COVID-19 Treatment Experiences and Challenges

Thank you, Senator Johnson.

Let me start by saying I'm here representing a medical profession

that I know can and will do better for the patients of this

country, and I apologize for those who did not.

Let's talk about that.

On August 20th, 2020,

I admitted my first COVID patient, a 97-year-old Italian ling-

linguistics professor, wonderful fellow.

He was in an assisted living facility where he contracted COVID,

and his daughter,

who, uh, knew about hydroxychloroquine, re- begged them to give him that.

They put him in isolation. He was dying.

She asked me to put him into the hospital so she could at least see him.

I put him into the hospital, one of my hospitals, and I actually

was able to

ask the compassionate nursing staff to allow his daughter to be with him

for the final days of his life, and that's all I could do. He

was too far gone.

On October 18th, 2021, I discharged my

last COVID patient,

60-year-old Steve, who had been 40 days on the COVID unit

with

his loving bulldog of a wife at his side 24/7,

fighting with everybody to stay with him because she knew darned well what would

happen if she didn't. And she gave him ivermectin from her own

private stash,

and he walked out of that hospital, and he is my patient to this day.

He would not have survived without his wife at his side.

Not me, it's the family members. In the 14 months between

Joseph and Steve, I made 450 visits to five different

hospitals.

I cared for patients Monday through Friday t-

in my medical office, while most family physicians abandoned

their sick patients,

as we all know. I took calls 24/7 from almost

3,000 patients across the country needing COVID therapies and

made house calls to hypoxic patients, getting them home oxygen,

anything to keep them out of the hospitals, and we here know why,

and we're telling those stories.

When the much-loved Pastor Bill of a local church was lying in the ICU on

a ventilator, a closed system, his family was denied visitation.

I brought his family, his son, who'd become the succeeding pastor of his

church, up

to the bedside to pray, and they did pray fervently with him as he

died.

The hospital imposed a $500 fine on me and two-week suspension

of my hospital privileges. As a young mother gave birth to her

daughter in August of '21, I got a call from an obstetrician

saying, "She's dying. She's not-- We don't know what to do with her."

But I had

given this obstetrician and his family ivermectin at that time.

This is during the Delta variant. I confirmed bilateral

pneumonia. Her oxygen saturation was 85% and

dropping. I had ivermectin in my pocket. I gave it to her.

I transferred her to medical floor, put her on Lovenox, the multi-dreg-

drug regimen. She returned home with her baby after

three days.

I was disciplined for dispensing ivermectin from my pocket, removed

as chair of family medicine, and the expectation from the CEO was

that I remain lockstep, and I'll never forget those words,

because my wife was

there to hear it over the phone. "We expect our physicians to be lockstep

with us when it comes to hospital policy." On New Year's Day

2021, a young single father of two was admitted with COVID.

I was again unable to provide ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

I could treat him with high-dose steroids, anticoagulants, so I just visited him.

It's the holidays. He couldn't be with his two sons.

He's a single dad.

I saw him two, two months later where he sells cars.

H- And my daughter-- My son, rather, was with me trying to get a car.

He says to my son, "You know, your father saved my life." I said,

"I couldn't have

saved your life. I mean, you're here, but I couldn't give you what I wanted." He

said, "No. Without your visits to me each day,

I would have given up hope.

I would have died."

On that same COVID unit, I overheard a young hospitalist

berating a patient. I'm walking down the hall,

and this patient is begging for

ivermectin,

something.

I went up to that young hospitalist in the hallway, and I said, "You know, that

patient on his cell phone in his room isolated knows more about the treatment

of COVID than you know in your little finger."

One Sunday afternoon in that same hospital,

I made rounds on my patients, and I

met the critical care consultant, and I said to him on this Sunday, "Why

are you

not considering use of anticoagulants to prevent

microthrombosis in COVID patients?" He said, "There's no evidence for

that." I pounded my fist on the table.

I said, "The only effing evidence that you need is that your patients

are dying."

And I never use the F-bomb, Pierre. You know that.

I was disciplined by the hospital, again, for being disruptive, and let me

show you what the letter says about this.

I had seen the 53-year-old. This is from the leadership council.

The wife wanted him to receive ivermectin.

The physician became very upset because the patient was not fully coagulated.

Inappropriate behavior ensued,

pounding his fist, witnessed by other providers.

The patient decompensated. I also had recommended he not be intubated

in the ICU.

This leadership council in this hospital mandated that I go for psychological

counseling to maintain my privileges, which I did, and I'm still

on staff at that hospital because I want to take care of my patients.

You know, I have no resentment against the doctors

in these hospitals.

They were lockstep with the current medical literature, with the

established experts in Washington and their hospital employers.

In fact, one of Orlando's hospitals,

in August of '21, during the height of the Delta variant,

sent this letter on

treatment guidance to 2,000 doctors and said,

"We recommend against using the following agents given lack of data:

corticosteroids, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, or

Z-Pak, ivermectin, fenofibrate, oleandrin,

and we recommend against using any preventive measures.

We do recommend routine use of remdesivir." This is the

protocol that the doctors were following lockstep.

They were also paid fifteen to thirty thousand for each COVID admission during

that time. Let us not forget. Yes,

I've always been a disruptor. I'm one of those doctors who doesn't want

to be

lukewarm

when it comes time for Judgment Day. I don't want to be lukewarm.

We can't afford to be lukewarm.

My motivation

and our motivation

needs to be advocates for those patients who were abandoned

by our healthcare system. And if I've learned nothing else in my 36

years as a family physician, it is that there is no healing

without hope. And thank you, Senator Johnson, for helping us

give hope.

Thank you. Thank you.