Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration tweeted a message as a way to tell people to stop using ivermectin to treat COVID-19.The tweet read: "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, ya'll. Stop it."At the time, people were getting and taking the livestock version of the medication after hearing it might help.There was nationwide ridicule that struck a nerve with a handful of doctors, including one in Central Florida.He claims he's successfully treated about 3,000 COVID-19 patients with the human version of ivermectin.“I said to her, if I'm going to lose my dad, I need to have the peace that I did everything I could do. I need to be able to sleep and know that we did everything we could do. So she finally did agree to put him on ivermectin,” Mindy LaFevers-Hodge told WESH 2 News.Mindy LaFevers-Hodge is sharing her family's ordeal. Her father David was suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He had just finished chemo and Mindy says he was one of the first patients to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in January of 2021. In March of 2021, David contracted COVID-19 and ended up in the hospital. The family couldn't believe it.“Well, not only was I stunned, but the Department of Health in Florida was stunned, the CDC was stunned. We got visits from both of them because he was one of the very first breakthrough cases of somebody who was fully vaccinated who got that sick,” LaFevers-Hodge said.While David was in the hospital, Mindy was advocating for ivermectin. She used it when she had COVID-19 and says it worked.“Literally after the first dose, I felt so much better,” LaFevers-Hodge said.So what is ivermectin?“It's actually considered a wonder drug, the person who made it actually got a Nobel Peace Prize for it in 2015,” Central Florida emergency department physician Dr. Rajiv Bahl said.According to Chest Journal, a peer-reviewed medical journal, ivermectin was developed in the late 1970s to treat parasitic infections. Originally it was used in veterinary medicine but was found to safely treat parasitic illnesses in humans- like scabies, worms and river blindness. Chest Journal also reported about 3.7 billion doses of ivermectin have been distributed globally over the past 30 years for humans. The World Health Organization names ivermectin on its Essential Medicines List. For Mindy, her frustration only grew that her father was being denied ivermectin in a local hospital. Not until day six when he was being transferred to the intensive care unit did a doctor agree to try ivermectin. Mindy says after five days on the drug, her father made a total turnaround. “I think it was ivermectin because of all of his comorbidities. He should not have lived and he was going downhill every single day until the ivermectin started and we started seeing improvements,” LaFevers-Hodge said.Dr. John Littell says Mindy's family story is far too familiar.“I know, from my own experience that tens of thousands of Americans lost their lives because the medical profession refused to accept that there was effective early treatment,” Littell said.It’s a bold statement from a local doctor who says he's treated around 3,000 patients with ivermectin and has seen its positive results. Littell has been a family physician since 1990, practicing in Kissimmee and Ocala. Littell says he's got a target on his back for being so outspoken about ivermectin - but feels it's the right thing to do for his patients. “I have to say this bluntly but carefully - I've already been suspended from one hospital and fined $500 for ultimately doing the right thing for the patient. But the bottom line is hospitals are not allowing us to provide optimal care,” Littell said.Littell says ivermectin was lifesaving during the delta variant because of its anti-inflammatory and anti-blood clotting properties.“It was preventing that cytokine storm, which is when you have inflammation throughout the whole body that leads to kidney failure and leads to respiratory failure,” Littell said.One of Littell's patients Stacie Morales, a recently retired nurse, got COVID-19 last summer. She decided against getting the vaccine for personal reasons. When her oxygen was low, she called Littell instead of going to the hospital where she worked at the time.“I didn't like the protocols that they had for COVID. And my oxygen being that low, there's a good chance I would have been intubated,” Morales said. “I've been with Dr. Littell for over 20 years. So my faith was in my doctor. And plus my own research. Within two hours, I was starting to breathe better. My oxygen had gone all the way down to 80. So at this point, then I could see right away in two hours, it was starting to come up.”The FDA's website states: "The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 in people or animals. Ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective for these indications."Bahl explains the studies on ivermectin treating COVID-19 are not sufficient enough. “So this little bit of question, when it comes down to the efficacy of ivermectin, there are no large randomized controlled studies that are double-blinded without bias that showed that this medication is efficacious when it comes down to COVID-19,” Bahl said. “There's a number of physicians out there who will prescribe ivermectin. However, the vast majority are not prescribing at this time, because the strong anecdotal studies that show that this medication hasn't been efficacious, it may show in the future that this medication is efficacious.”Congressman Neal Dunn represents Florida's second congressional district and was the former Chief of Staff at Gulf Coast Hospital. He wrote an op-ed in the Sun Sentinel in October of 2021 noting several studies out of India, Mexico and Argentina that found ivermectin was working when treating COVID-19. “There's an excess of 30 studies in the literature, 20 of them randomized controlled studies, that prospective studies that show benefit with ivermectin so to say that there's no evidence for this drug at this point, is to willfully, willfully just be ignorant of the true literature,” Dunn said.Dunn says ivermectin has become political and the patients are the ones suffering. He encourages health care professionals like Dr. Littell to share their experience with ivermectin.“We have a secret society of doctors anymore who really get it — who really get it and the medical students and residents who get it. And honestly, it's time that they were able to come out of the closet and be real docs and be real advocates for their patients,” Dunn said.There have been dozens of lawsuits around the country including in Florida involving families suing hospitals wanting ivermectin as an option for loved ones.Littell treated his patients with ivermectin for humans which can only be prescribed by a doctor.Doctors do not recommend anyone try to treat themselves with ivermectin meant for animals.It's also important to point out that right now the National Institutes of Health is funding a trial to test the safety and effectiveness of ivermectin and other drugs on COVID-19.