A Texas woman was finally released from the hospital after a nearly three-month battle with the coronavirus, and she hopes others will heed her warning about the importance of wearing a mask.
Paola Castillo was admitted to the Medical City North Hills hospital emergency room on April 27, days after she had symptoms related to the coronavirus, such as cough, shortness of breath and fever, the center said in a press release published on Wednesday.
The 24-year-old was quickly placed on a ventilator and spent more than a month in the Medical City intensive care unit. But Castillo’s health continued to deteriorate, reaching the point where he fell terribly “close to death,” the hospital said.
As the doctors struggled to save his life, Castillo was under sedatives. Today, she only has brief memories of the experience.
“I saw a light,” he recalled from one of those memories. “That light was God telling me it was time to wake up.”
Castillo eventually recovered, only to find that he was no longer able to walk, speak, or swallow easily. He entered rehab to rebuild his physical strength and, on July 3, took his first steps since entering the facility.
“What we are doing now is the essence of what it is to be human,” Andrea Morian, director of Rehabilitation Services at Medical City North Hills, said in the statement. “What the care team has done even for this patient is a mark of a life well lived and a purpose fulfilled.”
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CBS DFW Paola Castillo
“This is a single patient,” Morian continued. “The impact that our teams have on so many more is now overwhelming.”
Castillo was finally released from Medical City on July 15, 79 days after his arrival. While talking to KTVT, he admitted that the deadly virus didn’t worry him before it completely overturned his life.
“Maybe if I had listened and put on a mask, something simple, I would have avoided all of this,” he told the news station.
“I work in a bank, I’m always surrounded by people, but I thought, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ I never thought I’d catch him,” Castillo said.
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The use of masks has become a hot topic of debate in the country four months after states began to adopt restrictions on social distancing to stop the spread of the disease. Research has shown that fabric face liners help in public settings and when social distancing measures are difficult to maintain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On July 4, a 37-year-old Ohio Army veteran died of the coronavirus two months after he criticized the use of face masks in a social media post.
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Coronavirus cases have continued to rise across the country. As of Friday, the United States has seen more than 3.6 million cases and 138,753 deaths attributed to the disease, according to a New York Times‘database.
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