'I thought my time had come'

"If you don't get me to the hospital, I'm gonna be dead," Dennis Bishop told his wife, Trish, in the late hours of the night on Sunday, November 1, 2020.

The Bishops own and operate Wagon Wheel Café and are involved in the community. With the exception of a few days, Dennis was hospitalized between November 1st, 2020 and August 10th of this year when he finally returned home.

Bishop developed Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a serious autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks healthy nerve cells in the peripheral nervous system. Guillain-Barré is extremely rare, affecting only about 1 in 100,000 Americans, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The syndrome leads to weakness, numbness and tingling, and can eventually, as it did in Bishop's case, cause paralysis.

It all started in October of 2020 when Bishop first noticed he had symptoms of COVID-19. He had a soaring temperature and was very sick. By the time he and his wife got to the VA Clinic at Fort Meade in Sturgis, South Dakota on November 1st, Bishop had sever pneumonia and his heart was "racing like crazy," mostly over 200 beats per minute.

He has been on a medication ever since that brought his heart back to rhythm, but he says he tried to convince them to use cardioversion to bring his racing heartbeat down.

"I was mad they didn't shock me when I got there, I wanted that shock."

That night, Bishop was life flighted from Fort Meade to Sanford Medical Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He was intubated and sent to the COVID Intensive Care Unit.

"That's a nightmare I'll never get over. My fever had broke but I was sweating gallons. I had hypothermia. At the two or three day point, I figured out I was there to die in that COVID unit. Every day about two of my roommates would die. So many people were there. They would tell me, 'We're gonna keep you comfortable.'"

Bishop served in the armed forces and deployed multiple times overseas during his tenure. He said that the COVID unit was worse than any war zone he'd ever been in.

"People were constantly screaming and coughing. I can't even tell you how bad it was. Sending all of your sick people to one location like that is not right. I still have PTSD from it. I'd rather have been left on top of that hill over there with no coat on," he said, motioning towards one of the hills visible from his dining room table in Ekalaka on Sunday.

Bishop was then given the Regeneron antibody cocktail, the same one that President Trump received. The antibody cocktail was authorized by the FDA last November.

"I think that's what saved my life," he said.

While at Sanford, Bishop also contracted clostridium difficile colitis (C. Diff), an inflammation of the colon caused by a bacteria.

After approximately two weeks in Sioux Falls, Trish received a call notifying her that she could go there and pick Dennis up. His lungs were better and pneumonia was gone.

"He was walking slow when we left Sanford, but got in the pickup by himself and was walking," Trish said.

Bishops arrived together back in Ekalaka directly after multiple local residents had just died from complications of COVID-19.

On November 12, Bishop said that he wanted to get out of the house and talk to some of those residents' loved ones, stating that those lost were his friends and he had been gone when they passed.

When Bishops arrived back home later that evening, Dennis said his legs felt heavy, so he decided to walk on the treadmill on the slowest setting to begin to regain the strength in his legs. He believed he was weak from being in a hospital bed for two weeks and as a result of being so ill.

By 9 p.m. that evening Bishop couldn't feel his feet and said it felt like he was "being compressed."

The next morning more area on his legs felt numb, and by 9 a.m. he couldn't feel anything from his knees down. He was also having difficulty breathing.

Trish called Dennis' primary care physician at Fort Meade, Dr. Madonna Hulm. When Dr. Hulm called back she asked how long it would take Bishops to get there, and offered to have an ambulance meet them half way. At that moment, Dr. Hulm was quite confident that Bishop had GBS. She had seen it before.

Bishop's son, Desi, had to carry him from the bottom of the ramp at their house into the pickup. Trish said she drove about 120 miles per hour down Highway 323 after Hulm told her that her husband only had a few hours to live if he didn't get the medical attention he needed as soon as possible. Other than the speed, she remembers nothing from the trip.

"I thought my time had come," Bishop said about the trip. "I knew I was going to die."

Upon his arrival at Fort Meade, doctors immediately started Bishop on intravenous immune globulin (IVIG). Dr. Hulm had consulted with the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and doctors were all in agreement that he should start on IVIG even before testing for GBS.

On November 14, a spinal tap confirmed the doctor's prognosis.

Bishop stayed at Fort Meade until November 20. His symptoms continued to worsen. Trish went home since she was not allowed to see Dennis. She was told to go home as it was the height of COVID-19 and no one was allowed in to see the patients.

On the afternoon of November 20th, staff at Fort Meade called Trish and told her that Dennis was going to be life flighted to the Minneapolis VA Medical Center in Minnesota. They told her that if she could get to Sturgis, she could see Dennis before he left.

"They let me see him because they thought he was going to die," she said.

Bishop spent time in the ICU and the progressive care unit between November 20th and December 4th when he was sent to rehabilitation.

Then on December 17th, things again took a turn for the worse.

All of the nerves in Bishop's diaphragm had stopped working and his heart "was going crazy." He was rushed again to the ICU and put on a ventilator. Though completely paralyzed, Bishop was awake and could hear one nurse tell another "he's not going to be here tomorrow." GBS usually reaches its height of destruction on the body in four weeks.

Bishop couldn't even open and close his own eyes. He remained that way for about a week, and was in such excruciating pain that he couldn't sleep. His entire body was swollen. Nurses covered his body in ice bags in an attempt to keep him cool. Even a tug to fix his bed sheets sent Bishop into an unbearable pain, but he couldn't do anything about it. He was unable to communicate.

Trish was able to see Dennis on December 27th. The entire clinic was shut down due to COVID, so she had to get congressional approval through a liaison with the VA administration in order to see him. She was allowed to see him for two hours, every other day, and saw him a total of four times.

Also on the 27th, the tube was removed from Bishop's mouth. He instead received a tracheal intubation. Trish said that kissing Dennis was comparable to kissing a mannequin. His skin was cold, clammy and firm.

Bishop started Plasmapheresis (PLEX), the removal, treatment, and return or exchange of blood plasma from and to the blood circulation. He had a feeding tube, his intubation tube, a constant blood pressure monitor and a catheter into his jugular vein for the PLEX.

"They were throwing away all of my plasma, about three gallons each time," he said. Trish added that they were replacing it with a man-made plasma, made partially with egg whites. The therapy was done in five hour sessions every other day, for a total of 37 treatments.

The treatments made Bishop extremely cold, but they were helping.

"It made a hell of a difference and brought me out of the death chamber into the living again. I was making incredible progress on it," Bishop said.

After his first treatment, he started to move his fingers. At 10:30 p.m. that night, he gave a thumbs up. Doctors and nurses were so elated they danced and celebrated in his room. Dr. Thomas, who Bishop has since grown very close with, came from her home that night because she was so excited to see him after staff called her with the news.

The conclusion of this story will be printed next week.