A Minneapolis man suffered two strokes after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Cain Pence, a self-proclaimed “wanderer of the world,” joined Liz Collin Reports to discuss how he’s been forced to rethink every step since.
The 48-year-old Georgetown graduate has been documenting his journey in videos he posts on YouTube.
Pence grew up in southeast Minneapolis. “I’m a fifth-generation Minnesotan,” he said.
Pence’s dad spent time in federal prison before he decided to become a doctor after Pence’s mom told him he’d better get his life together.
“He might very well be one of the oldest convicted felons to have ever graduated from medical school,” Pence said.
Pence explained how his love of travel started at an early age.
“My dad made me memorize all 50 states and their capitals. And as a boy, I said, ‘I’m going to go see all 50 states, all their capitals.’ Instead of being a lawyer or a lobbyist, I had this idea my senior year of college to go visit every congressional district,” Pence recalled.
Pence eventually became a bookseller and a writer.
In 2021, he said that next on his bucket list was to go see London.
“I’d saved that for a long time. I wanted to see where Shakespeare was from, the home of the English language, and everyone had to be vaccinated at that time. I honestly had no anti-vax views. You don’t really pay attention to it until it happens to you. So, I signed up,” Pence said.
“I thought the doctors were the good guys and I signed up,” he recalled.
Pence said it was the day after receiving his first dose that his left arm started to shake, and it continued to get worse.
“This has never happened to me before. I never spent a single night of my life in the hospital. I walked five miles a day. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I’ve never done illegal drugs. The third day after I got it, my face, my left side of my face stopped working, and I couldn’t speak,” Pence said.
Pence said an MRI confirmed he’d had a stroke, but doctors were resistant to admit the vaccine had anything to do with it.
Pence knew he needed two shots in order to travel to Europe.
“It was, ‘Absolutely, you have to take the second shot,’” Pence said the doctors told him. “This is where I feel I was wronged as an American, as a patient.”
“There was no discussion at all about the vaccine. ‘You had diabetes. It’s just a coincidence that all this happened the day after you took the shot,’” Pence added.
He said he inquired with seven other doctors who told him he should complete the vaccine series and get the second shot.
“I took their advice. I got out of the hospital. My arm and my leg were affected, but it wasn’t life changing. I was going to be able to bounce back after this first stroke. I was hesitant, but I did that,” Pence said.
It was a couple weeks later when he said the same thing started happening.
“A friend took me out to Lake Independence, and I stood up and got out of the lake … and my entire left side stopped working. Then it was my face, my shoulder, my arm. Now, it’s been almost three years. Every day I try and do some kind of therapy and thank God I’ve been able to walk again when I was in a wheelchair for eight months, a nursing home for 14 months, a group home for 16 months, and none of those doctors, none of the people I talked to, admitted at all that the vaccine had something to do with it,” Pence said.
He’s grown frustrated because no one seems to cover stories like his in the media.
“Every night I watch the nightly news and local news, I never hear anything about people like me whose lives were forever changed by the vaccine,” Pence said.
One of Pence’s doctors filed his case with the Vaccine Adverse Event Report System (VAERS). According to the OpenVAERS project, which draws off of HHS data, more than 21,000 Minnesotans have reported adverse events related to the COVID vaccine. 524 people have died as of December 2023.
“I come from a line of activists, so I kind of felt this was God’s way of telling me I had to get my message out there. The traditional media does not cover my story,” Pence said. “They’re bought and sold by pharmaceutical companies.”
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Liz Collin
Liz Collin has been a truth-teller for 20 years as a multi-Emmy-Award-winning reporter and anchor. Liz is a Worthington, Minnesota native who lives in the suburbs with her husband, son and loyal lab.
