An elderly client of mine who has had 2 vaccines (not sure if they're Pfizer or AZ) has stopped coming to her clinical Pilates session. She is in her 70's and has come to me for 2 years, twice a week. Just before Christmas she ended up with such severe bruising on both feet that she fell over 2 days after her Pilates because her feet were so swollen and sore.
She sent me photos of the bruising and I recommended she visit her GP. I didn't say it but I immediately associated the photo with blood clotting and it was difficult not to suspect the jab.
She is a fan of the jab and she has spoken a few times about those 'damn anti vaxxers' so I stayed quiet about that and instead pointed out that we have been working together for 2 years, twice a week on basically the same stuff and she has never suffered anything like this so she should get it checked, maybe get a D-Dimer test to see if her blood is okay.
Of course her GP has blamed in on the Pilates and said nothing about an adverse event so now she's stopped coming with the belief that Pilates has hurt her. They said she now has a tendon injury and hemorrhaging of the blood vessels in the feet which to me is hilarious because my job is specifically working at rehabilitating tendon injuries - not causing them.
It both saddens me for her sake and boils my blood for my sake since this is my job and if GP's keep spreading these lies then I will lose people for sure.
In my 15 years of working with chronic conditions I have never once seen someone end up with hemorrhaging of the feet from Pilates. New normal BS
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A follow up to this experience I posted above:
The husband of this woman emailed me to say that they have decided not to return to their weekly clinical Pilates appointments since her GP had told her that the injury was probably caused by Pilates. In Australia we are required to fill out an incident report form for insurance purposes if we have anyone injure themselves whilst under our care so I asked the husband for the GP's name so that I could add them to the form just in case there ended any litigation issues.
I decided to ring the GP and confirm with him that he actually believed that rehabilitative exercises could cause this injury and see if I could get any info on his vaccine injury views. What happened blew my mind so I'm sharing it with you.
The first thing I asked was whether he was aware that blood clotting was a reportable adverse event with the TGA (our reporting system) and if he had considered this a possibility with this particular patient since she had recently had her second vaccine with him and the photos she sent me looked like blood clotting. He checked her details and confirmed that it was a possibility but that he wasn't allowed to discuss that with the patient.
Having employed medical professionals in the past, I receive the newsletters from APHRA (Australian Physicians Association) and I had seen the newsletter that was sent out early on in the pandemic telling physicians that they must abide by government guidelines when dealing with covid which included only recommending TGA approved medicines and treatment protocols so I used this as a talking point and asked him if this is what he was doing and he replied yes, his hands were tied and APHRA had told them that they face de registration if they didn't tow the line.
I asked him if it went against his hypocratic oath and he replied that he had to make the decision to either stay registered and feed his family or tell his patients what he believed to be the truth and lose his licence.
I then asked him if it played on his conscience and how did he sleep at night when the service he provides is meant to be for the individuals health and should never be a government choice but an informed patient choice supported by him.
He agreed and said that in his 45 years of practice as a surgeon and a doctor that he had never been told by the government that he was not allowed to discuss the effects of taking a drug with his patients and that he and many of his colleagues are scared and are either forced into staying silent or are leaving their jobs. He said that it was a tragedy to humanity but he had a family to feed and had to make the difficult choice to follow the guidelines despite having read enough clinical data to make him believe that the risk to benefit ratio did not match the government directions.
The crazy thing is, I went in to the phone call with my boxing gloves on, thinking that he was going to berate me for being an anti vax conspiracy theorist. After all, I have lost 2 regular clients because this doctor told them that I caused an injury that he and I both know I did not cause at all and instead of having a slinging match and defending myself I ended up consoling the guy!
He asked 'what do you suggest I do'? If I tell my patients anything against the vaccine I will lose my job. How do you suggest I deal with it? And thats when it hit me what a messed up situation this is!
The phone call went for about 20 minutes and we hashed out some ideas of how he could tell his patients the truth - that he has been told that he can not disclose any information to them about the vaccines because he has been told by the authorities that he would be de registered and ask them if they had done any independent research, if they were aware of the vaccine injury compensation plan and how the reporting system works. Then at least he has given them a chance to really consider - you know, that informed consent thing they are meant to be offering.
Whether or not he actually does this I will never know but that phone call made me realise that we are not enemy's. We are all embroiled in this mess and some of us just don't see a way out of it. He was very stressed and sad and once I told him I knew all about the issues of the vax, he couldn't stop telling me how he felt and how much he appreciated the phone call.
I'm not saying what he is doing is right. It's abhorrent. It's putting other peoples lives at risk. But it did make me realise that he is just another messed up human being who has to live with the choices he's making and that there must be plenty of them doing the same.
