Deep vein thrombosis (DVT)

The above photo is from my close encounter with death from deep vein thrombosis. I developed this condition and languished confined to my bed for almost a year, unable to see a doctor because they were all busy dealing with dying COVID patients. How soon we forget.

I lived in between two heating blankets wrapped around my painful legs. Right before my leg turned blue, I noticed my leg covered in raised dots filled with fluid about the size of an M&M.

When my leg turned blue, I went to the emergency room at Hazleton General, and after check-in, sat in the waiting room in pain for over three hours. I politely told the nurse at the counter that I was tired of being treated worse than an animal and demanded the ID bracelet cut from my wrist.

The next day, I made an appointment with a real doctor in Leighton, and after a lot of STAT talk, was sent to Miners Memorial and was diagnosed with DVT. They prescribed a new blood thinner that cost over $600 per prescription, and I lived but changed forever because the leg was never the same.

The only reason that I drag you down memory lane is because I read a recent article about how people are giving Trump's Secretary Kennedy a hard time for pulling the plug on COVID vaccines pending further study. Thank you, President Trump, for putting the citizen first above billion-dollar pharmaceutical deals.

They say it's rare; maybe they never looked hard enough, for the record I had the J&J.