Dose 1: Pfizer BioNTech 12th May 2021
I’m 54, married, and have a 3-year-old son.
I have travelled around the world, and pushed my body to the brink, even going walkabout around the circumference of Australia and through the desert. Through my experiences, I became extremely in tune with my body.
I’ve played the tuba (euphonium) for the last 44 years and entered into the New Zealand Defence Force in 2005 as a brass musician. I wanted the opportunity to travel, and this job gave me that. I took a break from the army for 3 years (2013-2016) to do dairy farming, then returned.
My role for my last 3 years there (2018-2021) was Staff Sergeant, Drum Major, of the New Zealand Army Band (NZAB). In this role, I led the march in our most recent and significant honour in 2019, performing 24 sold out shows in Edinburgh, Scotland, and NZAB was awarded ‘The Pooley Sword’ (top prize) for the ‘Greatest contribution at the military tattoo’.
I’d had no pre-existing conditions had been fitness trainer of our unit since 2016. Operating at a Grade 1 fitness level, I only required annual fitness and medical check-ups, instead of the standard 6 monthly ones, over the 13 years I served.
Mid-2020, I was assigned to a security liaison officer role across the 7 different security firms and 5 managed isolation facilities at Christchurch HQ. In January 2021, I’d counted up the positive cases we’d had in managed isolation in Canterbury, and there were about 230 cases including 4 or 5 in hospital who were released after 14 days. I’d then thought Covid didn’t seem as bad as what we were being told. I’m not anti-vax – when you join the army, you get every vaccine, that’s the decision you make when you join. I didn’t have any concerns about getting covid due to my health and fitness – I’d been doing 6km runs around Hadley Park in 24 minutes daily.
In 2021, The Chief of Army made a direct order that there was to be no coercion or bullying around vaccination within the Army. I was happy about that, I was dubious due to what we had heard from overseas about vaccine injuries, but only 3 weeks later the Chief of Defence told us we were being mandated.
At the time, we’d been travelling around NZ with the band doing free concerts to cheer people up, and we’d had some high-profile international event invitations on the cards, so I knew international travel would be an issue. Because of my Drum Major role and being regarded as one of the best army bands in the world, there was a massive amount of pressure. Even though my intuition screamed “Don’t do it!”, I didn’t want to leave just for the next person to have to go through with the same decision.
I prepared my body for battle with vitamin C, D etc prior. The vaccines were being given in the camp medical centre and the main reactions we saw within my unit was lethargy, and people saying they were out for about 10-14 days afterwards. Three of us in our unit (of 32 pers) had held out until last.
I had my first (and only) vaccine on the 12th of May 2021. I didn’t have an immediate reaction but developed fatigue and brain fog symptoms soon after.
I stopped running altogether as the fatigue felt like I was being pulled into the ground or sucked into mud with gumboots on.
As we were frontline, our medical centres were closed, only taking emergencies.
Week 3 post-vaccine, I called in sick to our medical centre for the first time. As it was a non-physical role, I’d been pushing through and just managing.
Week 4, my family, and I went to Dunedin. I walked the baby in the pram up and down the hills and was ok that evening, but the next evening, I felt frozen from the inside out, I was cold in my bones (I’m normally a hot sleeper with my feet out of bed). It felt like an ice cube had formed my lungs and it was cold and itchy, but I couldn’t get to it to give it any relief, and from the knees down, it felt like I had growing pains, and nothing would relieve them.
Week 5, I called in sick again and they said to get a PCR test. I mentioned I’d felt off since I had the vaccine.
Week 6, I was due for my second vaccine, but the Army stipulate you can’t have a vaccine if you have respiratory symptoms (I had the lung issue), so it was postponed each week and at week 8 they questioned me, and I told them again I’d not been well since the first vaccine. I never rebooked the second.
On the 19th of July I called the medical centre as I still had symptoms. They started to say get PCR, as they did each week, but when I told them I wanted the doctor to lodge an adverse reaction to the vaccine, they had me in seeing my doctor within an hour. There was a student doctor in training who listened to my lungs first. My doctor asked her what she thought. She said, “I believe he has pneumonia”, and he responded, “As this person is really fit, it’s concerning”. I told him I hadn’t been well since the vaccine. He prescribed heavy duty antibiotics, and I was put on sick leave – I felt grateful to have a diagnosis. The pain had been different to anything I’d experienced before, and no-one had wanted to know about it.
In August, the doctor said my lungs had sounded better but sent me for an x-ray to check if there was still fluid on my lungs – it came back clear, but I was still struggling. The next day I couldn’t move again. The up and down was playing on my mind, we were due to have our fitness tests done at the end of September, so I thought I’d get back into running.
We were in lockdown at the time and my doctor rang for a phone consult, which happened to be just after I’d done my first post-vaccine run. I felt ok, but he said he could hear me puffing a lot (I was walking at the time). He said he’d request a CT scan and will see me when he was back from leave in early October.
A few days later I went for a second slow run with my dog, doing the 4km circuit around camp. At the 3km point, I couldn’t breathe and was gasping audibly. My run turned into a limp, but I was too stubborn to walk back to the house. When I got home, my wife gave me her asthma puffer to take, which helped.
I couldn’t go outside in the cold because my lungs would burn, so I wasn’t taking my baby out, which played on me, and I was needing to have nana naps during the days. I was getting worse every day. I saw another doctor in late September who gave me 4 days of steroids (thinking it was Asthma) and said he’d see me Thursday afternoon. The steroids had no effect at all and Wednesday night when I went to bed, I had a sensation from my right-side ribs, up behind my shoulder to behind my right ear. I have a high pain threshold and lay there trying to determine if it was pain or not, and determined it was.
My wife had gone to work when I woke at 6.30am Thursday and the whole right side of my body was tingling – my first thought was that I was having a stroke, so I went to the mirror and could see my mouth was drooping, and face slightly drooping as well.
A colleague came to drop his dog off at 8am and asked what was going on with me. I told him I thought I was having a stroke. He asked me what I was going to do about it, and I’d said I was seeing the doctor in the afternoon but would pull my appointment forward. He was coming back in the afternoon and said if I needed anything, to give him a call. He’d mentioned my comment to another colleague at work and decided to come back, but I was already heading to the doctor in camp and was limping on my right side too.
The doctor called an ambulance when he saw me, and when getting me ‘needle ready’ inserting the cannula in my arm for any meds, the right side of my body started shaking. The nurse asked if I was cold, I said no, and didn’t know what was going on. It was still happening in the ambulance, and the paramedic also asked if I was cold. The CT scan showed scaring revealing I’d had 2 strokes PRIOR to whatever was happening to me that day. I told them about the run 10 days before and they determined that was probably one of them. As my vitals were all fine and the shaking had stopped, though the right side of my body was weak, and my right shoulder dropped, they sent me home with an anti-coagulant and pain relief.
After the strokes, I went back to my regular doctor, and took my wife so she could ask questions. He arranged a bunch of tests, but I told him “You’re looking at the stuff you do know, but what’s happening to me is the stuff you don’t know. If you don’t acknowledge this is an adverse reaction from the jab, I’ll leave”.
The next week he printed off a raft of medical journal articles and as I sat in his office he was reading through them and kept saying “f*** me” and “I had no idea this was going on – everything I’m reading is what you’re telling me is happening you, and it’s happening to others” He’d always been supportive, but from this point on, he knew. His son was about to get vaccinated, and he didn’t know what to do. It definitely opened his eyes.
I gave my 3 months’ notice in August to leave the army and my leaving date was the 21st November 2021. I’m not one for controversy and wouldn’t have the second vaccine and I was too ill to work after the hospital visit and was on full time sick leave. All pers must pass a full medical before they can be discharged, and I still wasn’t in any condition to pass a full medical, so my commander pushed my leave date out a further 6 months to the 21st of May 2022, hoping I’d be fine by then.
In October, my doctor secured an appointment with a Neurologist in Christchurch and was excited, as this guy was a detective type. The Neurologist said, “An Offence has been committed against this body, and I will find the perpetrator”. He organised a Brain MRI, another Chest CT scan, and an Echocardiogram. The MRI and CT scan confirmed what they already knew, but in December I had the (bubble) echocardiogram with the saline solution and as soon as they released the bubbles, the Cardiologist and nurses visibility reacted at what was happening and she said “That’s very convincing isn’t it”. They had also found a hole in my heart. There is a family history of holes in the heart, with 2 of my 4 sisters having had heart operations for it. I had my heart checked in the mid 90’s and was cleared of any issues.
In October, I’d also gone to a herbalist in Christchurch who did a live blood analysis on me and showed me that my white blood cells were attacking the poison in my body, depleting my cell count. He noted I was lucky I had a lot of white blood cells. He said he’d seen many vaccine injuries. I also described to him what I was feeling in my body, that it feels like the ice cube in my chest is like a mother ship that’s constantly there all the time, and it’s sending out what feels like little worms or electrical currents crawling like maggots through my veins and muscles. It’s like a pulsating current. It’s mainly in my legs and through to the front right side of my head, then dissipates and goes back to mothership. Then I might have 4 or 5 parts of my body that feel under attack at any one time. I started taking a diary of all the sensations I was experiencing, but I couldn’t keep up with it – when I documented everything that was happening, I’d have to go through it all again because things would be happening somewhere else. He’d made a herbal remedy for me, but it didn’t make much difference.
In September 2021, my wife and I had bought a house bus and were planning to travel, exploring the country, and doing fruit picking, and bringing our child up on the road for a stint, but it was apparent I couldn’t do any physical work and was put on permanent sick leave.
We left Burnham in December to go north to Murupara to be with family for support. There are a couple of doctors aware of vaccine injuries in Murupara who have been ostracised in the media for speaking out. I was sent by them to Whakatane hospital after my d-dimer result was twice what it should be along with chest pain and shortness of breath.
The first doctor I saw didn’t want to know a thing. I also mentioned to her about some excruciating pain I’d had intermittently in my legs, a pain which doesn’t stay in one place and keeps moving around. It feels like lactic acid after you’ve been training (I still have this). I asked her whether it might be related to everything else going on, she said it wasn’t and sent me for another Chest/CT scan which only revealed what they already knew.
There was a shift change, so I asked the new doctor all the same questions and this one gave me all different answers. I asked about my legs, and she said yes, it’s 100% related, and that it made sense that was happening due to lack of oxygen in my blood.
At the beginning of February 2022, I received a letter stating I would be terminated from NZDF (by the end of February 2022) if I was not fully vaccinated. My doctor then had a call from my immediate commander to encourage me to get the second vaccine, so my doctor decided to get a second opinion and contacted a cardiologist for it. The cardiologist said, “Tell him to get his second vaccine”, but hadn’t requested to see my medical history at all. When my doctor shared this, I told him I would not be getting the second vaccine. He was glad I’d stuck to my guns. On the basis of my decision, I received another letter saying my contract would be terminated, but a court decision overturned the mandate requirement for NZDF (and Police) on the 25th February, so then received a letter stating my contract was reinstated (they hadn’t yet followed through on the termination process).
On the 3rd of March 2022, I spent 1.5 hours telling my story to another Neurologist in Christchurch (I was referred to him by the Neurologist). When I finished, he went quiet, and I asked him what the diagnosis is. He said I displayed all the signs of Long-Covid, but because I conform to the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, that it was in his opinion I would not be able to fulfill my duties with the New Zealand Army. I asked him what the fix is, he said, “I’m sorry, there is none”.
When my Army doctor got the report, he said he was submitting me for medical discharge and that I’d be covered by insurance and would continue to be paid for 2 years. He expected to have an answer in about 3 weeks, but near the end of March, I was told the Chief Medical Officer put a block on it. My doctor had also submitted a vaccine injury claim to ACC at the same time in March, but ACC are denying ever receiving a claim from the Army.
Mid-March I had Covid, my existing symptoms were about 8 times worse over 3 days, then went back to what they were.
An NZDSOS doctor I see diagnosed me with neutropenia and leukopenia (depletion of white blood cells), making me more susceptible to infection. This was the first time it had been picked up medically, with the herbalist picking it up initially. I had been taking the post-vaccine FLCCC protocol but the only thing that gives any relief for me, is the Ivermectin. If my breathing is tight, I take it and get relief within 20 minutes, so I take it when I need it. The last script (of 121 capsules) cost $666.00 and I’ve had 2 lots so far.
My savings are disappearing, and I’ve been without pay since May 2022.
I have no issues with Army, or the Chief of Army (who I respect very much) – I have issues with the Chief Medical Officer. In November, my Army doctor said he’d been ordered not to speak to me and had been threatened with legal action if he does. I’d be surprised if the Chief of Army knew this.
Mid-November, I was lying in bed, and under my heart it felt like a knife was stabbed into my chest. It was 10/10 pain, almost throwing me out of bed, then it dissipated. It happened two nights in a row and then not again until Sunday night (18th of December) when it happened again and woke me up.
A week after the stabbing pains, I’d be walking around, then felt what was like a knitting needle, being stabbed into my ear, and my legs would buckle with the pain. This happened multiple times in one day, where I could feel it coming each time, then the stabbing pain would disappear. It feels like I’m a character inside a game, and an outside force is pressing buttons on a keyboard and I’m getting zapped by it.
My doctors in Murupara are convinced I have Pericarditis, but I requires a cardiac MRI with contrast to clearly diagnose it. The doctor advised the adverse event rates of Pericarditis are approximately 1 in 800. I was in the doctor’s office when she called the place that does the cardiac MRI with contrast (on speaker), and they told her yes, they do them privately for $1,800 and that the earliest appt available is the first week of December. They then sent a questionnaire online for me to fill out which I completed on the 23rd of November. I emailed them early December asking how far off the MRI will be, they responded on Friday 9th December saying they don’t do private Cardiac MRIs, then on the following Monday advised I’d been denied an appointment.
My doctor is researching injuries, looking at my ECGs and seeing my heart is under strain. A week ago, I had another ECG and she advised my left ventricle is under heavy strain and she was sending me to hospital to get the MRI I need. The head ED doctor sat on my bed crossed his arms and said “So, you’re from Murupara. Tell me what’s going on”. As soon as I told him it started after the vaccine, his eyes glazed over, and I thought this is going to be a waste of time. He told me my ECG’s are totally normal and mockingly said to another doctor, “This guy’s come from Murupara” He said to me to come back if was short of breath. I told him I’m short of breath all the time and he looked at me for a couple of seconds, then turned and walked away.
I’m not angry. I can’t afford to be angry. The silence has been deafening and they’re keeping us under stress. I’m on some closed chat groups and reading that everyone is going through the same shit, it’s really really sad.
I try to get out on the farms and do a bit of work for my mental health, but my heart rate spikes, and I suffer with Palpitations and chest pain. I look after my son while my wife is working and have been glad to be in Murupara with family. I have to stay positive and focused and try to find things to be appreciative about, otherwise everything that’s going on in my body is all I’m ever thinking about, because there’s always something happening in my body. Many nights I wonder if I’ll wake up in the morning – it feels like being on death row with all the pains and not knowing what’s coming. I overcame my fear of death in my 20’s, and if It’s going to happen, I accept it.