A Colorado man describes what its like to be on a ventilator from COVID 19

one of those survival stories belongs to relatively young man 44 years old healthy and he ended up on ventilator his doctors told him that our social distancing is one of the reasons that there was ventilator there to save his life here's new shiroi the downward spiral started marched very serious symptoms by the evening of the 10th four days later Tony Fira went to an urgent care and they directed me immediately to an emergency room they diagnosed me with pneumonia prescribed me z-pack and told me to get some rest and quarantined myself by March 18 he was back should go home and self-quarantine and quote unquote make it and Netflix weekend we days later was basically suffocating at home Tony ended up Denver Health under the care of dr. Halas and doctors knew he had cope at 19 made the decision that now's the time where nothing Tony really needs to go to the ICU because it looks like he's gonna need to be put on ventilator Tony is married father of two couldn't speak in full sentence at all he really looks scared was really grateful that Denver Health had it an event ready for me we're not at the point where we have to make really difficult decisions as to who gets ventilator and who doesn't get ventilator and that's because many people have been social distancing which dr. Halas says has helped with their patient load patients who were fighting ferocious virus their family comes by themselves and even when we do go into the room were covered head to toe and TVE so you know despite caring for Tony for five six days Tony's never seen my face for 5 days tony was on ventilator in room that was actually for orthopedic surgery patients but transformed for people who needed critical care at critical time not everybody that goes on vent comes off one as quickly or as healthy as did April fourth doctors said Tony was ready to come home 44 years old in in excellent shape and it it took me down so Tony wanted to share his story because he wanted to encourage people to keep social distancing and in the other part that played such critical role in him getting better was the fact that Denver Health has been expanding the number of ICU beds they have usually they have about 47 for adults so far they have double that and Kyle they're ready to go as high as hundred and fifty-three if they see surge of patients and know that there's there's certain subset of the population that thinks well want to get this because I'm just gonna power through it and then I'll have my immunity and it's back to life but we really don't know what the prognosis looks like for folks like him long-term yeah exactly you know and doctor said that that is definitely something they're keeping an eye on but at this point the virus is so new they simply don't know the answer to that but Tony knows for him that he's got weeks of recovery left mean he's been home for almost week and half now he still gets winded going up the stairs in the beginning it was hard for him to even have enough energy to just brush his own teeth so it's gonna be weeks before he is completely back to normal Kyle all right new shoe Roy thanks for that conversation with Tony appreciate it