The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex

CHAPTER 40: Graduating into Eternity

Dr. Peter McCullough and John Leake

One of the persons who saw the video was [Leake’s documentary on McCullough’s early assessment of COVID-19} was Jodi Carroll.

She watched it with great interest, and in particular noted McCullough’s remarks about the usefulness of ivermectin and corticosteroids in treating hospitalized patients. A month later, her 74-year-old mother, Carolyn, fell ill with COVID-19 and was admitted to Baylor, Scott & White hospital in College Station, Texas. Upon hearing this news, Jodi,who was visiting friends in Colorado, travelled to College Station and checked into a hotel near the hospital. Looking out her third-floor window, she could see the entire building in which her mother lay, fighting for her life. Just as she’d feared, the hospital’s staff refused to administer ivermectin to her mother. Nor did they administer the methylprednisolone corticosteroid in theFLCCC protocol, and nor did they administer the full dose aspirin and lovenox anticoagulants in the McCullough protocol. According to Carolyn’s chart, the hospital initially administered 10 mg of dexamethasone per day. This was, in the words of Dr. Paul Marik, “the wrong drug, the wrong dose, and the wrong duration of Rx.” As for the anticoagulants: the hospital administered 81 mg of aspirin once daily, and 40 mg of lovenox twice daily. The McCullough protocol recommended 325 mg of aspirin per day, and 80 mg of lovenox twice daily.

On behalf of her family, Jodi repeatedly requested, in a polite but firm tone, that hospital staff administer ivermectin and the FLCCC protocol to her mother, but the hospital staff refused. Carolyn Carroll did not get better in the days following her admission. On the contrary, she declined and appeared to be headed for the ventilator. One day Jodi sat in her dreary hotel, looking out the window at the hospital in the distance, trying to think of something, anything, she could do. She commenced her daily fervent prayers and while deeply immersed therein, she remembered a video interview with Dr. McCullough she’d seen a few weeks earlier—in what seemed like a desperate Hail Mary—decided to try to contact him. She called HeartPlace, got his e-mail address from the receptionist, and sent him a message. To her astonishment, McCullough called her soon thereafter. “Here is what you must ask for,” he explained. “I have no power to compel the hospital to administer it.” His heart ached for the woman, because he knew well the immense power she was up against.

He was especially concerned about blood clotting in the lungs, so he told Jodi to press hard for the full dose (325 mg per day) of aspirin and a full dose (80 mg twice daily) of lovenox. The hospital insisted on maintaining only 81 mg per day of aspirin. It made a partial concession by increasing her lovenox dose from 40 mg twice daily to 60 mg twice daily, though this was still far below the 80 mg twice daily that. “The doses you are asking for could cause internal bleeding,” a doctor said to Jodi. “Blood could start rushing out of her colon. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for that, would you?” At that point, she was clearly dying anyway. She reported this remark to McCullough, who replied that the risk of internal bleeding should be assessed in comparison to the risk of the patient dying from blood clots in her lungs. So began Jodi’s struggle to induce the hospital to give her dying mother the drugs that McCullough recommended. She continued her polite but persistent requests, but when all were ignored by hospital staff, she felt she was left with no choice but to apply greater pressure. McCullough put her in touch with an attorney named Todd Callender, who was working with America’s Frontline Doctors. Mr. Callender submitted a letter to the hospital, asking that it administer the McCullough Protocol pursuant to federal and state Right to Try laws, but his letter was rejected. Jodi sought an ethics consult with the hospital’s patient advocate. She called the consultant’s cell phone number and left a voice message, but didn’t hear back from the woman. Later she would discover that the consultant responded to the voicemail by calling the patient, Carolyn Carroll, while she lay unconscious on a ventilator in the ICU. Jodi then appealed to a member of her extended family who happened to be a benefactor and former board member of the hospital. He’d long had a close relationship with Carolyn, who had recently provided him with daily care and assistance during his convalescence from a severe disease. He contacted the hospital’s chief medical officer, who in turn contacted Jodi’s father. She was at her father’s house when he took the call, so she was able to speak directly with the chief medical officer, to whom she again requested the McCullough Protocol for her mother.

The medical officer said he would look into it, but then he never got back to Jodi or her father. One of the aspects of our tragedy that adds so much additional weight is the fact that many do not believe our version of events and because of that withhold compassion. It is a cruelty I personally have never experienced before now. I’ve described this grief as walking around with third-degree burns. As far as she could see, they weren’t doing anything for Carolyn but watching her slip away while refusing to give her FDA-approved, repurposed drugs that could help her. At the local (85 th District) court, Jodi and her father filed for an injunction compelling the hospital to McCullough Protocol drugs to Carolyn Carroll. The court ordered Baylor to administer the drugs, but the hospital’s attorneys appealed and were granted another hearing, where they argued that the Hippocratic Oath compelled them first and foremost “to do no harm.” Given that the therapies proposed were, in the words of their expert witness, “unproven and possibly dangerous,” they could not be lawfully administered to the patient. The judge apparently found this argument persuasive and overturned the court’s initial order. Jodi was devastated. McCullough sensed that her distress was aggravated by her social isolation in College Station, so he invited her to visit him and Maha in Dallas. I joined the three of them for dinner, and the next day I met Jodi for coffee. As she told me about her struggle, I sensed she was in a state of acute distress that was perhaps akin to PTSD. Her encounter with Baylor’s hired gun attorneys and their expert witness had been bruising. “Why would they go to such lengths to avoid giving my mom ivermectin and the other medications?”

She asked. “The doctors admit that her condition is worsening and that she’s probably not going to make it. Why won’t they let her try something, anything that could help her?” ​“God, I wish I knew,” I said. We concluded our talk and then I walked her to her car. ​“I’m so sorry, Jodi,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do to help.” “Thank you,” she said, and got in her car and drove away. The next day I got a text notification and looked at my phone and saw it was from her. Mom graduated into eternity today at 2:50 pm. Jodi was exactly my age, and her mother was exactly my mother’s age. I imagined the despair and rage I would feel if I’d been in her shoes, and I wondered what I would do. Her helplessness as she watched her mom slip away—while the hospital steadfastly refused to give her something that could have helped her—must have been akin to that of a woman being physically violated. At McCullough’s urging, Jodi requested an autopsy on her mother, who was also her best friend. As he’d feared, the lungs were filled with blood clots. This was the final death sequence he had endeavored to prevent when he and his colleagues formulated the sequential multidrug treatment that came to be known as the McCullough Protocol. Administering it to Mrs. Carroll could have halted the disease’s progression and enabled her to enjoy some more good years. In her court filings, Jodi mentioned that Dr. Peter McCullough was the doctor who’d recommended the protocol she was requesting for her mother. A few days after her mom died, she heard from someone in her social circle that McCullough was being sued by Baylor. The news struck terror in her heart, as she assumed the lawsuit was retribution for giving her the medical advice that was the basis of her lawsuit against Baylor. She immediately called him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “My troubles with Baylor go way back and have nothing to do with you.”