Many of you already know Baby Alex’s heartrending story. Unfortunately, what you know is likely inaccurate. I reached out to Cornelia Hertzler, Baby Alex’s mother, to request clarification regarding the conflicting details I found floating around online, and she was gracious enough to recount exactly what occurred. Cornelia appreciated the opportunity to set the record straight. Please help us get the true story of Baby Alex out to the world.
“And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune. To do nothing and to despair is to neglect our duty.”
—Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook)
On February 17, 2022, forty-five-day-old Baby Alex died of a clot so long it extended from his left knee to his heart.
That was twenty-four days after staff at Providence Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in Spokane, Washington, had administered a transfusion using blood from vaccinated donors—explicitly against the parents’ wishes.
Baby Alex had been born with a throat condition known as tracheoesophageal fistula (TEF), which is often accompanied by cardiac defects. In his case, this took the form of double-outlet right ventricle (DORV)—a “95% survivable congenital heart defect.”
1. A newborn baby boy named Alex was born in Washington state with a 95% survivable congenital heart defect and was also anemic and needed a blood transfusion. pic.twitter.com/rOZ5DsQheH
— Defeat The Mandates (@dchomecoming) December 14, 2022
Alexander’s parents, Ron Bly and Cornelia Hertzler, were clear about their wishes to use unvaccinated directed donor blood, but the donation was not available by January 24, the date of his tracheoesophageal fistula surgery.
To Ron and Cornelia’s relief, Baby Alex didn’t end up requiring a transfusion during his surgery.
Several hours later, however, the doctor decided to administer a transfusion from the COVID injection–tainted blood pool instead of waiting until the directed donor blood had made it through the bureaucratic hoops.
Ron shared this gut-wrenching discovery in VSRF Episode #59:
“It was just the doctor’s discretion.… [She] decided that his hemoglobin levels were slightly low and they were going to give him vaccinated blood instead of waiting a few more days for the blood we had donated to be fully processed and available.” (@ 21:07)
The clot—which was impervious to blood thinners typically successful at combating normal blood clots—developed within hours of the transfusion. It appeared where the PICC line for the transfusion had been inserted in his knee.
Cornelia explained:
“They told us blood clots in babies are very rare, but blood thinners will just fix it. But that did not happen. The clot just continued to grow, and they had him on the highest amount of blood thinners they could legally give him, and it did nothing.”
Tragically, the procedure intended to save his life wound up taking it—not from the straightforward operation itself but from the massive clot that developed after his transfusion.
“Ron and I went back into our messages and figured out that the TEF operation happened on January 24, so that is the day he would have received the blood transfusion.
“The night before the operation is when we finally obtained the proper documentation to request directed donor blood. At this point, no blood had been donated. We had people who were ready to donate, but we hadn’t received the paperwork that we needed to fill out until the day before they decided to operate on his throat. We had asked for it a week prior and were informed by the hospital staff that it was ‘very expensive,’ and the implication was that people like us would not be able to afford to get directed donor blood. We insisted we wanted the paperwork to file anyway, but it wasn’t until I asked a different doctor that I was able to get the form.
The next day, he had his tracheoesophageal fistula operation, which was uneventful. No blood transfusion had been needed.
A few hours after the operation, Dr. Beadle gave him a blood transfusion anyway, which had not been authorized by us. The next day, they discovered a blood clot.
We did obtain directed donor blood a few days later. The process was inexpensive. As Alexander continued to weaken, he needed more and more blood transfusions. They did give him the directed donor blood as required.
A few days before he died, they claimed they could not find the directed donor blood and were going to give him another transfusion straight from the blood bank. This is the situation Ron was referring to. We insisted they find the blood, and it magically appeared after we made a fuss.
This is an accurate account of what happened. There are definitely a lot of different narratives running around online, which makes it very confusing. I wish more people would check the facts before publishing. 🙂
He only had one operation, the one on his throat. They were never able to move forward with any heart surgeries due to the blood clot.
He was definitely a fighter. He continued to breathe for four hours after we pulled life support. The hospital team had said he would die in five minutes. But he was determined and kept fighting for every single breath.
