‘We were told the vaccine was safe – but what happened has been life-changing’ – The Telegraph

For 10 days after the first dose, Jamie was fine. He went home and went about his normal life. Then, on the morning of May 3, his and the familys life fell apart. Kate recalls what happened next. Jamie complained of tiredness and Kate let him sleep in, taking the boys downstairs for breakfast. An hour later, he vomited, recalls Kate. The noise of his retching was unlike anything she had ever heard. It sounded different. I came upstairs to check on him. At this point his speech was impaired. I thought he was having a stroke. He just wasnt speaking a language and he didnt know where he was or who I was.

An ambulance was called, taking Jamie to the local hospital where physicians there diagnosed a suspected case of Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis (VITT). Their quick thinking helped to save Jamies life. The hospital knew it was too small and did not have the expertise to treat Jamie and, as he threatened to slip away, another ambulance took him to Coventry hospital.

His condition continued to deteriorate. Despite the Covid restrictions in place at the time, Jamies father was summoned to his bedside along with Kate, who was keeping vigil. By this time he was non-communicative and didnt know who I was, says Kate.

The situation was now desperate. Coventry hospital summoned an air ambulance to get Jamie to Birmingham for an emergency operation at the one hospital in the region with the expertise to carry it out. But a storm prevented the helicopter from flying and Jamie was rushed there by road instead. Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham was the third hospital to treat Jamie in the course of just one day. Doctors there would keep him alive.

Jamie was in surgery for three hours for what was a catastrophic bleed on the brain. An MRI scan showed the damage to an area of the brain 97mm by 47mm, almost four inches by almost two inches. It is equivalent to about the area of a credit card. That now is dead tissue, says Kate.

The reason this was so complicated to treat and the reason Jamie is lucky to be alive is this had never happened before. It [VITT] didnt exist. It is why she knows the vaccine was responsible for Jamies near death; why it was the cause of the bleed on the brain. The vaccine had caused both a massive clot at the entrance to the brain and a bleed on the inside. Treating the clot risked worsening the bleed, says Kate.

Jamie underwent a craniotomy, removing part of his skull to reduce the swelling. For the next four weeks and five days he was in a coma on a ventilator and with a tracheotomy put in his throat. Through the whole terrifying time, Kate was largely refused permission to see her husband because of strict Covid regulations inside the intensive care unit. Their children, at the time aged four and eight months, did not see their father for four months. Only the previous month, Downing Street staffers had been enjoying illegal parties inside the seat of power, including one on the eve of the Duke of Edinburghs funeral.

Kate saw her husband when the hospital was fairly sure he was dying. Three times I was called in to say goodbye; three times I was called in because they thought he wasnt going to make it, says Kate. But the boys didnt see him for 122 days. For them their dad just disappeared. He couldnt communicate and he couldnt Facetime. He was just gone. That was so hard.

Kate was persistent and in the end negotiated with the hospital authorities that she could visit Jamie for an hour each week. I was luckier than others, she says with an optimism born out of extreme hardship. Jamie is a medical miracle. If you see the damage on the MRI scan you can understand that.

Kate admits it is both hard and sad to talk about what happened to Jamie. She does a lot of talking for him. I still get goosebumps. He was my perfect partner, he was the perfect date. The hardest thing for Jamie now is he is not able to be that same dad and husband. We have two boys who are energetic. They love playing football and climbing trees and Jamie cant do that anymore. He remembers that he could. He has that constant internal battle with himself, knowing what life was like before and knowing his limitations and understanding he cant do anything about that because of the size of the bleed.

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'We were told the vaccine was safe - but what happened has been life-changing' - The Telegraph