Dr. Grant Lashley contracted the coronavirus in April and suffered a stroke.
After more than three grueling months fighting and recovering from COVID-19, an emergency room doctor reunited with his wife and three children on Friday.
Dr. Grant Lashley first contracted the coronavirus in April and then suffered a stroke. They put him on a fan for 39 days.
“There were many days when we didn’t know if Grant would survive intensive care,” his wife, Dr. Melissa Harrington, told ABC News.
But leaving the ICU was only the beginning of a long road to recovery.
Lashley spent six weeks at the TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston, where he relearned basic functions.
“It is humiliating to say, ‘Help me put my socks on, help me go to the bathroom, help me go to the shower,'” he explained. “All those things that we just take for granted.”
Hospital staff at TIRR Memorial Hermann applauded when he left the facility and hugged his family for the first time in 96 days.
“It was very overwhelming, so exciting,” Lashley told ABC News of being able to go out the doors alone. “That was my goal. I said, ‘I will … I will get out of here when I go.'”
Wyatt’s father of three to nine years and seven-year-old twins Cody and Weston said that just three weeks ago, he feared this moment would not be possible.
“The first week was difficult because we are getting new things to do new activities, and each one of them [was] very challenging at first, but I never said no, “he said.” I will make the wheelchair [and] walker for a while but soon I’m [going to be] walking with nothing. “
Lashley’s treating doctor, Dr. Nikola Dragojlovic, told ABC News that the previously healthy 50-year-old man arrived at the facility with weak arms and legs due to a loss of muscle mass from a stroke that had as a complication of the virus.
“It is happening to people with COVID. It is not just a respiratory illness, people have neurological problems like loss of strength, or they can develop a stroke or loss of circulation in the arms and legs that can contribute to weakness and loss of independence too, “Dragojlovic said.
Harrington called it “exciting” to see the progress her husband has made since rehabilitation began.
“When he got here, he couldn’t do anything, without mobility,” he said. “Physically, things are different for him from time to time, they won’t always be like this, but it will be a long road to recovery.”
“You have to do your best and try every day,” Lashley said. “Every day there are little things that get better, and you should be happy for every little step along the way. And over time we will see that it gets better.”
Lashley praised his physical therapists for motivating him.
“Every day it got better,” he said. “I realized, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Harrington said, “As a doctor, you are used to fixing things.” But she said that with her husband’s virus, in times of uncertainty, she had to explain the situation to her children “to soften the blow.”
She said this experience gave her empathy for other families going through a similar struggle with COVID-19.
The couple will now return to their home in Lafayette, Louisiana.
“He is a hero,” Harrington said of Lashley. “He is a warrior.”
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