Pf1zered! How Side Effects from the You-Know-What Took my Life Away, and How I Got it Back by Defying the Medical-Governmental Complex

Part I—Flat on my Back

I lay on the floor of my bedroom. That was the only position I could find where I wasn’t in pain.

The sciatica that shot down my right leg was so severe that I couldn’t walk or stand for more than a few minutes at a time. Until you’ve lived with something like that, you have no idea just how many day-to-day tasks require you to walk or stand for more than a few minutes at a time. Like waiting in line at the check-out. Or preparing a meal, folding laundry, or cleaning the house (Hey, I’m a single guy. I have to do these things myself). I couldn’t go to the gym because the walk from the parking lot was too much for me. As for social life, my friends invited me to do stuff, but unless it was sitting down stuff, and there was parking right next to the venue, I had to turn them down. And I was making no progress writing my new novel (did I mention I’m a novelist?) because even sitting up for long periods was painful and I was spending all my time going to doctors and physical therapists anyway.

It was July of 2021 and this had been going on for over two months. As I lay flat on my back, I came to the realization that I had exhausted everything traditional medicine had to offer. Almost everything, anyway. The orthopedic surgeon wanted to cut me. But I really, really, really didn’t want that. I had asked around (at my age, there’s no shortage of friends and loved ones who have had back surgery) and by all accounts I was looking at a painful, months-long recovery with maybe a 50/50 chance it would actually fix my problem.

So that was it for doctors. I was on my own. No help coming from the Medical-Governmental Complex. Which wasn’t exactly a surprise. After all, it was the Medical-Governmental Complex that did this to me.

This is the first installment in the story of how Covid vaccine side effects took my life away, and how I got it back by doing the opposite of the Medical-Governmental Complex’s decrees. Over the course of this series of Substack posts, I intend to cover not only what happened to me, but vaccines in general, life during the pandemic, the government’s heavy-handed and occasionally despicable response, cancel culture, censorship, inflammation, and the Diet Wars.

But first a disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. I’m not anything in the medical profession except a patient. I have no opinion whether what worked for me will work for anyone else, and nothing I say should be construed as advice. It’s just the story of what happened to me; make of it what you will.

By nature, I’m a private person; there are so many more interesting things to write about than myself. But shortly after my realization that I couldn’t count on my doctors, I made a decision to go public with my vaccine story. I did this for the best of reasons: I was pissed off at the Biden Administration. Specifically, I was pissed off when spokesperson Jen Psaki announced, regarding Covid vaccinations, “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”¹ In a country where freedom of speech is enshrined in its Constitution, it’s outrageous—and IMHO illegal—for government officials to pressure private companies as to what speech is “problematic” or “disinformation.” It’s particularly outrageous in this situation because there are legitimate questions about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. The best way I know to get to the truth is to let the opposing sides fight it out—which can’t happen when there’s an organized effort by one side to hush up anything that disagrees with the official narrative. Of course at the time, we didn’t know just how organized it was. It wasn’t until the Twitter Files were released, starting at the end of last year, that we learned the extent of the censorship.

So I posted my story to Facebook. It was an act of defiance.

But not solely an act of defiance. I also felt strongly that my story and the stories of people like me would help others. They could take them into account and make rational, informed decisions about their medical treatment in general and the Covid vaccine in particular. And indeed, I got a lot of positive response to my Facebook posts, both from people who were just interested, and people who were facing similar situations and wanted to compare notes. In fact, I got more engagement on my vaccine story than anything else I posted about recently. Which is why I am here now to spell out all the gory details in a more systematic form.

Let me be clear where I’m coming from: I am not anti-vaxx. I may not be a doctor, but I am a student of history and I know what a miracle vaccination is. The book I’m writing now is a historical novel about a civil war that took place in the Muslim world between 1092 and 1096. During that time there was a smallpox epidemic in and around Isfahan, Persia. A number of my main characters—who were historical figures—came down with it in real life; several died, altering the course of the war. So I’ve been researching smallpox. It was a terrible thing. Almost everybody got it sooner or later. Usually sooner—in childhood—which was why it was thought to be a normal part of growing up. The physician Avicenna (980-1037) described it as “the natural fermenting of the blood to shake out the remaining menstrual nourishment that was mixed in it from the time of pregnancy.”² Twenty-five percent of patients died from it,³ accounting for about half of the enormous childhood mortality that existed before the Industrial Revolution. It was a horrible way to die: covered with sores, shaking and delusional with fever, smelling bad, gasping for air and ultimately suffocating due to ulceration in the esophagus. And those who survived were lucky if all they came away with was scars; some found themselves blind or infertile.

The smallpox vaccine put an end to this horror. It literally wiped the disease off the face of the earth (the last case was in 1978). Other vaccines all but ended polio, measles, mumps, and a host of other debilitating and sometimes fatal illnesses. There is no question that vaccination has been an enormous boon to humankind; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Even the Covid vaccine—which did me personally a great deal of harm—undoubtedly was a net benefit to the world. Obviously the high hopes we once had for it weren't realized; the variants came along and the vaccine turned out to be useless at preventing infection. Nevertheless, there is abundant data showing that it reduced mortality, especially in the elderly.⁴  

But not all vaccines are created equal. Not every vaccine that comes out of the pharmaceutical industry’s laboratories is equally necessary. Not every disease is as serious as smallpox or polio. And even with serious disease, not everyone is equally susceptible.

Further, we should never lose sight of the fact that a vaccine is a drug. Like every drug it has side effects. Usually minor, sometimes serious, occasionally fatal. It’s always a balancing act—does the expected benefit outweigh the risk of side effects for a particular patient?

It’s the story of the Covid vaccine side effects for this particular patient that I’ve set out to tell.

Next Installment—Part II: Life and Health before Covid

Michael Isenberg eats meat, drinks bourbon, and writes historical novels set in the medieval Muslim world. Please check out his latest, The Thread of Reason, at http://amazon.com/dp/0985329750.

1. Richard, Lawrence, “Biden administration ‘flagging problematic posts for Facebook,’ Psaki says,” Yahoo News, last modified July 15, 2021, accessed February 2, 2023, https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-flagging-problematic-posts-202600638.html

2. Avicenna, Qanun al-Tibb (Canon of Medicine), Beirut: Muʻassasat ʻIzz al-Dīn, 1987, Book IV, Vol. 3, Section 67 (Translation mine).

3. Hopkins, Donald R., The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.

4. “Impact of Vaccination on Risk of COVID-19–Related Mortality,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last modified November 16, 2022, accessed January 31, 2023, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/data-review/vaccines.html.