Craig Norkus, a veteran Minneapolis television news photojournalist, was an ultra-fit and muscular amateur athlete until shortly after his second Moderna mRNA COVID-19 booster shot in November 2022.
Just days after the shot, Norkus began experiencing headaches and sinus drainage along with hot and cold flashes. He didn’t think much of it.
However, by Thanksgiving, his condition had taken a dramatic nosedive. He began experiencing extreme exhaustion, muscle weakness and mental fog. By late December, he had to request disability leave from his job.
“It was a sudden, weird change — an oppressive agony,” he said. “All of a sudden, I felt like I was dying,” he said.
Norkus’ quest for a proper diagnosis and treatment led him through a frustrating journey with multiple doctors and specialists who were unable to pinpoint the cause of his condition.
With the help of his partner and dogged persistence in searching for solutions, he eventually found a practitioner who identified his symptoms as signs of vaccine injury.
The physician prescribed unconventional treatments that succeeded in relieving most of Norkus’ symptoms and getting him back to work last summer.
By the end of last year, Norkus suffered a serious relapse. But with some new treatments, he is beginning to feel more like his former self. At the time of his conversation with The Defender, he had been back at work for two weeks.
Believing everything happens for a reason, Norkus is using this experience to raise awareness of vaccine risks, help the vaccine-injured and end the liability shield enjoyed by pharmaceutical companies.
‘It’s now in my head?’
As Norkus’ condition deteriorated in late 2022, he made several trips to urgent care facilities, but the visits yielded no answers. He tested negative for COVID-19 and was prescribed antibiotics and sent home. But his symptoms persisted.
Between December and January 2023, Norkus made a series of visits to his primary care doctor, who ran “dozens and dozens” of blood tests but could not determine the cause of his illness.
Desperate for answers, Norkus sought the help of specialists, including neurologists, who could not provide a definitive diagnosis.
One doctor changed an in-person appointment to Zoom at the last minute and attempted to conduct neurological tests “through my computer screen.” He diagnosed Norkus with migraines and potentially Parkinson’s disease, prescribed drugs and told Norkus to report back in three months.
Norkus refused to fill the prescriptions, later learning the drugs could have caused a lot of damage. He also now believes the three-month wait could have proven fatal.
Another specialist, a “prominent university neurologist” whom he had to “pull strings” to see, ordered a comprehensive series of scans and tests to rule out serious conditions like brain tumors, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), cancer and multiple sclerosis — “all the really scary stuff,” he said.
When all of the tests came back negative, the doctor told Norkus there was nothing wrong with him and said, “You need to see a psychotherapist.”
“I thought, ‘Am I crazy?’” Norkus recalled. “After all this physical illness where I can’t even move, it’s now in my head?”
After six unsuccessful attempts to find answers from medical professionals, Norkus felt devastated and broken.
‘A life-changing moment’
in April 2023, Norkus finally connected with Dr. Jeffrey Kotulski from Between the Bridges Healing Center in Mankato, Minnesota. He described the integrative holistic osteopath and former Mayo Clinic physician as “brilliant and compassionate.”
“It took my seventh doctor — literally in April 2023 — to diagnose what was happening with me,” he said. “He gave me a big hug and said he could help me. I realized that I wasn’t crazy and somebody knew.”
Norkus said meeting Kotulski was “a life-changing moment.” The memory stirs deep emotions to this day.
Kotulski took the time to thoroughly review Norkus’ medical history and blood work, ultimately diagnosing an adverse reaction to the mRNA vaccine and developing a treatment plan tailored to his specific needs.
Under Kotulski’s care, Norkus underwent a series of treatments that included extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation, peptide therapy, methylene blue infusions and other therapies aimed at helping his body heal from the vaccine’s side effects.
“Peptides are chains of amino acids that help build body tissue in a similar way that the growth factors do,” Norkus explained. “They also reduce inflammation.”
After just six weeks of treatment, Norkus had recovered much of his strength and stamina and was able to go back to the gym. “It was amazing,” he said.
By June 2023, Norkus had recovered much of his pre-illness state of health and was able to return to work.
Relapse leads to new, effective treatments
Despite the promising results, Kotulski warned Norkus that the long-term effects of the vaccine were still unknown and that he could experience a relapse.
That warning would prove prescient. In November 2023, Norkus’ condition began to deteriorate again. By December, he was forced to take disability leave again.
In early 2024, Norkus repeated some of the same therapies that worked well the previous year. However, by March, his condition had not improved much. Kotulski deployed a “new weapon in his arsenal,” incorporating growth factors and platelet-rich plasma injection treatments along with hormonal therapy. He saw immediate improvement.
Norkus also sought the advice of Bryan Ardis, a retired chiropractor, certified acupuncturist and nutritionist who suggested using nicotine patches to help detach vaccine toxins from nicotine receptors in his body. The patches had an immediate effect, bringing his health “close to 100%” and even eliminating some of the side effects of his other treatments, such as sinus drainage and tinnitus.
When Norkus discontinued the nicotine patch experiment after seven days, the side effects returned and he felt “really sick.” Ardis recommended continuing with the patches and also taking apple pectin powder and BioDefense, a product designed to help prevent the replication of spike proteins and eliminate toxins.
Norkus said he feels very good at the moment. “I have all the physical evidence I need to know that Dr. Ardis knows exactly what he’s talking about.”
‘Everything that did help was not covered’ by insurance
The novel therapies brought Norkus an additional financial burden — his insurance didn’t cover them.
“Everything that did not properly diagnose me or help my suffering was at least in some way covered by insurance,” he said. “Everything that did help was not covered.”
Norkus said it “blows my mind that this can literally be possible,” emphasizing that this disparity in insurance coverage needs more recognition.
Other vaccine-injured people he met through the Team Humanity group “are worse off than me [and] can’t do anything right now because they don’t have the money to do it.”
Norkus was told that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t recognize the validity of the procedures that are helping him, categorizing them as “experimental.”
“They’re not bothering to do more research to make them non-experimental, legitimate treatments,” he said. “And that’s tragic. That’s a failure in the healthcare system.”
‘A woman with a heart of gold’
Throughout his harrowing journey, Norkus credits his partner, Christine, with providing unwavering support and encouragement. “I literally found a woman with a heart of gold,” he said.
Despite their relationship being less than six months old when his health crisis began, Christine’s own experiences, including losing a son to cancer at age 17, equipped her with the knowledge and empathy to navigate the medical system.
“I actually had two doctors do some really harmful things to me,” Norkus said. “And if I didn’t have Christine showing me how to advocate in those situations, I could have been in a lot more trouble than I’m in now.”
Christine’s ministrations extended beyond Norkus’ physical well-being. Her relentless positivity and genuine love served as a lifeline during his darkest moments, when he “got beat down so much by this illness that [he] had nothing positive to give.”
Christine held him every night and reassured him that better days were ahead.
‘All it takes is one domino to fall’
Norkus’ experience has motivated him to become an advocate for others suffering from vaccine adverse reactions.
“As a person of faith, I believe that you are sometimes put in a position to experience things in order to help other people,” he said.
He has connected with groups like Team Humanity and React 19, which provide support and resources for people in similar situations.
But he said his and Team Humanity’s efforts to get Minnesota lawmakers to listen to the vaccine-injured has been difficult “because they think it’s career suicide.”
“They keep referring us to the feds,” he said, even after he tells them that “the feds won’t do anything.”
He also encountered resistance and censorship when speaking out, from social media platforms and his own employer.
The recent Kansas lawsuit against Pfizer has given him hope, he said. “All it takes is one domino to fall to end this ridiculous law that protects the pharmaceutical companies,” he said.
Norkus also emphasized the importance of patients and their families and friends becoming educated advocates for alternative solutions.
“The medical system is broken,” he said. “And if you just take what one doctor says, you might be in a lot worse shape than you were originally.”
Norkus plans to write a book and continue speaking publicly, advocating for change in government policies related to vaccine injuries.