Tim McAdams, a 59-year-old pilot who for over a decade trained pilots for Airbus Helicopters, can no long fly and has had to go on disability after suffering two strokes following the Covid injection that was mandated by his employer, a report said.
McAdams and his wife Beth told The Defender in an interview published on Aug. 24 that, because he was fit, healthy and had no family history of illness, they didn’t think he needed to get the Covid shot, despite repeated urging by Airbus.
“But when my employer mandated it, I thought, ‘Well now all of our retirement plans, everything could be in jeopardy if I have to try to find another job,’ ” Tim said, adding that he didn’t qualify for a medical exemption and had no religious beliefs that would exempt him.
McAdams got his first Pfizer dose on Oct. 17, 2021, and the second on Nov. 7, 2021.
"Three weeks later he had two cerebellar strokes, a rare stroke in the cerebellum that accounts for only 1-4% of total strokes," the report noted.
Tim’s primary care physician for more than 15 years blamed his strokes on the Pfizer Covid injections.
Tim said the doctor himself got a blood clot in his leg after being vaccinated, lost one patient and had two patients — Tim and another person — who had strokes, all in a very small family practice in Colleyville, Texas.
In his first two visits to urgent care, McAdams was told he had vertigo. During a third trip, doctors still thought he was suffering from vertigo but wanted to observe him overnight in the hospital. “They only wanted to send me to a hospital within their hospital [system], which was a two-hour ambulance ride away,” even though there were approximately 15 hospitals closer to them in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, metroplex, Tim said.
Beth and Tim returned home instead. But the next morning when the symptoms returned, they went by ambulance to the nearest hospital. Doctors there told Tim he had suffered two strokes, one on each side of his brain.
“Cerebellar strokes, in themselves, are very rare to begin with,” Beth told The Defender. “And then to have them bilaterally was very very strange. We were just shocked. I mean shocked is all I can remember,” because Tim was such a healthy person and had never had any health issues at all.
In the hospital, the McAdamses asked the doctors repeatedly what could have caused this rare event, but “they always shrugged.”
McAdams said he told the doctor, " 'Well, the only thing is three weeks prior I got the second shot of the vaccine' The doctor responded, 'No, that had nothing to do with it.' And he walked out.”
“The thing that got me,” Tim said, “is they were telling me they had no idea why it happened, but they were really quick to eliminate only one possible cause, the one change that had happened.”
After the doctor left, a nurse who had been in the room spoke up. “For political reasons, you’ll never ever get a doctor in this facility to admit that the vaccine has anything to do with it,” the nurse said.
Things then "took a turn for the worse," the report said.
While showering in the hospital, McAdams said he started to feel his legs shake and give out. He was rapidly becoming paralyzed on his left side.
“I’m looking at him. Tim can’t talk, he can’t even raise his hand, barely. He’s trying to grab three of his fingers to tell me that he thinks it’s the third stroke,” Beth said.
But it wasn’t another stroke. Tim was suffering from brain swelling, which doctors treated with drugs and Tim soon improved.
But a few days later, the swelling returned and Tim was being rushed into surgery for an emergency craniotomy.
After the surgery, he remained in the acute-care hospital. “It was such a wild 80-some days in the hospital because along the way he developed double pneumonia and lung failure,” Beth said.
Tim was intubated a number of times and eventually given a tracheotomy and a feeding tube. His vocal cords were damaged in the process.
After outpatient rehab, "Tim was able to return to a greater degree of physical normalcy, and he continues to improve. But he still struggles with fine motor skills, loss of balance and dizziness multiple times a day," the report said.
McAdams was able to return to work, but "began suffering headaches and high blood pressure and had to make the decision to stop working," the report noted.
“That’s very disappointing to me because it means that at least for a few years, I can’t go back to work because I can’t risk my health. And of course, I spent 40 years in this career and I love flying,” Tim told The Defender.
Tim said he was anxious at first to get recertified to fly. But his doctor pointed out that “in my business, I don’t have the luxury of having a second pilot — it’s what we call ‘single pilot.’ ”
The doctor told Tim, “If this had happened when you were flying, you would be dead. And so would everybody that was with you.”
“So with that thought in mind,” Tim said, “I’m thinking, well, maybe I’m better off not flying. I don’t want to put myself or anyone else in jeopardy.”
“At this point, Tim wouldn’t be physically able to fly anyway,” Beth said. “Life is different today in many ways,” Beth said.
Tim is on disability, his family has downsized, sold their home and moved out to the country where things are less expensive.
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