Q&A: How Has the Injury Affected Hart Mentally and with Doctors?¶
Day 2 · 3:33:10 · Shawn Buckley · Daniel Freiheit · Thor Hart · Dean Allison · Jasmeet Grewal
- 😤 An MP’s posts that pivot from injury counts to “vaccine hesitancy” re-traumatize him; outreach is met with silence.
- 🏷️ Despite charts listing vaccine injury and full vaccination, clinicians gaslight him as diabetic or “anti-vaxxer” and even “Trump supporter.”
- 🙏 He never expected to be heard and thanks the inquiry for ending years of feeling forgotten.
Mental toll of political gaslighting and hostile medical encounters.
← Dropped by Doctor, Denied Accommodation, Permanently Disabled | Q&A: How Has Hart’s Injury Affected His Family Daily Life? →
Transcript¶
Shawn Buckley · 3:33:10
I want to kind of go there. We were talking about you know, how this has affected you mentally. And you were talking about— and we'll get there— but you said a comment, um, there was one fellow that was active online, an MP, Doug E. Olafson, and you said he re-traumatizes you. And I—.
Daniel Freiheit · 3:33:29
He does.
Shawn Buckley · 3:33:30
And can you explain, explain that and explain the mental journey?
Thor Hart · 3:33:33
Well, I, I read his posts, and, and, and I'm sorry, I've reached out to him. I've called his office. I've sent him emails, um, I've tried to contact him on chat. I've, I've reached out because his post will say from the Cana— because they used to track vaccine injured on the Canadian website, and he'll say there are this many vaccine injured, but then pivots directly towards vaccine hesitancy. And I take it as he's essentially gaslighting the issue where if we don't talk about it, it's more important to bury the injured and fight vaccine hesitancy, as it's put. So I've responded to his post several times trying to say, okay, I actually said it'd be wonderful if he showed up here. He could lend his medical knowledge to say, okay, let's fix this system. That left us sort of forgotten, if you will, and not treated.
Thor Hart · 3:34:37
Um, and again, it's gone with silence. And in fact, one, one person— I don't know who they were because again, I, I can't— you can't verify who's online talking to you— and they said to me that he is a compassionate doc because I, my, my said was— what I said to them was, for a doctor, he seems very—.
Thor Hart · 3:34:55
Doing it.
Shawn Buckley · 3:34:56
And I, I wasn't I'm not— No, I'm trying to get— It intrigued me that even somebody questioning people coming here and testifying would— that's what I was curious about— would trigger you. So what has been the mental journey and what has been the experience like dealing with the medical system?
Thor Hart · 3:35:17
That there, the gaslighting that I've received from medical— this is where It gets hard because it's in my medical records, it's vaccine injured. But again, most of the medical system that I've encountered, they refuse to look at that and they say, well, it must be I'm diabetic, it must be something else, it must be the— and they run through the whole gamut of things that it could be. And I have to almost fight with them to say, read my charts. And when they do read the charts, come back in, they treat me like I've done something wrong. And I've been labeled as anti-vaxxer. At one point, I remember outside the room, this boggled my mind when they called me a— I heard Trump supporter. And, and that— and I, and I remember I'm with my wife and I'm thinking, what does that have to do with my injury? I don't understand how that factors in.
Thor Hart · 3:36:19
And then the anti-vax label, I don't understand. Like, I'm trying to be non-emotional and I'm thinking, they have my medical records there, they can see I'm fully vaccinated. And to be vaccine injured, I must have taken the vaccine. So where does anti— and this is where I was just— I'm in so much pain, I'm writhing. I just want help. And when you're getting that kind of reaction from— I call it like the met— the doctors that I'm reaching out to help for, it's just, it feels surreal. It's almost like a Twilight Zone experience because this, the hospital, my doctors, that's where you go when you're sick. That's where you go when you're injured. So to have this kind of 180 where I'm encountering this I never experienced that before in my life.
Dean Allison · 3:37:16
Cool. Thank you very much for being here.
Thor Hart · 3:37:18
Can I say one— just, I just want to say, and thank you, Sean, and thank you, Dean Allison the, um, I really never thought this was going to happen. I really thought I'd be forgotten. Um, that was my experience for the last several years. So as much as it hurts me to be here, I felt I had to because what yous are doing, I just want to say thank you. And if, if I can, if me being here does anything, I don't care what I'm feeling, the pain, I have to do my part as well.
Shawn Buckley · 3:37:51
So thank you. Well, Thor, I want to thank you for coming and sharing your story because I know it's at a cost and And what you've said to us, I hope, will change the world because the world's watching these proceedings. It's quite shocking how it's— I think we were number 7 worldwide now. So you are being heard today and we're just honored to hear you in person here. Thank you.
Dean Allison · 3:38:20
Before I turn it over to my colleague, Mr. Dawson, you know, part of the reason we're doing this is that we want to have a public discussion. Right, right. It's crazy that as MPs, and a number of my colleagues have heard from people on a multiple level, and we can have these conversations privately, but for some crazy reason we can't talk publicly about it, right? And we've got to be able to break that, that stigma down. We've got to give people permission to tell their stories publicly, because if we don't start a discussion, if we don't have conversations, we don't encourage other brave doctors to come forward. Forward and share those. And you can imagine if we, we had a whole bunch of docs that showed up at the same time saying, we got to address these issues, we got to figure out a way to get treatment, and by not having conversations we can't get treatment, right? Because they don't acknowledge this exists. It's kind of this, uh, uh, you know, carrot and stick or chicken and egg or whatever you want, you know, that is a challenge. So that's why we're doing it. And I, and I, I completely agree with you. When people are calling people that had injuries anti-vaxxers, it's the most ridiculous thing.
Dean Allison · 3:39:23
But it just shows you where we're at with dialogue in this country. We've got to fix that.
Jasmeet Grewal · 3:39:28
Exactly.
Dean Allison · 3:39:28
And we've got to push forward and we've got to encourage people. We've got to demand people to have conversations that are uncomfortable. Yes, we have to have uncomfortable conversations. And that's why I'm glad my colleagues are here, because I want them to help me have those uncomfortable conversations as well. So I'm going to turn over to Uncle Mike.