BRAIN ON FIRE

Happy, healthy and connected to depressed, detached and suicidal in the blink of an eye.
Lynette Milakovich had her C19 jab and could not understand how her life changed for the worse so quickly. Her family supported her, but no one believed her until one doctor provided the hard evidence. With a confirmed cause, Lynette was able to hunt for a treatment and when she found it, the results were spectacular.

Transcript

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Hi, Lynette. Welcome to a patient story. Oh, thank you, Dan, for having me. You are the first guest I've ever interviewed in the middle of a hurricane warning. So this is exciting. Yes, it is. Yes. Now, as we start this conversation, our conversation today is about your reaction to the COVID vaccine. I'm wondering how many of the platforms will allow me to publish, because any time I've discussed Covid or any Covid incident with another interviewee, some of the platforms have said, no, we're not going to talk about this. We'll see how we go. We'll get it out there. But it's such a sensitive issue still, isn't it? It is. I have had a podcast with Doctor McCullough, Doctor Witcher, a man named Tom Roten from West Virginia. Oh, and react 19. And I know it's getting out there somewhere here in the United States, but maybe it's something different with Australia. Yeah, but you know what? Censoring is happening. Oh, look, it's definitely happening. And the stories are starting to come out. And your story in particular, is absolutely extraordinary. And it's particularly extraordinary because you have documented records, medical records of what you went through. And the proof that you bring to the table is really makes it quite special. It takes it out of hearsay. So, Lynette, I know that you had two Covid shots, the Pfizer shots. And would you like to tell us what happened to you after you had the second Pfizer shot? Sure. Well, I was very trusting of the pharmaceutical companies and our government. I believed in the safe and effective propaganda and felt I was doing my part to protect other people, as had been told, and to get herd immunity. We were told, oh, in three weeks, we should be back. I was living in California at the time. I live in Florida now. So that's why I took it then. I had it on March 31, 2021, and on April 7, 2021, I woke up with very loud tinnitus, nerves on fire all over my body. And then when I tried to go to sleep that night, I could not fall asleep at all. My sleep system was shut down. And I know now that was part of the damage to my brain. It did shut down my sleep system. As time went on, I lost cognition, attention. I lost emotional connection to anything. I became very frightened of everything. I had tremors and convulsions. I had pots. I lost 20 pounds. Within two months. My thyroid levels fluctuated greatly, same with blood pressure levels. And I was suicidal most of the time. It was a harrowing experience. Lynette, given your pre Covid vaccination life and who you were, did you ever lean towards any sort of anxiety or depression or suicidal ideation? I had some depression in my life which I received therapy for. Just family dysfunction. My mother had. My mother was a troubled lady and so I had therapy for quite a while and in a group, therapy was very helpful. I had a very good psychiatrist who at that time she was an older psychiatrist, so at that time they still did the counselling. Now, at least in the United States, they don't. They just prescribe medication. But she knew who I was, she knew my family history. And I just am a better person and happier because of going through the therapy. It's not easy. William, part of the interesting aspect of that, and the reason I ask that question is because I know throughout your journey you were gaslit or gas lighted. I'm not sure which is the right way of saying it all the way through. And I find that still is a major issue for people not being heard, not being believed, not being listened to. And I particularly know it in the whole Covid situation because the doctors aren't taught to believe that COVID vaccine side effects, or even long Covid for that matter, is real. So that must be incredibly frustrating for someone like you. And do you feel that they. They sort of went back to say, oh, look, she's an ex person with some sort of psychiatric issues, therefore this is just coming up again. Is that the reason you think you are so gaslit? Yes. So people thought I was crazy. It was menopause, it was a nervous breakdown. I was turning out like my mother, all kinds of things. And within two months of this happening, I went to a hospital feeling suicidal. They did a CAT scan, found nothing. They prescribed me seroquel, which is an antipsychotic. And then just a few weeks later, I went to an outpatient treatment centre for cognitive Behavioural therapy. But when I went into any kind of therapy type treatment programme, I couldn't process. My brain was not working. And so it was. It was the oddest thing, but I was. I would have done anything to get my life back. And your life sounded like it was a fairly wholesome life. You know, you exercise, you were doing HIIT classes and you're a yoga teacher as well, so you understood about movement and about meditation and relaxation and these sorts of issues. And, you know, a loving husband. So it sounds like you were pretty together, but it sounded like you had, after the shots, you had dropped off quite significantly. I mean, the change, from what I understand, was quite remarkable. Yes. And the way I kind of look at it now, and I have a poem in my book. It's like you lose your whole ego, you lose any desire at all, including to live, any motivation, any kind of. I mean, to take a shower, to cook. Everything was stopped. I. I just couldn't do anything at all. And so my family, my, my kids and my husband picked up the pieces on that and I had some really, really nice, very compassionate, loving friends who didn't know what was going on. Everybody was frightened about what was going on. I had a friend who I been friends with for many years who was not so compassionate, and I learned a lot about who your true friends are. My family gaslit me and it couldn't be from the vaccine and that kind of thing. A lot of people were like that, especially in California. Some doctors, my primary care physician, very kind, he really cared about me and I said, could it be from the vaccine? And this was right away. And he says, we just don't know enough about it. But when he sent me to, like, the head endocrinologist at our medical centre, that head endocrinologist said, I've had about ten people that this has happened to with the vaccine, about the thyroid levels just going wacky. But even just that statement, you know, given that we gave the vaccine to millions and millions of people, that statement of we just don't know enough about it is kind of scary. Yeah, that's it. True. Yeah. So you had a lot of fear, you mentioned earlier, and the fear seems to be, from what I understand, about what was going to happen to you in the future and whether your life would be continually debilitated as it was. Is that where the fear was coming from? Yes, the fear was that. And also I really believe it was a part of the brain that, like football players get, or veterans with PTSD, it hit that same part of the brain that gives you PTSD and they're just. You don't. I really believe there's a part in your brain that gives you the will to live and the motivation to live, and that was shut down. So it was like I had no motivation. I had to force myself to get dressed, force myself to eat, take showers, because I knew I had to function to keep on going. But I would look out a window and I would see a tree and it would be frightening. Everything was frightening to me. Any kind of chaos, any kind of changes. It was overwhelming. Light, sound was. It was overwhelming. Just everything? Yeah. With the symptoms that came on, and you have many symptoms, and they're quite broad. Did they all hit you at one time or did it happen over a period of time? A new symptom would just pop up over months or weeks. Well, so I had that first day, and then gradually, the cognition. I lost more cognition, more attention. I had to stop teaching yoga right away because I couldn't put poses together. I really couldn't think. I was also anxious about getting sleep, no sleep, and then being able to teach a class. My connection with people was waning, but it got worse and worse and worse over time. Convulsions and tremors didn't come until maybe a year later, but everything just got worse and worse. You said that you felt like your nerves were on fire. What does that mean? What does it feel like to have your nerves on fire? I think what's happening in the body is this vaccine or the virus causes the body to be over, the immune system to be way overstimulated, so everything is multiplied. It's like having a really, really bad allergy, like, real bad all over your body. You feel like there's pins and needles. I would take a bath before I went to bed, and during the middle of the night, I would get up and I had left the bath there so I could get into cold water because my body felt like it was on fire and like there were pins and needles. Yeah, it's terrible. It's bad, yeah. You eventually met a doctor in Florida called doctor Villa, who sounded like a wonderful lady, and she seemed to be one of the first doctors that actually understood and accepted that it was potentially the COVID vaccine that had caused your problem. Absolutely. It is so divine. Everything that happened, even up to this point, just was like a gift from above. I mean, where I'm at at this moment. I happened to call for a naturopath in Florida and just looked it up, googled it, and she said, we don't practise. They don't allow us to practise as naturopaths in Florida, but I do have somebody who I would refer you to. So she referred me to Doctor Villa. I happened to call Doctor Villa. She was treating long Covid and vaccine injury. So when we came out to Florida to visit and look at homes, we went to her and she says, oh, I'm sure this is vaccine injury, but I'm going to give you the test to take back to California so that insurance will cover. And so then when I went back home, there was other things that happened, and I finally did the testing. And when she called me, she said, your cytokines are very high. You have Epstein Barr, uh, lupus, um, you definitely. And you've never had Covid. Uh, the antibodies came out that I'd never had Covid. And she says, you are. It's from the vaccine. And that, to me, was the defining moment when you had a test, because when we talk about long Covid or Covid adverse reactions, we had a professor come out to Australia that talked about Spike. And the spike protein could either be derived from the COVID virus itself or from the vaccine. So no one completely knew which it was. But in your case, we've had some blood tests to define that you've actually never had the virus can only lead to one conclusion, and that it was vaccine injury. And that's what makes your case particularly extraordinary, in my view. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So Doctor Villa then gave you some vitamin C and some intravenous glutathione, which I'm a huge fan of. Did that help you in any way? I don't feel at the time that it did, because my brain was damaged, which I didn't know at the time until I found the Aviv clinic. Once I went to the Aviv clinic and went through their testing, and they did the spec scan, that's when I was diagnosed with. They call it long Covid, because their research that they've done in Israel shows that long Covid or Covid hits the frontal lobe, whether it's from the virus or the vaccine. They weren't familiar with the vaccine at the time because it was early on. But since then, there have been, like, half from the virus, half from the vaccine. People that I went to the clinic with that have the same thing, and it damages the front part of the brain. Same with all of us. But I also. It went into my basal ganglia, too. So that part of the brain had hit, too. And that was confirmed by some specific scans that they do at the Viv clinic, and that was the spectre scans. And that's a contrast, intravenous contrast scan they do. And you were kind enough to put pictures of your brain before and after in your book, and I found that quite fascinating. So the difference in your inflammatory path or the obvious inflammation in your brain between 2022 and 2024 was. Was really quite extraordinary. And so what they had done at the Aviv clinic was obviously very successful. Interesting to note that, you know, I know it's an israeli based technology that's exported to various parts of the world. Aviv in Hebrew means spring. So it's almost like you had a spring clean. That's interesting. You know that? Yes. Isn't that? Yeah, that's right. So the Aviv clinic, from my understanding, and I'll ask you to help me explore this further, is they. They've developed a modality of therapy which involves hyperbaric treatment together with physical therapies, cognitive exercises and nutrition. Is that correct? That's right. It's like a four pillars that are in that it surrounds basically the hyperbaric protocol. And hyperbarics are absolutely fascinating. And there's so much written in the medical literature about hyperbarics. And if you read everything, you'd think there was a miracle cure for just about anything. But what the literature quite strongly supports is the notion that hyperbarics are very useful for stimulating and activating stem cells and decreasing pro inflammatory cytokines, increasing anti inflammatory cytokines and also increasing mitochondrial function. And that is what my understanding of long Covid or COVID vaccine injury is all about, addressing those issues. And is that what was explained to you at the clinics? Yes, it is. They actually have presentations on how it works and how the stem cells are triggered and exactly what you're saying. Yes. About the metabolic issues and. Yes. Okay, so could you just walk me through, like, what it's like to go through a hyperbaric chamber? Sure. So for Aviv, it is like walking into an aeroplane. There are 14 seats for 14 people. The masks are used. It's not like a mono chamber. These chambers are multimillion dollar chambers. In Florida, there are four. So you go into the chamber with other people, and it's very nice to go in with other people because, you know, you share your stories. I had. I went in with Navy Seals who had ptsd, traumatic brain injury, people with strokes, miss, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease. So. But a lot of us, like, especially the veterans in the long Covid, whether from virus or vaccine, shared our stories about we were all had been suicidal or had attempted or, you know, and it hits that part of the brain, you know. So that was. That was a really a nice thing, too, is you are supported and surrounded by other people going through the same thing. So anyway, you go into the chamber, you decompress for ten minutes. Then there's a nurse in the chamber. She says, put the mask on. Mask is on for 20 minutes. So what that does is we breathe 21% oxygen. And when we put the mask on, we're breathing 100% oxygen is at 2.0. What is it called? Air pressure or so it's like going 33ft down in a dive. In a scuba dive, maybe. Atmosphere. Atmospheres, yes. So then after the 20 minutes, the nurse says, okay, take the mask off. So it's off for five minutes. So that happens four times while in the chamber. That is called the hypoxia induced factor, which won the Nobel prize in 2019. The whole idea of it is when you go from 100% oxygen back to the 21%, it tricks your brain and your body into telling the stem cells, oh, my gosh, your body's dying, or, this part needs to heal, and that's what it does. So you're in these chambers 2 hours a day, Monday through Friday, for 60 days. And that's how the healing happens for a long Covid. We found just through the people at Aviv, and I'm helping out at Aviv, we found that it takes months after it's. You feel the healing a little bit at the beginning, but really all the healing comes after. I mean, month after month, you're seeing changes. And Aviva's done studies up to two years for all different kinds of issues. And everybody has, it shows in their cognition tests and. And their other tests that everything gets better within the two years. They haven't done it beyond the two years, though. But I can tell you that, you know, at a year, I said, oh, my goodness, I'm better than I was a month ago. So it keeps on going. Yeah, it's amazing. So my understanding is that you had 60 sessions, or do you call them dives? Yeah, they call them dives, yes. So you've had 60 dives? Yeah. Over what period was that? It was. So I started September of 2022. I ended December 22, 2022. Is there a maximum number of dives that you can have or was, why? 60. They have done their studies for 60 dives for almost. Almost everybody who is in for a. For some kind of issue, like long Covid, traumatic brain injury, they find, I guess they found that that is the best amount for the healing, total healing. Now they do, like, contract with, like, a plastic surgeon who sends his patients right before plastic surgery for a couple of days and then a couple of days after, and you wouldn't believe the changes. I mean, women would come in all bruised, and then within two days they were, like, cleared. It was crazy. Yeah. The healing is amazing. Yeah. I've actually been in a hyperbaric chamber myself. I think in 15 minutes, I've had the best sleep I'd ever had in my life. That's what they say, too. And even during the dives, people complain, oh, I'm so tired, I'm so tired. Or you'll feel like you're going backwards. And so you. There's doctors right there. And so a lot of us, you know, we would go to see a doctor walking in the hallway and say, I just feel so tired, or I feel like I'm going backwards. And they're like, good. That is good. That means your brain is working. So it's a matter of patience, you know, just having the patience to get through it. So after your 60th session, you left and your improvement continued for several weeks afterwards. Seemed like you hit a point where you went, oh, I think I'm better now. Yes. Like, my world opened up. I would say two and a half weeks after the dives, I looked out my window and my world was no longer distorted. It was crazy. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is great. So then everything else came back. The organisation, you know, we had just moved into a home, so unpacking things got better there. I started cooking again then, you know, and shopping for furniture. And then the emotional part came back where, you know, the joy came back of enjoying to go pick things out and decorate and. And, of course, so December 31, we had our first grandchild, so when I got to hold him, I did feel some of the joy and I just knew that as time went on, it was all going to come back. And it has it's best. So while you're sitting in the chamber, they also get you to practise some sort of cognitive therapies. What. What are they getting you to do there? Well, so they give everybody a plan according to what's happening to you. So wherever your brain is damaged, for example, mine was cognition, attention. So they gave me cognitive exercises. It's a brain hq, and they put it on the iPads, which this is the only hyperbaric treatment centre that allows the electronics. So they've been able to do that. So while you're under the hyperbarics, you do about 30 minutes of your cognitive exercises that are, like, prescribed for you, and daily you do them. And the idea is it hits the part of the brain that is responsible for the attention, the cognition, or whatever it is. Somebody has a stroke, it may be something else, memory, it may be other kinds of exercises for that. It's an individualised programme and you're also having to go through physical therapies which are important. Is that whilst you're in the chamber or is that something you do outside of the chamber? Well, you plan on spending about two and a half hours just for the hyperbarics, but really you should plan on like spending three or 4 hours at the clinic each day because you will have appointments for nutrition, physical therapy, an appointment with the doctor, just rechecking things, or the neuropsychologist to go over your cognitive exercises. So, yeah, that's. Do you do that outside of the hyperbarics? So would physical therapies mean slow moving therapies like tai chi? Or would it mean therapies that would be just stretches or trying to get your heart rate up? What's. What's the purpose of the physical therapies? It is for strength, like muscle strength. And I do believe there are certain parts of the body that connect with the brain. So they'll have you do certain exercises that connect with that part of the brain to help stimulate it. And so it's mainly trying to get you to be healthy and aware of your strength and your cardio, that kind of thing. And it just gets you better shape. And some light weights or something like that. Yeah, old weights, yeah. Okay. Then there's a nutrition aspect to it. Obviously, nutrition is the foundation of a lot of health. And what sort of is that? Mainly diet and or supplements. And what sort of supplements, if they're. Involved, they do not recommend any supplements unless they see on your test, for example, you're low in vitamin b twelve. Okay. They will, you know, give you a vitamin b twelve shot or. But they really try to stay away from supplements. It's mainly the nutrition aspect of it. And they gear it towards each individual. They really believe in intermittent fasting. So, yeah, and just kind of, you know, learning about nutrition so you can keep the inflammation down in your body. One of the biggest aspects of hyperbaric therapies is elevating mitochondrial function. Was there any particular discussion about that? I mean, that can happen with good nutrition and hyperbaric. Of course, there are some supplements which make that happen a lot faster. Was there any education around that aspect of it? So the presentations that they put on, they talk a lot about mitochondrial function with their nutrition programme. So people who are not even part of aviv, they come and they listen to the presentation. So they give new presentations about three or four times a week. And anybody can come and listen to them. But they do talk a lot about how the mitochondrial function works and how the diet helps. They give a lot of information about physical therapy, sleep, all kinds of things. Well, the proof is in the pudding and you look amazing. Thank you so much. I feel great, I feel really good and I'm just so grateful to have been able to do this. You know, there's a lot of vaccine injured who have lost their jobs, they can't afford it. It is not covered by insurance. You know, we sold our home in California and that gave me the opportunity to pay for it and I just feel terrible that these people cannot get help. You know, they're just struggling and trying tonnes of supplements and ivig and. And it's just a real shame. It's an absolute shame. You're quite right and you were brave enough to put your story together in a book. What's the name of your book? It's called my story. The Covid-19 vaccine and brain injury. I've read your book and what I love about it is that it's just so personal. It is you and your story and it makes it very real because all of us have lived a life not that dissimilar to what you have with family and children and. And you bring all of that into your book and that's, you know, it's very touching. So well done and I love some of the science you've put in there as well and the references to other resources. How do people buy your book? Amazon. Amazon? Yeah, it, um. I never thought I would ever write a book, but something like I say, so many things happened that were so divine and that's. I feel that that's what. I don't know, just. I put it on the paper I. I wrote with my heart and it was very cathartic because there are things in the book that are stigmas or, you know, can be shameful. And I just decided to, you know, that's it. I'm putting it out there because this is it. I'm going to be real. What I really appreciate about the book is, I think most upsetting to me personally, aspects of all of this is the gaslighting, as we mentioned earlier. And we just have to believe people. If people come with a set of symptoms that are so clear, you know, it's our duty as practitioners of any sort to believe what they're saying and try to understand it. But that's one of the biggest hurdles, I believe, of getting further action in this area which has affected so many people. I was just going to say, I don't know how it is in Australia, but I just feel that, you know, the AMA has a hold on doctors and they're frightened because I know doctors have been threatened with their licences and like, I believed in what they were saying, safe and effective. I believed that everything was good, but I think it's just really hard for them to realise that that's happening. And I do know the incentives are given too to doctors and I'm sure that has something to do with it. But they've taken a hippocratic oath and. That'S any doctor in Australia that spoke out, even if they raised a query, not even speaking out were threatened with the loss of their licence. And I know that they got written to by the health department saying if you speak out against the COVID vaccine, you risk your medical licence. And that was a worldwide phenomena, I think, which is pretty scary stuff. It is, yes, I know we're battling, not getting into the World Health Organisation. That would be a huge mistake. I am so grateful. Thank you so much. There are so many people that will benefit from hearing your story and knowing that there's hope. Oh, thank you. You know, and that's. That's what this is all about. So that's what I'm here for. Yeah. Great. Well, thank you. I hope to speak to you again another time. Sounds good, Dan, thank you very much. Take care. See ya. Okay, bye bye.