all related in some ways, but you attack — at least I do — attack the thing that seems to be the most prominent first.
Sharyl: What are you learning today that you didn’t know three months ago? Like where is this going, in your opinion?
Kory: I think it’s really the foundation of what we need as a new field, which is spikeopathy. We need to learn much more about that. What I’m doing — so I’m not a basic science researcher. I’m a clinician and I’m up front with patients. I’m trying to learn how best to help them, using various therapeutic mechanisms. Like, for instance, ivermectin, which is one of our mainstays, has about 20 positive mechanisms of action, but there’s lots of other therapies which have similar. And so really I am just doing old good gumshoe medicine, really just figuring out how best to help my patients in a safe way, in an effective and sustained way. And that’s just me trial-and-erroring. And I have to tell you, the clinical trials research response of our medical system has been appalling.
Sharyl: Cutting edge for you — what is sort of, are you on the precipice of learning the next new thing about your patients? Or where are you in that?
Vaughn: A lot of what I’m seeing is addressing these people with venous disease and actually helping them get back to where they can walk upstairs, and even back to running in college, those kind of things. And those things have been almost what I would call game-changers.
When we met Dr. Vaughn’s patient, 19-year old runner Ellen Redinger, a few months back, she’d gotten very sick after getting vaccinated and getting COVID.
Redinger: I mean, I can pinpoint the day, the time, where I was, when I was running. I was doing a workout. And all of a sudden, I cannot feel my legs. I cannot feel, I mean, my heart rate is going 200. I can’t do it. I call my dad. I’m like, “I’m done working out. I can’t, I can’t do it.” And I mean, I can’t do any type of working out. I can go on a walk, but it has to be like a small, short walk, for a short period of time. And if I do ever do it, I feel all I can do the next day is lay down.
Today, after months of therapies with Dr. Vaughn, Redinger reports she’s back running in college again.
Kory: The good news is that we are making significant progress. More and more people are learning the things that they need to learn, that they’re not being told, and we’re figuring out every day how to help our patients. And so we’re getting better at what we’re doing, and I expect that trajectory to continue.
Vaughn: The good news is, we’re learning about disease. We’re learning how to treat it correctly. And we’re also learning how to remake our system to truly back to helping patients.
Sharyl (on-camera): Dr. Vaughn says in the past year, he’s diagnosed 125 patients with iliac vein disorder or May Thurner syndrome. Prior to that, he says, he’d never seen a case.
Watch video here.
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Are you telling us that Ms. Boebert got the Trump Jabs, and you think she may be sick from them. Now that is surprising.
Very strange because my daughtr was diagnosed 10 years ago with May Thurners Syndrome and was told at the time it was genetic. She still has a stent and is checked once a year.
Very strange because my daughtr was diagnosed 10 years ago with May Thurners Syndrome and was told at the time it was genetic. She still has a stent and is checked once a year. This is not a duplicate comment.