Naples doctor returns to medicine after losing lungs to COVID

The COVID pandemic took a huge toll on all of us, but it was especially challenging for healthcare workers who were on the front lines.

Studies found they faced a three times greater risk of contracting COVID-19, and thousands died as a result. A Naples doctor nearly became part of that statistic.

In sickness and in health, a vow Karen and David Wilkinson took 29 years ago. Never thinking how it would be put to the test.

“So, 2021 was not a good year for me,” Dr. Wilkinson told WINK News health and medical reporter Amy Oshier.

“The Delta variant of COVID, it just kind of came up on Florida, took us all by surprise,” added Karen, “and David got deathly ill.”

Sickness was everywhere, hospitals were full. As a doctor, Wilkinson put his patients first.

“You can’t just shut your office down for people who have emergencies. We limited, but, you know, I’m 100% certain I contracted in the office,” said Dr. Wilkinson.

The early years of the pandemic were much different than today. COVID was indiscriminate and brutal. These images of Wilkinson’s lungs left little room for hope.

“Three weeks after COVID, 80% of my lungs were destroyed,” he said.

When he couldn’t breathe, the family made a difficult decision, putting Wilkinson into a medical coma and on a ventilator.

“And we cried,” said Karen Wilkinson. “I mean, the reports at that time, if you recall, were people aren’t coming off the ventilator. Once that step was taken, it was very rare for someone to survive.”

The memory still stirs emotions. He said, “The last thing I said was a promise to my wife that I was coming back to her.”

“There are four separate times they called our family to the bedside to say, ‘This is it,'” Karen Wilkinson recalled.

“At one point, my carbon dioxide level got to 128, which is not compatible with life,” said Dr. Wilkinson.

While the doctor fought to hang on, he had no idea how hard his wife was fighting too.

“The only option for him to possibly survive was to get a double lung transplant, and there was only one in the United States that said, ‘You know what, we’ll take a risk. We’re not sure it’s going to work out,'” Karen Wilkinson said, “and so even placing his lifeless body on the helicopter, I wasn’t sure if I would see him alive again.”

David Wilkinson was flown to Advent Health in Orlando. To be eligible for new lungs, he had to come out of the coma and walk. It was a long, improbable feat.

“I got to the point where I was able to stand, able to walk with a walker, on oxygen, able to do some basic things and qualified for the transplant,” said the doctor.

When donor lungs became available, the doctor underwent nine hours of surgery and woke up a new person.

“When people tell us, like you received a miracle, I honestly say you can’t even count how many miracles,” said Karen Wilkinson.

Now, against all odds, Dr. Wilkinson is putting on his white coat and returning to practice. “Kind of makes me remember why I do what I do,” said the doctor.

Doctors told him he’s their only COVID-lung transplant patient to make a complete recovery.

“It’s really interesting when you’ve taken care of people your whole life, but then suddenly you’re the person being taken care of,” said Wilkinson.

Recommitting himself to medicine, it’s another vow he promised to keep.

The Wilkinsons authored a book about their experience called “On Borrowed Breath.”

He is slated to see patients in mid-September, for the first time in more than three years.