Covid-19 hospitalised him for 453 days but he made it back home
Covid-19 put life on hold for Dub Crochet.
The Bellaire, Texas, man had contracted a bad case of the coronavirus disease in August last year before being confined to a hospital for months, keeping him from family milestones and holidays.
He missed the birth of his new grandson. He was not home to host Thanksgiving dinner last year. Nor was he out of the hospital in time to celebrate his 70th birthday.
Most of his doctors were not optimistic that he would be able to leave the hospital at all. And if he did, doctors told Crochet’s wife, he would probably be in a vegetative state. But after 453 days in the hospital recovering from the disease and an array of complications, Crochet rolled out of the facility in a wheelchair to the cheers of doctors and nurses on time to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas at home for the first time in over a year.
‘‘It was tough for me lying there during Thanksgiving [and] during Christmas because I am a big holiday person,’’ Crochet said ‘‘To miss that was tough.’’
Crochet headed home in a new phase of the pandemic when, for the first time in the United States, more people who have received at least the primary series of a coronavirus vaccine are dying of Covid-19 than those who have not, according to an analysis conducted by Cynthia Cox, vicepresident of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Fifty-eight per cent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, the analysis showed.
Although the unvaccinated still have a higher chance of dying of Covid-19, the disease can kill vaccinated people because the preventive medicine’s efficacy eases over time. US health officials have urged people to keep their vaccinations current by getting booster shots.
Crochet, who did not have preexisting conditions and was fully vaccinated at the time, tested positive in August last year, his wife, Rachel Crochet, said. A visit to an urgent care centre to treat Crochet’s fever and dropping oxygen levels turned into a stay in the hospital’s intensive care unit. He was placed on a ventilator four days later.
He pushed through pneumonia, collapsed lungs, pancreatitis, kidney failure and what appeared like a never-ending list of virus complications. Every time Crochet started getting better, a new ailment would arise.
‘‘Every organ in his body failed at some point except his heart and his brain,’’ Rachel Crochet, 70, said. ‘‘The doctors looked at me and said: He’s not going to survive.’’ In December, Crochet was transferred to a longterm care facility where things slowly started to look up but an infection that wasn’t healing properly after another emergency surgery had his doctors postponing his discharge date.
It wasn’t until November 9 that a nurse pushed Dub’s wheelchair through the facility’s hallway while doctors, nurses and family clapped as he approached the exit door.
Some held signs reading ‘‘Way to go Papa!’’ and ‘‘Dub Crochet. You are my hero’’ on his way home.