You could say that Bill Davis has lived a testosterone driven hyper active life. As a kid growing up in Annapolis, Maryland, he was into motocross – off road motorcycle racing – and martial arts.
Golf Course, August 20, 2025
Davis remained physically active as an adult. He moved to Berkeley Springs in 1990, ten years after marrying his wife Marion.
He built his own house and a house next door for his in-laws on the banks of Sleepy Creek.
He loves heavy machinery and construction and is constantly on the go – either playing golf, or on his electric bike, his souped up golf cart, his tractor, or his Chevy truck.
He spent most of his 45 year professional career working in the construction industry, most recently as a divisional vice president at 84 Lumber, where he ran the commercial materials division.
At 84 Lumber, Davis spent 43 weeks out of the year traveling. He’d get up Sunday morning, drive from Berkeley Springs to BWI, fly to one of 84 Lumber’s locations somewhere in the United States, oversee the construction supply chain for some giant construction project, then return home on Thursday or Friday.
Then sometime around 2000, Davis came down with Lyme disease. He figures he was bit by a tick while riding his dirt bike or camping in the woods in Morgan County. He didn’t see the tick. He didn’t see a bull’s eye – the telltale sign of Lyme. He didn’t even remember being bit by a tick. But there was the fatigue and lethargy – which was anathema to Davis.
It was slowing him down – and he hated it.
So, he went to a local hospital to do a test. And he says the tests came back negative. Davis says that low cost Lyme’s tests are only fifty percent accurate. Eventually he ended up in Winchester, Virginia where they did what is known as a Western Blot Test, which Davis says is 95 percent accurate. And that test came back positive for Lyme disease – and it was off the charts positive, Davis says.
After testing positive for Lyme, Davis started on a years long treatment of antibiotics and other drugs. And things started getting better.
Here’s another thing about Bill Davis. He doesn’t drink alcohol. He doesn’t do drugs. He doesn’t like drugs – legal or illegal. But the antibiotics were helping him overcome the effects of the Lyme – so he put up with it for eight or nine years. Then he figured – well, I’m feeling better, I’ll lighten up on the drugs.
“I don’t like being on meds, any meds,” Davis says. “I’ve never taken any pain pills. I’ve never drank alcohol, never done any drugs in my whole entire life. I didn’t like taking them, so I just figured I’d like to get rid of all the drugs in my life and stop.”
Then something worse happened. Much worse.
But before we get to that, check this out. Throughout his entire life, from when he was a kid growing up in Annapolis, Bill Davis wouldn’t feel pain. He could fall off a ladder and not feel the pain. A nail from a nail gun would go through his hand. His co-worker fainted at the sight. But Davis would pull out the nail and keep working.
And he hated going to see a doctor. Once in the late 1980s, his appendix burst. He didn’t know what it was, so he kept working. It was only when he started coughing up blood that he was rushed to a hospital where they performed an appendectomy.
All of those things – doesn’t feel pain, hates going to see doctors, hates taking drugs – are just background for what happened in 2019.
All of sudden one day, in the fall of 2019, Davis felt his arms and legs getting heavier.
Over the course of a couple of days, he couldn’t lift his legs or his arms or his head. He couldn’t get out of bed. His wife called an ambulance and Davis was put on a stretcher and rushed to a hospital in Winchester.
His wife was at the time caring for her ill mother, who lived next door. Davis’ son came down from Manhattan and went directly to the hospital to be with his dad.
That led to two years of Davis being confined to a bed and a wheelchair. Why? Because the doctors first in Winchester and then in Morgantown, despite their best efforts, could not figure out what the cause of Davis’ illness.
Two years, experimental drugs, experimental therapies, hundreds of thousands of dollars in out of pocket costs – and they couldn’t figure it out. It was a medical mystery.
After a second trip to the hospital in Morgantown, doctors called Marion and told her that they would help her make arrangements to put Bill Davis in a nursing home.
“He’s going to get worse and you are not going to be able to care for him,” the hospital staff told Marion.
Davis was also having many seizures a day. They wouldn’t stop. So Davis had to be put on seizure medication. But the underlying condition was the same. He couldn’t stand, or walk. He felt heavy. And he was significantly heavier.
Because of the drugs he was being prescribed, his weight had skyrocketed from his normal 260 pounds (he’s 6 foot 4 inches tall in a family of five foot four relatives) – to close to 400 pounds.
Bill Davis was eventually referred to a specialist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore in January 2023 – Dr. Andrea Corse, who has since moved on to become a Professor Neurology at the University of North Carolina.
After a battery of tests, Dr. Corse diagnosed one major problem as myasthenia gravis (MG), a rare autoimmune disease of the neuromuscular junction that prevents nerve impulses from triggering muscle contractions.
Dr. Corse prescribed steroids and mycophenolate (Cellcept), an immunosuppressant used for organ transplant patients and to treat autoimmune conditions.
Davis was happy to finally have a diagnosis of his problem, but as the months passed and he still couldn’t get out of his wheelchair, he started doubting the treatment.
Dr. Corse also urged him to lose weight. He promised the doctor that he would. He went on a crash five month diet. The first month was a strict carnivore diet – lost 50 pounds. The second month was carnivore plus salad and fruit and a touch of carbs – lost another 50 pounds. The third month, back on another strict carnivore diet. After five months, he was back to his normal 250 pounds.
In late summer of 2023, Davis returned to Dr.Corse at Johns Hopkins for a checkup. He rolled into the office in his wheelchair.
“Dr. Corse was in a room with somebody else, and I was at the water fountain. She turned around the corner and she walked by without recognizing me,” Davis says. “I said – you don’t even know, do you? And she turned back, and she just busted out crying and gave me a big hug. And she was like – I can’t believe it. I said – I told you that I was going to do this – and I will keep my end of the deal. And she was just blown away.
Then in September 2023, he was out back on his deck overlooking Sleepy Creek. His wife was in the kitchen, overlooking the deck. And his son was with his mom in the kitchen.
Davis saw something down below the deck and just got up and walked down the wheelchair ramp that friends helped build two years earlier.
For the first time in two years, he was up and walking holding on to the hand rails.
“My wife and son noticed,” Davis says. “They came running outside. And they said – what are you doing? And I said – I’m walking. I just felt like getting up.”
“When I spoke with my doctor, I told her what happened. And she said – that’s good news. That means the treatment is working.”
“At that time, I was getting upset – thinking this drug wasn’t working. And this doctor doesn’t know what’s she’s talking about. But after being on those drugs for almost a year, I started walking.”
Now, Davis is two and a half years into a five year recovery period. He still can’t feel much in his arms and legs. But he’s out of his wheelchair. He has ripped out the wheelchair ramps around his house and he’s doing small construction projects again.
Before getting sick, Davis was an avid golfer. He was about a three handicap and golfed with corporate executives at some of the best golf courses around the United States.
Now he’s back at the Cacapon State Park Golf Course, testing his muscle memory. His drive is coming back. And he’s close to being a bogey golfer. Soon, he’ll be shooting in the 80s again.
Bill Davis was down but not out.
Now he’s on the comeback trail.
