‘Keep fighting’: COVID patient set to be released after 100 days in Lincoln hospitals

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Forget Christmas — Sara Brown can’t wait for Dec. 29th.

That’s the day her father, Gary West, is scheduled to be released from a rehabilitation hospital after fighting and recovering from COVID-19.

Brown, a Lincoln native who moved to Illinois with her husband, plans to be there to see her father go home. It will mark the 100th day since he was first admitted to CHI Saint Elizabeth.

“I’m really, really looking forward to it,” she said.

Brown says her 74-year-old father has remained active his entire life. He’s part of a bowling league, works on cars, delivers newspapers and shovels snow and mows lawns at his apartment complex.

“My dad does not sit still,” she said.

So when he began to not feel well, his doctors though he may be suffering from allergies and sent him home. He tested positive for COVID-19 the next day. Two days after that, he drove himself to the hospital and was admitted to the ICU.

Brown says he was so infectious none of her family was allowed to visit him. Living hundreds of miles away, their only option was the phone – and even that wasn’t always a possibility.

“There was times he couldn’t talk on the phone because it was harder for him to breathe,” she said.

Brown said one minute her father would seem to be getting better, and the next she’d be getting calls from his nurses saying they may have to intubate him.

She described it as a “rollercoaster of emotions” for both of them.

“To be very honest there were times my dad cried to me and said he can’t do it anymore and he was ready to die,” Brown said.

Her father remained in the ICU at Saint E’s until Nov. 2nd, then moved to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital.

For her birthday, Brown said all she wanted was to see her dad. As he was no longer infectious, she was able to get on a plane and surprise him with a visit as he recovered in a hospital bed.

She remembers hugging him for the first time in months.

“It was everything in the world, that hug I got from my dad,” she said. “I was able to exhale knowing my dad was OK and he was in my arms.”

Brown says through it all she did her best to encourage her father to keep fighting.

“I wasn’t ready for him to leave me yet,” she said.

It’s something she now encourages anyone with a family member battling the virus to do, no matter how bleak the outlook.

“I would tell them to stay encouraged and just keep fighting,” she said.” “They really, really need that. I mean they really, really need it.”

Having seen what her father has endured, Brown says it makes her “blood boil” when she hears people suggest the virus isn’t real or isn’t serious.

“It’s very real,” she said. “I never thought my dad would have it and he had it in one of the worst ways. Just take it serious, my dad went downhill so incredibly fast. So fast that we almost lost him.”