ITP Crisis: Platelets Crash to Zero After Second Shot

Day 1 · 7:55:54 · John Grant · Shawn Buckley · Ron Johnson · Denis G. Rancourt, PhD

• 🩸 Within two weeks of the second dose Grant developed nosebleeds, petechiae, mouth bleeding, and platelets of 4 (baseline ~154), later falling to zero.
• 🏥 Hospitalized 12 days on steroids and weekly IV meds; hematologists said they had never seen bleeding like his whole-body blood blisters.
• 📖 He clung to Scripture and a Spurgeon book while fearing he might not live, later recovering platelets by October but developing type 2 diabetes.

Grant details acute immune thrombocytopenia and near-fatal bleeding after vaccination.

← John Grant Sworn In: Healthy Builder Turned Vaccine-Injured | Rebound Clots, Lung Damage, and Forced Downsizing →

Transcript

John Grant · 7:55:58

It was, uh, a decision I made because I was involved with young people. I had spent my whole life from the time I was 17 involved with young people, with camps and Sunday school and kids clubs. So I had spent a lot of time with young people. And, um, at the time, just, well, before I got the vaccine, when COVID broke out, um, we were told in no uncertain terms we cannot continue on with the Owana program. The Thursday we had our fun kind with racing cars down a back. And, and then the next day we're told we can't have it. Wana, it was a very critical time because that's when the kids finished the books and everything.

John Grant · 7:56:59

And being a leader, I was thinking about this one day and I said to myself, my heart is really troubled because of what I'm hearing out As soon as I said that, because I'm a Bible-believing guy and I love the Bible, I was reminded of what Jesus said to his disciples on the night that he was betrayed. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I'm going to come back again. So those words were kind of my marching orders to keep me going in spite of the blockages that we had to be able to function with our ministries and just everyday life. So that was one, one thing that really helped me along.

John Grant · 7:57:59

The process of me making the decision to get the vaccine vaccine, and I never had a flu vaccine in my whole life other than the ones that you get for childhood diseases. I got all those, but I never had a flu vaccine. And my wife being a nurse, she reacted to a flu vaccine one year, so she didn't have to. By the way, the Senator this morning, I don't remember name. He said something that really resonated with me. He says, top line caregivers and nurses are very important. I'm here today because of those that looked after me, but because my wife was a nurse and she recognized things. Well, I made the decision to get the, the vaccine because I wanted to honor the government, because the Bible says we should honor the government, those who are in authority over us.

John Grant · 7:59:08

So I decided to get it, and we did it together, my wife and I. We went down, we got the first shot. Then a while later, I got the second shot. Within 2 weeks, it was a Monday that I did some sawing with my, uh, sawmill with my nephew and, uh, really enjoyed it. Uh, but anybody that's done anything with logs, you know what happens when you, uh, their arms are spot out and you're gonna scrape your arms and just nothing really spectacular Spectacular. The next day, um, my wife and I go and visit my daughter and the grandchildren, and I have one nostril bleeding. It was off and on all day. On our way home, we stopped by to go for lunch, and I needed to tie up my shoes. My wife took a look at my legs.

John Grant · 8:00:08

She says, you got patiki on there. It's broken vessels on your leg. She said, you're going to have to get that checked. I came home that night after we went out for supper, and in the course of the evening, I says, Sandra, look at my mouth. My mouth is bleeding. She says, you better get to the hospital. So I— we were only 10 minutes away, so away I went. I get in there, and immediately they give me a blood test. The blood tests show that my blood platelets are sitting at 4.

Shawn Buckley · 8:00:50

What are they supposed to be?

John Grant · 8:00:52

My, my baseline is about 154, but it's anywhere from 150 to 400 depending on the person. So I was basically bleeding to death. The doctor on call at the Westlock Health Care Center contacted the top, uh, hematologist in the University of Calgary, Edmonton— University of Edmonton, um, Dr. Sawyer. And he says, get this guy on steroids. The next day I went and saw my home doctor, Dr. Comer, and he says, we got to get you into that clinic. And so I ended up going to the clinic at 9:00 in the morning. He took one look at my blood work and said, we got to get you into the hospital here.

John Grant · 8:02:01

Well, that was 9:00 in the morning, and he said he tried from his clinic. Finally, he says, I can't get you in from the clinic, you got to go over to emergency. It was until 9:00 that night that they found me a room. The next day My daughter came in to see me. My plate— what, the platelets had gone down to zero. I didn't know if I was going to live because I'd done enough research on it to say this is very important to have your blood to be able to clot.

John Grant · 8:03:07

Something else happened the next couple of days because I was really hanging on to that verse about Jesus coming back again. Maybe I was going to be going seeing him sooner than I want, because I love being a husband, I love being a dad and a grandpa.

Ron Johnson · 8:03:37

And I had some—.

John Grant · 8:03:38

I had a good friend came and saw me. That's another interesting thing— you find out who your real friends are when you're in hospital, ones that come and visit you, ones that give you a call or text you. Boy, that's important. He dropped off a book. It's a book from an old theologian, Spurgeon, and he identified a verse in Hebrews It says, let us come boldly unto the throne of grace in prayer so that you may obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need. And the verse before that, it says, we have an advocate, we have a savior who knows what we are going through. So I remember speaking to the Lord.

John Grant · 8:04:39

Lord, I come into your presence. I don't have anything here. I'm empty-handed. You know, there's somebody else in the throne room, that's Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ says, hey, Dad, Dad, John belongs to me. He put his faith and trust in me when he was 5 years old. He belongs to me. And you know what happens? That great God, he gets up and he puts his arms around you. And spiritually, I got a spiritual hug from my Father in Heaven. Well, I was on a healing process. I was carried through many times. Many times I returned to that chapter and that verse. It took me about October to get my platelets back up to 150.

Shawn Buckley · 8:05:41

But let me—.

John Grant · 8:05:42

With—.

Shawn Buckley · 8:05:42

Can I slow you down? Because my understanding also is, is you, you had what was described— you described to me as blood blisters. Can you tell us about that?

John Grant · 8:05:51

What was that again?

Shawn Buckley · 8:05:52

Blood blisters.

John Grant · 8:05:55

Oh, blood blisters.

Shawn Buckley · 8:05:57

Yeah, the blood blisters. Can you share about—.

John Grant · 8:05:59

Oh, well, I had it in my mouth. Oh, I would tell you about my arms being scraped. Show the picture of my arms there. That's what broke out onto my arms. Because any little broken skin was oozing blood and it would dry. And I had that over my whole body. Show the one on my face. Not that everybody wants to see my face. This was in my mouth.

Shawn Buckley · 8:06:32

So what's happening here? We see spots all over.

John Grant · 8:06:35

That's blood oozing out of my every orifice and every broken piece of my skin. I had it all over my body. The hematologist, Dr. Sawyer, had 3 or 4 interns who were studying to be hematologists, and one was Dr. Wong, who was kind of leading it. And she said, we have never seen anything like that before.

Shawn Buckley · 8:06:57

So let's go back to the first one, David, the legs. So you were describing what you call petechiae, right?

Denis G. Rancourt, PhD · 8:07:04

And that's—.

Shawn Buckley · 8:07:04

This is, this is what you're talking about. So your legs don't normally look like this. This is all basically blood vessels bleeding.

John Grant · 8:07:11

Yeah, and it was over my whole body.

Shawn Buckley · 8:07:14

Okay, so then David, go to the one of his tongue. So we don't really see it that well in the picture, but there's actually big blisters of blood in the back of your throat.

John Grant · 8:07:27

All my gums were, were, were bleeding, my tongue, uh, and Basically, I was bleeding from in my urine, my blood, my nose. The only place I wasn't bleeding out was in my ears, thankfully. But it was very uncomfortable being in bed there because if I moved too hard, these blood things would break off.

Shawn Buckley · 8:07:58

You also had an experience in the hospital where you had to go to the bathroom. Can you share with What happened?

Speaker L · 8:08:03

What?

Shawn Buckley · 8:08:03

You had to go to the bathroom and something—.

John Grant · 8:08:06

Well, that's the next— that was the next chapter.

Speaker G · 8:08:09

Okay.