Meet the former Mizzou basketball player who’s now on the COVID-19 front lines in Columbus
This is what Tajudeen “T.J.” Soyoye signed up for, he tells his five children.
He understands the risk he takes every time he goes into his job, as an emergency room physician at Piedmont Columbus Regional Northside. The new coronavirus pandemic has slowed life in the ER temporarily, he said, but that hasn’t made work any less stressful.
“Everybody’s at home, school is canceled,” Soyoye recalled his children telling him. “Daddy ... why do you have to go?”
But Soyoye knows the importance of his job during this time of worldwide crisis.
People are sick, he tells his kids, and somebody has to take care of them. Those who have the virus, he told the Ledger-Enquirer over the phone Wednesday evening, “can’t be left to die.”
“Somebody has to take care of them,” Soyoye said. “We know the risks, but we still put ourselves out there.”
Soyoye, born in Lagos, Nigeria, played basketball at Missouri, where he was recruited to play center for the Tigers. He played for two years at Missouri.
Now, the 6-foot-9 Soyoye has moved from the front court to the front lines of the fight against COVID-19.
A lifelong dream
Working in the medical field was always Soyoye’s dream. Growing up, he got a close look at herbalism, a traditional medicinal practice based on the use of plants and plant extracts, by observing his father at work.
“I saw the joy in his face after finishing taking care of his patients,” Soyoye said. “And, one way or the other, (he) made them better. I saw how grateful people were to him for what he does.”
With a career as a physician as the end goal, Soyoye saw basketball as a way to reach it.
Soyoye averaged just under eight points and 6.5 rebounds per game for Missouri, and played for the Nigerian national team. He graduated from Missouri with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and did his residency in Family and Community Medicine at University Hospital in Columbia, Missouri, 6,200 miles from his birthplace.
“It never escaped my mind to become a physician,” Soyoye said. “Even though I was playing as a top player at that time.”
His job and love for traveling brought him to Georgia. He lives in Atlanta, and commutes to Columbus when needed. He also commutes for shifts at Capital Region Medical Center in Jefferson City, Missouri, the Post-Dispatch reported.
Challenging work
During his emergency room shifts, Soyoye must wear more equipment. In a photo he provided to the Ledger-Enquirer, he wore two masks, gloves, medical booties over his shoes and a see-through face protector, in addition to his medical attire.
Work is challenging. Any individual who enters the hospital with symptoms of the virus, according to Soyoye, is presumed to have it “until proven otherwise.” Patients are more scared now, due to COVID-19.
“This is a novel virus,” Soyoye said. “It’s a virus that we don’t know anything about. So, we are learning as we go. Things are changing every day.”
The Georgia Department of Public Health had confirmed more than 10,500 cases of the virus statewide. More than 300 people in Georgia have died from COVID-19. Muscogee County, as of noon Thursday, has reported 98 cases and two deaths related to the virus.
Soyoye said the fight against the virus is in “phase one”: test everybody with symptoms that mirror those associated with COVID-19.
Soyoye said the unknowns surrounding the virus, coupled with the possibility that an individual could be asymptomatic and transmit the disease unknowingly, drives much of the fear. It’s much different than the flu where an individual will feel the symptoms in a matter of hours after contracting the virus.
“But this, you could have it three, four days without knowing,” Soyoye said. “And you could die.”
The total number of cases in the U.S. has climbed above 420,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But Soyoye sees potential positives on the horizon, pointing to the news out of New York.
The number of virus patients hospitalized in New York grew by its smallest number in weeks, the New York Times reported Thursday. In the past two weeks, the number of virus patients hospitalized has grown more and more slowly, from over 20% a day at one point to single-digit increases this week, according to the Times.
Those are promising statistics, and a potential sign that the virus has reached its apex in the state, which Soyoye described as a “hot spot.”
“Hopefully, we don’t have new states that become hot spots,” Soyoye said.
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 2:05 PM with the headline "Meet the former Mizzou basketball player who’s now on the COVID-19 front lines in Columbus."
