Doyle Wilhoite

My name is Doyle Wilhoite. My wife is in the group you created for Long Haul. We lived in Nqshville during Covid. I first got Covid in February of 2021. It began as a sudden croupy cough that appeared out of nowhere. This was around 2pm in the afternoon. We went to an Urgent Care and they said I needed to go to the hospital. We went to St. Thomas. They told my wife it would be a while and that she should go home. Our home was an hour away, but she went home on their advice. I was in the ER for about 30 minutes when they declared they were discharging me. I went to the waiting room for my discharge so I could wait on my wife who had left to go home not long before my discharge. The staff came into the waiting room and said I could not wait in the building. I went outside and tried to hunker under the roof as it was raining. The staff came out again and said I needed to leave the property. I explained to them I was waiting on my wife and they had sent her home. They did not care. Nevertheless, I left walking in the rain with nowhere to go. All the while I was running a fever, coughing, and it was pouring rain. It took my wife an hour to reach me. I was soaked and miserable. The next few weeks that followed I was in and out of coherence. I ran a fever of 104 and could not get out of bed. We called our Functional medicine doctor. My wife had to talk to him because I was so out of it. At the end of two weeks I had no energy left, my vision was blurry, and brain fog had taken over. My wife came home one day to find that I had forgotten and left water running in our kitchen sink. It ruined our floor. I spent the next year dealing with brain fog so bad I would forget how to get home. I would have energy crashes so bad that I had to stop and take naps to be able to get home. I also began to have a pain in the back of my leg after Covid. The pain in my leg got so bad that I decided to have it checked out. The first place would not even let me in the building due to Covid restrictions. The nurse came out to my car and without even examining me sent me to physical therapy. I looked at her and said, "This could be a tumor and you are just sending me to therapy." I opted to not go to therapy as the pain was too bad. I was afraid to try another doctor. Around August the pain became unbearable. i could not sleep in my own bed and was up all night due to pain. I would get so tired that around 7am I would fall asleep on the couch. I decided to try a doctor one more time. That is when I found out I had developed very large Schwannoma tumors in my Cauda Equina. These are very rare and no one in my family has ever had them. The tumors were found by an MRI with contrast. Here is where the story gets more interesting. These tumors grow very slowly. I had an MRI just a few years before they were found. No tumors were on this MRI as the doctor checked. There is no way they could have grown this fast in a short few years. I suspect Covid was a factor. We began the battle with insurance and finding a doctor that could remove them without crippling me. I was scheduled to have surgery in February of 2022. This was exactly one year after my first Covid case. Well, I caught Covid again and had to delay my surgery. By now the pain was so bad I could barely walk and was miserable. I went to Vanderbilt and had a monoclonal antibody infusion. I noticed after my first bout with Covid that I began losing weight. I have always been thin and muscular. I am 5'11 and at the time weighed 185. I dropped down to 165 and thought the weight loss had peaked. Then I began losing muscle and my teeth started falling out. I still had brain fog, bowel issues, gut issues, thinning hair, and extreme muscle loss. Vanderbilt was no help at all. I have been battling this since 2021. I have been to countless doctors and spent thousands of my own money trying to heal. I am now at 143 and barely recognizable. I have lost around 10 teeth. My life plans have all been put on hold and it feels like my life was stolen. Here is me before and after. I retired as a police officer in Nashville. Then unfortunately and exactly one year later I got Covid in February of 2022