Dan Van Ackeren’s symptoms, says his widow Brenda Van Ackeren, began abruptly after his second—& last Covid shot. At the time, he was 50, healthy, fit. He loved playing tennis w their three sons—two from Dan’s first marriage, one from her first. Tennis was Dan’s game—he’d won top in state for tennis back in high school. Dan was also an avid hiker & loved pickleball & basketball. By profession, he was a chiropractor w an MBA, a serial entrepreneur, mostly in the wellness industry, while Brenda has been in talent acquisition for 20 years. Dan had proposed to Brenda after only four months. “Our connection was immediate,” she says. In the early days of Covid, Dan was working on a regenerative medicine deal for the NFL Alumni Association, when, as fate would have it, he met Dr. Peter Marks at a meeting. Back then, Marks was FDA’s vaccine tzar; now he works at Eli Lilly. At that meeting Brenda says her husband heard Marks state that “they had something big prepared that was being rolled out,” which Brenda believes was probably the Covid vaccines. Dan’s first Covid vaccine was relatively uneventful, just sweats, chills and fever for a few days. But the night of his second shot, Dan’s life changed irrevocably. “He woke up screaming in pain & unable to sleep,” Brenda recalls. Pain became his unwelcome companion. “He couldn’t sit or lie down, [he] started vomiting, his feet would turn blue." “He couldn’t work, which was really hard on him as a type A go-getter," Brenda says. In November of 2021, Brenda woke up to find her husband unresponsive, gave him CPR & called 911. Paramedics intubated Dan & rushed him to their hospital's ICU. After the immediate crisis passed, the hospital treated him "terribly," Brenda says—even warehousing Dan on the psych floor—until a social worker realized how much he wanted to live. Brenda and Dan were determined to get answers & treatment. Their search led to a diagnosis of POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), plus severe & widespread microclots, both common in long vax and long Covid patients. The bad diagnoses kept coming. The final blow was the diagnosis of multiple system atrophy (MSA), a rare, progressive, fatal neurodegenerative disorder that affects both the central nervous system—movement and coordination—& the autonomic nervous system, which regulates blood pressure, digestion, heart rate. (MSA used to be known as Shy-Drager syndrome.) Dan began to experience hallucinations and major memory problems—not typical for MSA. But the diseases induced by Covid vaccines & long Covid are often more virulent w unusual presentations, making them difficult to diagnose & treat. Some researchers believe that the root cause of these atypical diseases is the body's unrelenting spike protein production in susceptible individuals. The spike factories create diseases that are riffs on known maladies—but that don't respond well to approved treatments. And no scientist has figured out how to reliably turn off spike production. Usually MSA is slowly progressive. But Dan’s progression was relentless, like many others suffering from Covid-vaccine injuries & long Covid. “He knew he was not going to get any better, & he didn’t want any more bad news,” Benda says. “He couldn’t even get into a car to get to a doctor. At the end, hospice pain medications were not enough to help w his pain.” On July 24, 2026, at the age of 55, Dan Van Ackeren committed suicide. *** One week later, Brenda received a letter from the Social Security administration. Dan had appealed Social Security's denial of benefits, but the agency affirmed its denial. The denial read, in part: "You said you were unable to work as of 11/15/2021 because of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome; abnormal finding of blood chemistry; blood clogs [sic], dysautonomia; alpha-synuclein; tumor left inner ear; whit [sic] matter frontal lob [sic] brain; POTS; and multiple degeneration of the autonomic system nervous [sic]. "We have determined your condition not disabling on any date through 12/31/2024, when you were last insured for disability benefits. In deciding this, we considered the medical records, your statements, and how your condition affected your ability to work." *** If Dan Van Ackeren's story resonates w you, please retweet. @AckerenBrenda @POTUS45 @SecKennedy @DrJBhattacharya @SenRandPaul @SenRonJohnson #COVID_19 #longcovid @KevinMcCairnPhD @ChrisCuomo @React19org @CharlesRixey @MaryBowdenMD @HouseLyndseyRN @exosome @DrMargaretShow Brenda and Dan Van Ackeren