I lost my fight to avoid contracting COVID in May 2022.

My main symptoms passed quickly—a day or two of fatigue, mild cough, loss of taste, stuffy head. But other symptoms I’d struggled with for years became worse.

I had lived with mild tinnitus and partial loss of hearing in my right ear since college. Occasionally, my symptoms would be more pronounced, and I’d see a general practitioner. After checking me over, they’d prescribe an antibiotic, and the symptoms would improve until the next flareup.

But during the pandemic, my wife, Ellen, and I noticed that I was struggling to stay on the sidewalk during our walks around the neighborhood. I’d veer into the grass on the left or right. Meanwhile, the tinnitus grew louder as my hearing grew weaker.

However, once my COVID symptoms had resolved in May, my balance, tinnitus and hearing got even worse. I could hear nothing but ringing in my right ear. I walked into corners in our house. I was tired and disoriented all day, every day. And now, light bothered me, too.

Just before Memorial Day weekend, I visited my general practitioner. Though I didn’t have headaches, he said my symptoms were consistent with migraines. Migraines, he explained, don’t always cause headaches, and they can cause light sensitivity and other nervous-system symptoms.

He prescribed an antibiotic and medications for vertigo, nausea and migraines. He told me to call him immediately if anything got worse.

The following Saturday, I began biting my lip repeatedly when I ate. I struggled to eat food that required opening my mouth widely. When I filled my mouth with water to rinse after brushing my teeth, it dribbled out of the right corner of my mouth.

Then, on Sunday, Ellen and I went to a graduation barbecue. As soon as I walked into the backyard, the hostess looked at me and asked if I was OK. “I think so,” I replied, “why do you ask?”

She said I looked weird, and she asked me to smile. Then she asked me to raise my eyebrows.

“You need to leave this party and go to the hospital,” she told me.

Back in the car, I smiled at myself in the makeup mirror as Ellen drove. I looked like Popeye—the left corner of my mouth curled up in a smile, teeth visible, but the right side drooped. I tried to raise both my eyebrows. Only the left one obeyed.

At the nearest hospital, emergency room staff quickly ruled out our biggest fear—stroke. Still, they immediately took us back for further evaluation.

The ER doctor believed I had Bell’s Palsy, a temporary facial paralysis caused by inflammation of the facial nerve. He planned to keep me in the ER while they started antivirals, but when Ellen told him I’d struggled with balance, ringing ears and hearing loss for years, he ordered an MRI.

It took just an hour for the doctor to arrive at a diagnosis. The MRI showed a benign tumor called a vestibular schwannoma near my right vestibular nerve, which regulates balance. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), vestibular schwannomas are rare, affecting about one of every 100,000 people. Ellen and I listened as the ER doctor described three treatment options: wait-and-see, radiation and surgery.

Because we aren’t wait-and-see people, and radiation would have required repeated treatments, we choose surgery. After getting a couple of opinions about who to see for treatment, we chose neurosurgeon Albert Kim, MD, PhD, and otology and neurotology surgeon Cameron Wick, MD, both Washington University physicians treating patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

When Kim and Wick reviewed the MRI scans done in the ER, they noted the tumor was not in a place that should have affected my facial nerve. Though my paralysis had disappeared after two courses of steroid treatment over the summer, they wanted to rule out all other causes of that symptom. Two lumbar punctures to check for lymphoma and full brain and spine MRIs suggested no other causes, and Kim and Wick cleared me for surgery.

Finally, in September, the two surgeons completely removed my tumor. They had told me that symptoms would persist afterward, and they were right. The surgery required cutting my vestibular nerve, but my balance is no worse than it had been—proving the nerve hadn’t been doing its job anyway. The hearing in my right ear is gone for good, and it’s not yet clear if any type of hearing aid will help. During recovery, I worked with specialists at the Washington University Physical Therapy Clinic to improve my balance.

Over time, I developed a theory that COVID had saved my brain. I reasoned that it had caused the inflammation resulting in my facial paralysis—the one symptom that had accelerated my diagnosis.

But when I pitched my theory to Wick, he wasn’t as sure.

“We have no data to support that COVID exacerbated your symptoms related to facial paralysis,” he said. “Bell’s Palsy has been associated with viral infections, not specifically COVID. As physicians, we have to be careful not to put causality on something that we do not have data to support.”

One thing that’s more certain, however, is that not finding the tumor until years later could have had serious effects. Kim told me I may have experienced increasing unsteadiness and vertigo, brainstem compression, facial numbness and hydrocephalus.

“Not all of these things happen to everyone,” he said, “but tumor growth can certainly lead to these symptoms and conditions.”

So, I’m resigning my position as armchair neurologist, grateful to live four miles from Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, a national Center of Excellence for vestibular schwannoma and other brain-tumor research and treatment.

And I’ll bask in the possibility—however speculative—that COVID saved my brain.