My name is Joseph Leo. I am writing to tell you about my visit to Blake Medical Center in Bradenton, FL, Manatee County during the “Covid outbreak” in 2021.

On the morning of Thursday July 8th 2021, I went to Blake Hospital with severe abdominal pain. They did a CT Scan and found that I had a Perforated Sigmoid Diverticulitis. Dr. Jerry Mathew, the Hospitalist, informed me that as per Dr. Jason Cundiff, (the surgeon) I needed to have immediate emergency surgery because I was critically ill, and so I would not develop sepsis. I asked to see my GI, Dr. Ivan Rascon-Aguilar since he knows my history, and they never called him to let him know that I was in the hospital.

I was in extreme pain as I lay in the emergency room for the entire day without ever seeing Dr. Jason Cundiff in person. The staff kept telling me that they were waiting for a bed to become available before they could perform the surgical procedure. I was denied all liquids from the point I arrived at the hospital and for the next three days. The emergency room nurse told me she had to do a Covid test. I refused repeatedly and they forced it on me.

I was finally admitted into a room at 3:00 am the following morning (Friday July 9th, 2021) and was also told that I tested positive for Covid-19. I asked how they can prove I was positive for Covid and they said the PCR test. I told them that the PCR test cannot prove Covid as per Dr Kary Mullis, the inventor of the test.

I am a survivor of Bio Warfare, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever which I caught in the 1970’s. I spent nine months in bed and since then I have a weakened immune system. I spent the next two days in a room in the Covid section waiting for someone to tell me when I was going to be operated on. I was in extreme pain and kept asking for a stronger pain medication but was denied this also. As for the Covid, I never had any symptoms of the virus and they never treated me with any medication for the virus and I still spent the next ten days in the Covid section.

Before I had the surgery a doctor come in, by the name of Dr. Susan Sturm. I told her that I was supposed to have surgery when I first came into emergency but the nurses kept giving me different excuses as to why the surgeon didn’t get to me yet, until Dr. Altaras did the surgery on July 10th. I then had a drain installed on Friday July 16th 2021 to help drain the infection as well as being treated with antibiotics. Dr. Susan Sturm told me I have a very serious infection, Enterococcus VRE, and every antibiotic they tried did not help fight it. She told me there is a very strong antibiotic that they are going to have to try, even though I have a history of bad reactions to antibiotics. I was started on Linezolid and it was very tough on my stomach but I had to put up with it. Maybe if I would have been treated properly in the beginning I wouldn’t have had an infection.

On Saturday July 10th 2021, a different surgeon named Dr. Rona Altaras, saw my name was still on the surgery list so he came to my room to see what was going on. He only works at this hospital on the weekends. He saw the pain I was in and asked me how long I was like that. I told him since I got there on Thursday. He said he was told that I was not in any pain. He was very upset and told me he didn’t know how they could do this to me! He sent me right away for another CT Scan and within 45 minutes I was on my way to surgery. He called my wife at home and asked her to come to the surgery waiting room. He explained his surgery plan to my wife and told her to stay there.

Upon completing the procedure he informed me that he wasn’t able to fix the problem due to a puss pocket formed around the perforation, and he was worried about how severe the infection was that I developed. He did tell me that I would probably need to have surgery in the future to actually fix the problem. He took me through the hallway and stopped so my wife to see me, since she was not allowed to visit my room.

The day after the surgery, July 11th the surgeon told me I could go home but the Hospitalist in charge, Dr. Jerry Mathew said he wasn’t aware of me going home so I had to stay. I looked through all of my records and there is a lot of things missing on the 11th. It also says on the 11th that I didn’t have any pain and that’s when they started pumping me with all kinds of drugs, like Dilaudid, Demerol, and Norco.

About three days after the surgery, on July 13th, I was given three injections in my arm. Shortly after I felt like I had a clamp on my chest. I blacked out, and I heard a nurse by the name of Jennifer, calling me and asking me if I had chest pain. She said “what’s going on, your heart monitor is going crazy, your heart rate is up to 198”. I could feel myself being elevated off the bed. Then I heard a nurse, Jeff Sales come into my room and he told Jennifer he was going to “bolus me” and Jennifer kept telling me “stay with me Joe”. I didn’t wake up till the next evening, and then I had to have tests to see if I had any damage from the heart problem.

I also had a very troubling experience with an armed guard that escorted me every time I was taken out of my room for tests. He would take the bed out of the control of the woman pushing it so he could push it. He would ram the bed into the elevator, the hallway walls and hit every bump he could find. Then he kept his gun strapped across his chest and he would smack the gun with his gloves. He screamed at people in the hallway to get out of the way, up against the walls with your face against the wall. I used to keep my hand on the remote for the room light, fearing that he was going to come in and go crazy.

Some of the nurses that took care of me were very caring and understood that I was in pain, and they did their best to keep me comfortable, some of them were nasty. The bed was collapsed and I am still suffering with back and leg pain from having to try and sleep in that bed for eleven days. I already have back issues but now I’m in worse pain.

As far as the doctors, I can’t say enough good things about Dr. Susan Sturm and Dr. Rona Altaras, the surgeon that took care of me. As for Dr. Jason Cundiff, I was told that he is the only one that could do my surgery, and I never did see or speak to him even though he is on my bill. Maybe if I would have been treated properly in the beginning and had the surgery on the first day like I was told it was supposed to be, I wouldn’t have had ended up with an infection like I did. According to the emergency Dr., I was critical and needed the surgery right away. Sad to think a doctor could leave a patient in so much pain.

In my opinion, Dr. Jerry Mathew didn’t have the decency to call Dr. Ivan Rascon-Aguilar, who knows my history, and if he did I probably wouldn’t have been in the hospital so long and I wouldn’t have had to be in the pain I had to endure for as long as I have been putting up with it. When I had my appointment with Dr. Ivan Rascon-Aguilar, he was very angry to find out that he was not called when his patient was waiting for surgery. He was even more upset when I told him that I repeatedly asked Dr. Jerry Mathew to call him.

The hospital cleanliness was shameful. First of all since I was in the Covid section you would think that the beds would get changed daily, the floors washed and the toilet cleaned. The sinks were removed from the bathrooms. Supplies dropped on the floor stayed there and was never cleaned up. This is how infections are spread! Hospital cleanliness was terrible and I never got any towels or any way to clean myself. I laid in the same clothes that I wore when I went into emergency. Dirty socks that I had to walk to the bathroom in and then back into my bed.

One day an older women came in and sedated me. She left and came back at some point and I woke up because I could feel something being cranked around my head. She turned on the ventilator and I couldn’t breath and I ripped it off of my face. I received Midazolam, Fentanyl, Morphine, Lidocaine, and Alprazolam IV’s. I also was given many other drugs and Remdesivir was mentioned two times in my files, but Dr. Susan Sturm said “not yet” so I’m not sure if I ever received it.

A family member dropped off a change of clothes for me and the hospital said they would have to incinerate them. They were brand new clothes in the packaging and tags still on them. I kept saying I had to go home to take care of my wife, and I didn’t know she was admitted on the July 15th and put in the room next to me. She was admitted for Low sodium, and they forced her to take a Covid test and told her she had Covid also, even though she didn’t have any symptoms either.

One of my nurses told me my wife was admitted. My wife told me there was a women wrapped up in a blanket like a burrito, and she was placed in the middle of my wife’s room on an angle and no one ever took care of her. My wife went home on July 18th when her sodium level went up to 131.

I wanted to go home and I told the head nurse, Susan that I was leaving. I told her I would rather die at home then stay in there and have them kill me. I was finally released on July 19, 2021. I have all my records 736 pages.
I think that they gave me the covid vaccine without my consent.

Joseph A. Leo