A father in Skaneateles is now on an intense road to recovery after contracting Covid last year and ending up with a rare lung transplant miles away from home.
Scott DeWolf, 51, is a prison guard at Auburn Correctional Facility, and on November 15, 2020, he returned home from work unable to taste or smell and soon after tested positive for Covid-19.
DeWolf went to the hospital and decided to go upstate, only to still be there through Thanksgiving.
“The day after thanksgiving they called me and told me he had to be intubated and that’s when it was obviously very scary,” DeWolf’s wife Bethany said. “They tried everything and it just kept overtaking him.”
DeWolf’s wife and children were unable to visit him when he was put on a ventilator and life support.
Bethany refused to give up hope and came up with the idea of a lung transplant. At the time only a couple thousand hospitals in the U.S. were doing Covid lung transplants.
DeWolf was accepted for a transplant in Florida. The chances of this happening with all the criteria were slim, but DeWolf was chosen.
DeWolf was paralyzed, sedated, intubated, on life support and put on a jet to Florida to complete the lung transplant and his family followed soon after.
After arriving in Florida, DeWolf was woken by doctors to discover two months had passed.
For two more months DeWolf completed physical therapy before doctors decided the lung transplant was his only option.
On March 27 he underwent a lung transplant and he has been recovering ever since.
His family has stayed in Florida with him for the last 6 months and the family will finally be able to return home the first week of June.
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