[Sept. 15, 2022] 79-year-old Janet Aldrich stands at the podium and whips off her wig with a flourish. “I lost my hair,” she says, twirling around to show the audience her bald spot. It happened when Janet was hospitalized last year at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts for double pneumonia. She was admitted on September 4, 2021, the day Janet says she entered “the medical twilight zone.”
The former health worker knew enough to ask the doctor not to write COVID-19 on her record if she only had pneumonia. He did it anyway. When she made inquiries, she was told “they write everyone on this floor as COVID.” She asked for alternative medicine to treat her COVID. They refused. She asked to be released from the hospital to the care of her son and sister.
The doctors repeatedly told her family members she would be dead within 12 hours, and accused them of negligence for killing her. “I was in prison without my family, alone, not being able to have them visit,” she says. And she recalls other things. Her hair was yanked out from being carelessly pulled out of bed. She was woken up every two hours and allowed little sleep. She was “punctured for labs night and day.”