J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine probably caused blood clots in Durango man, his doctor said

A Durango man is walking and driving again after being hospitalized due to blood clots that his doctor said were probably caused by the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, the man said.

Andrew Pietrack is the husband of Aruna, and a father of a newborn. Before the adverse event, he worked as a baseball coach.

Pietrack has no family history of blood clotting disorders, he said.

While Pietrack did receive a J&J/Janssen jab which is known to cause blood clots, his doctors had previously thought that the blood clotting happened after cysts on his pancreas had popped, he said that the doctors told him.

The clotting started with his body attacking the cysts, he previously said.

After Pietrack’s follow-up visit with a doctor in Albuquerque, he now thinks that his pancreas issues were less likely to be the cause of his blood clots.

“All of the symptoms that I really had from the pancreas issues over the last couple of years, all those symptoms seem to have pretty well gone away. I’m still watching what I eat, and I have medication that helps me digest stuff that is harder to eat.”

For weeks after being released from the hospital, he was unable to walk due to the atrophy in his muscles, he said. Currently, he is 120 pounds and wants to lift weights and gain some weight.

Following his hospitalization, Pietrack also had a giant hematoma in his chest and lower back that took some time to disappear, he said.

Aside from his physical recovery, Pietrack will also be taking blood thinners twice a day for the rest of his life, he said his doctor recommended. Each prescription is $50 dollars, he said.

J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vax received prior to hospitalization due to blood clots

Pietrack’s blood clotting started on his way to work one day in 2021, when he stopped at Creature Comforts to get some dog food. While walking back to his car he noticed that he could not move his left leg very well, he said.

“It was stiffening up,” Pietrack said. “It also looked a lot bigger than my other leg.”

“Since it was kind of alarming, I drove across the street to the urgent care that was right there.”

“I started honking my horn because I couldn’t walk any more and I know that kind of pissed off the lady that was working in there.” he said. “But she finally got out there and realized what was going on.”

“They took my information, and said hold on for a little bit. When I finally go checked in–maybe a half an hour later–they called an ambulance and they basically said you’ve got to go to the emergency room.”

“Also, I was able to call my wife and she got down there and picked up my dog.”

“When I got to the emergency room, they started saying, ‘well, having a leg that’s so much bigger than the other one like that, it normally means clots. It could be a lot of different things’.”

“They said we need to get you somewhere besides here, we just don’t have a way to deal with it.”

Doctors finally found a facility in Albuquerque that could handle this type of injury, he said.

Pietrack flown to University of New Mexico Hospital

Medical staff decided to fly Pietrack to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque.

“They have a procedure called ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), which is where they can take all of your blood out, reoxygenate it, and then put it back in your body for you.”

“At the same time, they were able to do a 3-D rendering using an echocardiogram of my lungs and everything.”

“They found so many blood clots,” said Pietrack. “It was like packages of bacon coming out of me.”

“It was just very extensive as far as blood clots. They were worried about my lungs, about my heart, about my brain, everything.”

“Anyways, they had to put me into a chemically-induced coma, just because they didn’t want any of the blood clotting to slowly flow somewhere where it could really cause some damage.”

“Without that procedure, I would not have made it. There’s nothing they could have done for me anywhere.”

Lindsay Radford, the Director of External & Field Communications for Centura Health did not respond to an emailed question as to whether Mercy Medical Center in Durango offers ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) as a service.