In March and April of 2020 I found myself quite ill with a constellation of symptoms that were not respiratory. This was before we knew covid could infect the gut or clotting…. Other members of my family had respiratory symptoms but recovered fairly quickly while I remained sick. Due to my background and personal experience with pathogens and chronic illness, I decided to pull my microscope out and take a look…. Here is documentation of that process.

Here is a picture of (relatively) healthy blood viewed via darkfield

These are red blood cells that are well formed, consistently sized, properly hydrated and showing no signs of anemia.

Here was what I saw when I looked at my microscope

Obviously, not what you are hoping to see. To give some explanation for people who may never have seen unstained blood under a microscope, the RBCs in this image are stacked on top of each other like a bunch of coins. This is called Rouleaux ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouleaux ) When your doctor runs a lab for Sed rate or Erythocyte Sedimentation Rate, they are measuring the amount of aggregation of rbcs in your blood. This test helps doctors have an idea of how much inflammation is happening in the body.

In addition, in this image there are several Lymphocytes. I had never seen them look like this before, all cloudy and ominous. There were no other WBCs evident on the slide which looked entirely from edge to edge like this.

In all my years of looking at my own blood I had never seen this much rouleaux on a slide, even at my sickest.

Most of the slide looked like this: Complete aggregation of rbcs, sludged all together

In addition, I saw a tremendous amount of fibrin. A doctor would run a lab test called D-Dimer to determine how much of this was in the blood to give clues about clotting in the body ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-dimer ) D dimer values went on to be an indicator widely used in covid patients. (https://jintensivecare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40560-020-00466-z)

At this time we did not know about covid and clotting, so we became quite concerned about what I was seeing and wondered what could be going on. I feared the worst but not being able to get any answers due to the shut down, I began thoroughly hydrating myself with clean water and taking high dose Vitamin C because I believe in its powers to thin the blood as well as treat infection. C-Salts is a product that allows you to get a tremendous amount of vitamin c into the body without stomach upset and I was taking 28000-30000mg per day of vitamin C (as 1-Ascorbate) in the beginning stages of treatment. Because my stomach was not functioning well, this gradually started helping to soften the extreme constipation that had resulted and I tapered down the dose to 16000 mg a day after the first week. I began taking 120,000 SPU serrapeptase to help the fibrin and hopefully start cleaning the blood. I also started N-Acetyl cysteine, monolaurin, quercetin, zinc and vitamin d3.

In a couple of days I could at least start seeing more of what was going on in my blood .. I saw more neutrophils and the RBC started to have less rouleaux. (Note, this isnt bad smear technique, the blood had too many rbcs )

As the blood continued to thin out a bit I started to see microthrombi (microclots) as evidenced by clumps of RBCs

As the clumps began breaking up I could see objects I had not been able to previously see.

I noticed in the center of the clots there were often spikey ball objects, as I affectionately refer to them, that I do not believe were burr cells/echinocytes. I knew these objects did not belong in my blood but could not identify them specifically. My doctors were intrigued and began suspecting covid but the shut down made it difficult to even get labs drawn and doctors offices were closed by state order.

And the more the blood cleared, the more I saw..

I know I have lab verified chronic mycoplasma pneumonia, epstein barr and lyme and am used to seeing that in my blood from years ago and I saw that again.

I also saw more lyme spirochetes than I ever did during the years of looking for it combined.

The more the clumps of cells broke up the more unidentified objects appeared

In the below image you can see a variety of unidentified objects but at this time I also began to see indications of multiple types of anemia, echinocytes, signs of hemolysis, etc

There were target cells or Codocytes often associated with iron deficient anemia or reduced hemoglobin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codocyte

There were microcytes, small rbcs - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319050#symptoms-of-microcytic-anemia

There were macrocytes, aka large rbcs

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321620#:~:text=Macrocytic%20anemia%20is%20a%20type,transports%20oxygen%20around%20the%20body

I added lactoferrin at this time to help with the signs of anemia.

Although I could not identify the type of virus, due to the shape and size of the objects I was pretty sure the spikey items were viral in nature. There were a couple different looking kinds.. The ones I referenced above, like spikey balls.. As well as ones that showed up as a circle of lots of dots.

Once I started thinking I may be dealing with covid, I decided to start taking my emergency supply of doxycycline and Hydrocloroquine. My hope that was within 11 days when my medication ran out, I could get in to my doctor. At that point he was unable to write a new hcq script because of the restrictions occurring at that time.

Here is what it looked like in phase contrast so you can more clearly see the pathogens

Close up showing all the differences, there are echinocytes but also other cells I believe are infected… You cannot tell what virus or bacteria you are seeing much of the time, but there are signals you can look for.. An echinocyte wouldnt have the “spikes” or “balls” start multiplying as you watch.. An echinocyte doesnt lyse and start spilling moving particles...

What happened next was amazing.

This was what began to happen when I started taking Hydroxychloroquine and doxycycline. It was almost as if the rbcs had little holes or cuts poked in them.

Here is what it looked like in phase contrast

The holes got bigger (looks like babesia)

Then there were a lot less RBCs

Then about 48 hours into hcq/doxy they started to come back and the target cells that were present were much less pronounced.

White Blood cells FINALLY started showing up!

Here are various wbcs

A video of a gaggle of neutrophils doing their thing

https://streamable.com/vb2vts

I began to see more eosinophils and basophils during this time consistent with these findings: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(20)30099-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666379120300999%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

This Eosinophil had a feeler it would send out to inspect the cells. Super active and fun to watch. Felt like a security guard!

You can see two faded NK cells, Platelet aggregation and Eosinophil

And then they brought an army of them! This is a zoomed out view of a variety of WBC

Close up

WBC performing phagocytosis of an infected cell.

The neutrophils cleaned up all the debris after some ozone and Iv nutrients

Difference after 1 week of HCQ, Doxycycline, zinc, vitamin c, d3, lactoferrin, monolaurin, serrapeptase, quercetin and NAC.

At this point I was feeling so much better and able to get in to see my doctor. I continued the meds.. Here is the final after(left) and before(right). Quite a remarkable change! I would like to note that along with a return of energy, end to fevers and body pains, I also had complete resolution of the symptoms I was experiencing that were thought to be sciatica by several medical professionals. I now believe it was a possible dvt. I had swelling, heat in the left calf, hardness in the muscle and pronounced redness that came and went. I also had hives develop on that leg specifically between the calf and lower back https://healthcog.com/dvt-pain-deep-vein-thrombosis/

My theories after going through this process and watching the recovery. If you have ever been on the Guardians of the Galaxy ride at Disneyland, you will get this example. It starts off with a racoon hatching a plan to break the bars of iron holding his motley crew of friends and setting them free. I believe covid works in a similar way by liberating iron and oxygen (Reactive oxygen species) from RBCs and freeing them for use by unscrupulous coinfections that many people have without their knowledge. Iron is needed by almost every bacteria to infect a host, and covid’s ability to liberate iron helps other pathogens thrive. This leads your body to a series of dysregulation, going up and down like the ride.. In my case coinfections appeared to greatly increase the levels of coagulation I was seeing and as soon as the doxycycline started killing off the opportunistic pathogens of lyme and mycoplasma, my immune system seemed to come back online to take care of covid and reactivated EBV.

Some food for thought:

Iron and covid:

ht