On September 11, 2000, Janine took her two-month old daughter to the pediatrician’s office for her first round of vaccination shots including the DPT (Diphtheria, Pertussis, & Tetanus) vaccination.  Less that one week later while Gianna lay sleeping in her room with the door closed, her father heard a banging noise coming from the nursery.  Paul entered Gianna’s room where he found his daughter convulsing in her crib causing the crib to hit against the bedroom wall.  Not knowing exactly what was happening to his daughter at the time, Paul picked his daughter up, the convulsion stopped, and Gianna appeared to be fine. 

On October 1, 2000, Janine witnessed Gianna having a seizure while sleeping in her arms at church.  Janine immediately hurried home, called the pediatrician’s office to notify them of her daughter’s condition, and was advised to go to the emergency room of their local hospital.  The Pandolfino’s did just that.  Gianna was rushed to the emergency room where she was to stay for a 4-day workup including metabolic tests, MRI, and EEG.  Everything came back as normal so the doctors concluded a short course of Phenobarbital with the suggestion to maintain the dose at a therapeutic level for three to four months. Gianna was discharged to go home on October 4, 2000, after doing well on the medication with no further seizure activity.

On October 12, 2000, Gianna began to have breakthrough seizures, and by November 13, 2000, her dose of Phenobarbital was increased.  Seven days later, Gianna’s pediatrician wanted to administer additional routine vaccinations.  The Pandolfino’s were very reluctant to do so and originally postponed Gianna’s appointment as they always believed the initial vaccinations were the cause of Gianna’s problems.  Their pediatrician spoke to them about this and felt that the vaccinations had nothing to do with Gianna’s seizures, and so placing their trust in the pediatrician, they proceeded.

On November 20, 2000, Gianna was scheduled to have the second round of vaccinations including the DPT booster vaccination. Two days after the shots were administered; Gianna began to experience violent seizures.  Janine called the pediatrician’s office on November 22, 2000 to speak to the doctor. Janine was told that the pediatrician was off for the Thanksgiving holiday. Having been through this before, Paul and Janine decided to wait to speak to the doctor to discuss what to do.  Five days would pass before the Pandolfino’s would actually speak to Gianna’s pediatrician, which was her first day back after the holiday.  Gianna’s condition continued to worsen over a period of two and a half weeks, which resulted in an increased dosage of Phenobarbital to try to control the seizures.

With seizures continuing to worsen, the Pandolfino’s were advised by their pediatrician to take Gianna to Children’s Hospital in Boston on December 15, 2000.  Since Gianna’s seizures usually occurred at night when sleeping, the doctors did not have the opportunity to witness any seizures.  Consequently, the doctors examined her and noted Gianna to be a healthy, happy 5-month-old baby girl with excellent responsive eye and hand coordination.  The physicians also noted that Gianna’s motor skills were so advanced that they appeared to be comparable to an average 8-month-old child.

On December 17, 2000 when Gianna’s condition became unmanageable, she was admitted back into Children’s Hospital in Boston.  There she was placed on multiple medications and remained there until she was discharged on December 29, 2000.

Six days later, Gianna was re-admitted to Children’s Hospital for increasing seizure activity.  Gianna’s condition took a devastating turn for the worse. It got to the point where Paul and Janine could not even touch their child because it would cause Gianna an increase in seizure activity.  You could only imagine the struggle the Pandolfino’s were feeling at that time as they stood by watching their baby girl slip away.  Paul describes the experience as watching your house on fire with your child banging on the window to help her get out and not being able to help in any way, but watch from a distance.  Days later Gianna went into status (constant seizures and not coming out) and stopped breathing, whereby it was advised to intubate and put her in a drug-induced coma and place her on life support to give her brain a rest.  This was supposed to be for one week.  However, after one week when they tried to excubate, she would go into status and her breathing would be compromised.  As a result, Gianna became one of the most difficult cases in ICU.  Undiagnosed, and doctors not knowing the correct course of treatment, Gianna lay in a drug-induced coma on life support for five months.

During Gianna’s five month hospital stay (with her mother by her side 24 hours a day), Gianna experienced the unthinkable.  Gianna was repeatedly overmedicated from members of their nursing staff from misreading the charts.  The physicians kept medicating her with such large doses of narcotics that consequently the narcotics caused Gianna to have permanent brain damage from atrophy on both sides of her brain.  This has been documented in MRI tests. In addition, during her stay in the hospital Gianna received multiple fractures from the physical therapists including, a broken hip, two broken shoulders, four fractures in her back, a broken femur, and broken tibia while still in a drug-induced coma.

With Gianna fighting for her life, the Chief of Neurology called a meeting to inform the Pandolfino family that Gianna would not live more than two months and would die from respiratory and/or liver failure, because he was sure she had a very rare brain disorder called “Alpers disease”, which is incurable and always fatal.  Paul asked the doctor if he was sure, and asked if he had ever seen a miracle in a case like this. The doctor said, “No, I’m sorry I haven’t, but I relish the thought.”  Paul then placed his hand on the doctor’s shoulder and told the doctor that they would pray for him to get his miracle.  The Pandolfino family relied solely on their faith and chose prayer over the doctor’s death sentence!

Paul and Janine turned to their faith once again and began to pray.  The Pandolfino’s believed that if Gianna did not leave the hospital, she would surely die there.  The Pandolfino’s informed the hospital that they intended to take their baby girl home, and asked to take her out of the coma and off the life support.  The hospital warned them that it was against medical advice.  They told the hospital staff that their daughter had a home and a family, and if Gianna was going to die “Why can’t she die at home with dignity in the care of hospice and surrounded by her loving family?”  The doctors finally conceded, but highly recommended a life support machine and a g-tube (feeding tube).  Janine said “Timeout, when is it enough?” and fought to bring Gianna home without a feeding tube or life support.  Within a few weeks, Paul and Janine scurried out of the hospital with Gianna wrapped in a blanket gasping for every breath and seizing all the way home.  Trucks followed, bringing oxygen, a continuous positive airway pressure machine, a heart and oxygen saturation monitor, a suction machine, and all of the medications to their home.  After a few weeks, Paul and Janine realized there was no need to contact hospice at this time, they were caring for their daughter and joining Gianna in the fight for her life!

Over four months had passed since the Chief of Neurology had given a two-month death sentence.  Upon doing some research, Janine believed that the benzodiazepine medication (which suppresses the respiratory system) was suffocating her daughter to death.

Thus, the next battle began . . . weaning Gianna off the sixteen medications that her doctors had prescribed for her.  That was very difficult, but necessary if Gianna was going to survive.  The process of weaning anyone addicted to drugs is very difficult to watch. It took a total of a year and half to wean Gianna off the medications. Gianna was doing better; she had won that fight, but the battle was long from over.

Most people have no idea how many vaccine related injuries there have been in this country.  More than 12,000 infants in the United States have been injured or died as a result of a vaccine injury between 1989 - 2007.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Prior to October 1, 1988, in the event of a suspected vaccine injury, a parent could seek legal counsel to represent their child in vaccine related injury cases against the big drug companies and/or their physicians.

Since then, Congress voted to change the laws governing the liability of injuries caused from vaccinations and on October 1, 1988, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) went into effect.  NVICP was created to eliminate frivolous lawsuits and eliminate the liability of the drug companies that manufacture the vaccines and the physicians that administer them.

NVICP is a “no-fault” alternative to the traditional tort system for resolving certain vaccine injury claims. The new NVICP program allows a U.S Court of Federal Claims to decide which claims are denied and which claims are compensated providing victims and their families with the resources to fund the appropriate ongoing care for as long as the victims live.

Note: It is documented that ONLY one out of eight vaccine injury claims actually receives ANY compensation.

Since October 1, 1988, every time a vaccination is sold, the federal government applies a surcharge tax.  Those proceeds, now in the billions, are placed in the “National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Fund”.

Upon learning of the NVICP government program, the Pandolfino’s initiated a claim to seek funding to facilitate the special needs of their daughter. That claim lead to an investigation through the federal government. In their quest to seek justice for what had happened to their daughter, the Pandolfino’s ambitiously tried to find the physicians that had cared for Gianna to sign a document that would acknowledge the correlation between Gianna’s vaccinations and her illness.  “Off the record” the Pandolfino’s had little trouble finding doctors to substantiate their suspicions.  Unfortunately, the doctors feared more for their own liability than they did about Gianna and her family’s future.

While in the hospital, a neurologist specializing in epilepsy told Janine “off the record” that her daughter’s condition could have been caused from her DPT vaccination. He added that she would never find anyone that would take responsibility for that.

Determined, Janine met with another one of Gianna’s neurologists in hopes to receive a letter stating that it is possible that Gianna was harmed due to the vaccine.  When Janine followed up in person to see if the doctor had completed her letter, she regretfully declined in fear of future repercussions stating, “You will never get me or my colleagues to put it in writing.”

Persistent in her quest, Janine found Dr. Schweller who would testify on Gianna’s behalf.  However, the court would later rule that the pediatrician’s office could not find the documented medical record corroborating Mrs. Pandolfino’s claim on November 22, 2000 that “Gianna had violent seizures unlike she had experienced before.”

The detail in accuracy of any information recorded in a medical file depends solely on the person who is receiving the information and their ability to record it properly.  Timing is everything. If a patient calls a physician’s office and a receptionist answers the phone all while other lines are ringing, other patients are coming and going and you want to leave a message;   the accuracy depends solely on how focused and detailed that individual is.

For example, when Mrs. Pandolfino called her pediatrician’s office on November 22, 2000 (after the second round of shots), she asked to speak to the pediatrician.  Mrs. Pandolfino conveyed she had concerns about her daughter having violent seizures unlike anything she had seen before.  The receptionist informed Mrs. Pandolfino that the pediatrician was off that day.  Janine replied “Oh. Ok… I’ll call her tomorrow.”  Then the receptionist informed her the next day was Thanksgiving and that the doctor would not be in until Monday.  The receptionist informed Mrs. Pandolfino that she could bring Gianna to the emergency room.

Now when the courts subpoenaed the medical records the receptionist put a “post-it” note saying Mrs. Pandolfino called “It was ok”.  Now WHY would anyone call a doctor’s office to tell them everything is ok?  No, what Mrs. Pandolfino said was . . . “Oh. Ok… I’ll call her tomorrow.”  It comes down to the accuracy of the individual taking the message, or lack of it, in this case.

The investigation took five years. The court argued that in the event of a vaccine injury, a physician must be notified on behalf of the patient within 3 days from the date of the vaccination to be eligible for a claim.  The records indicated the Pandolfino’s did not actually speak to their doctor until 5 days after the vaccination. (Obviously, an attempt was made as documented by a “post-it” note, incorrectly I might add.)  Mrs. Pandolfino argued that she had called two days after the vaccination and attempted to reach the doctor who was out of the office over the Thanksgiving holiday and did not return their call until the fifth day. It came down to a technicality, a holiday no less, and an inaccurately documented post-it note. A judge concluded that he could not rule in favor of the Pandolfino’s case.

According to the findings, judges are expected to rule only on what is documented.  I suspect that is why 7 out of 8 claims are denied in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

To add to their hardship, the same governmental agency that turned down the Pandolfino’s claim has since changed the “3-day” policy to its current “7-day” policy.  Unfortunately, the Pandolfino’s statute of limitations has since run out!

Frustrated and in disbelief, the Pandolfino’s turned to a law firm to review the hospital care that Gianna received that ultimately lead to Gianna’s permanent brain damage and multiple fractures. The attorney reviewed the case and concluded that because Children’s Hospital in Boston is a teaching hospital, the hospital had a liability cap of twenty-thousand dollars. Moreover, Gianna’s medical staff changed every two-weeks; therefore, it would be impossible to single out any particular medical personnel for the negligence.  The attorney went on to explain that their law firm would take one third. Janine told the attorney the net amount would not even cover the cost of a handicap van!  Feeling beaten down and emotionally exhausted, the Pandolfino’s declined to pursue further legal action.

Forty years ago, children received five vaccines. Today, it is estimated that a fully vaccinated child receives 25-40 vaccines during the critical early stages of life, when their developing immune system is most vulnerable.  Even an adult’s immune system would be challenged by such an onslaught.

The Pandolfino’s Purpose

The Pandolfino’s purpose for wanting to bring this topic to a national platform is not to discourage the use of vaccinations, or minimize the importance of immunizations. They know that vaccinations have virtually eliminated many diseases that could have otherwise spread worldwide.

Their heartfelt desire is to:

• Encourage both physicians and parents alike to check infants for signs of underdeveloped nervous systems and to prescreen families with a history of seizures prior to administering the Pertussis vaccination.
   

• Bring awareness about the number of vaccines that are currently being administered simultaneously (as directed by the insurance providers to be more cost effective) and the dangers associated with some vaccines in some cases.
   

• Encourage the distribution of more comprehensive information to further educate the physicians and/or nurses that administer the vaccines and the families that receive them.
   

• Educate the doctors/vaccine administrators that if a vaccine injury should occur, if they testify on behalf of a victim for the NVICP- they are protected. Neither a victim nor the victim’s family can ever bring a future malpractice suit against them.
   

• Stress that parents are the best advocates for their children and that it is our right as parents to question and challenge anything a doctor suggests.
   

• Bring about awareness that the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program  (NVICP) is in dire need of reform!

Janine shared this . . . “There is nothing short of a miracle from God that could get Gianna out of her wheelchair, but if telling Gianna’s story can educate the public and save just one child or prevent one parent from going through what we have gone through . . . then it is worth telling!”

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