I was tortured': Former medical prisoner describes AFLDS rescue mission

79-year-old Janet Aldrich stands at the podium and whips off her wig with a flourish. 

“I lost my hair,” she says, twirling around to show the audience her bald spot.  

It happened when Janet was hospitalized last year at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts for double pneumonia. She was admitted on September 4, 2021, the day Janet says she entered “the medical twilight zone.” 

The former health worker knew enough to ask the doctor not to write COVID-19 on her record if she only had pneumonia. He did it anyway. When she made inquiries, she was told “they write everyone on this floor as COVID.” 

She asked for alternative medicine to treat her COVID. They refused. She asked to be released from the hospital to the care of her son and sister. The doctors repeatedly told her family members she would be dead within 12 hours, and accused them of negligence for killing her.

“I was in prison without my family, alone, not being able to have them visit,” she says. 

And she recalls other things. 

Her hair was yanked out from being carelessly pulled out of bed. She was woken up every two hours and allowed little sleep. She was “punctured for labs night and day.” They gave her no fluids – not even an IV drip – for three days. She became so dehydrated her feet became puffed and white. Skin started to hang. 

“Even the food was sent just as blood labs would come in,” she recalls. Though the food was cold, staff refused to heat it up; once inside, the COVID-infected food could not leave the room. 

“I suffered nine nights of hell in their hands. I was subjected to unheated, cold, pure oxygen pumped into my skull for five hours after repeated denied requests to the nurse’s station for Ibuprofen for the pain. I had to fight for that as well.” 

They repeatedly tried to persuade her to sign a DNR, to get ventilated, to take Remdesivir, but she refused all. 

“I simply knew the game.” 

She lost 35 pounds and begged her son to get her out of there. 

“I was tortured for 12 hours in Lahey Clinic, Burlington during the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I was in there for my Days of Awe.” 

Word of Janet's treatment traveled to Jessica Abu-Hijleh, medical director for America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) Citizen Corps. Within days, Lahey Hospital was inundated with emails which included scientific studies supporting alternative treatments. They were bombarded with calls demanding Janet's release. Unbeknownst to the public, the hospital had designated Janet as a “private” patient, which allowed them to deny her presence at the hospital. Some callers thought Janet had been released; others assumed she had passed.

But the AFLDS medical army, led by Abu-Hijleh, continued its unrelenting medical advocacy. Media reports began to surface of Lahey's violations. Demonstrators gathered outside the hospital and protested against the medical kidnapping. There were awareness campaigns collecting donations for her care costs at local freedom events.

Abu-Hijleh went to court twice arguing for Right to Try, a law which authorizes the use of unapproved medical products by patients diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Janet was able to be released under hospice, but she still required significant medical care. So the AFLDS Citizen Corps hired a private ambulance and assembled a volunteer medical team, which included a physician, a respiratory therapist, a medical assistant, a naturopathic doctor, an oxygen supplier and the necessary medical supplies.

Janet was brought home safely and convalesced successfully.