The virus sent him into a medically induced coma, he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday. And when he woke up, he was paralyzed.
“I really thought he had been involved in an accident or some kind of accident,” Case said. Since then he has had to learn to stop and write.
Case underwent intensive therapy in hopes of regaining the mobility she lost from the atrophy of her muscles. Doctors told her that only time will tell what her recovery will be like, she said. But if his wife hadn’t pushed for his medical care, he might not have recovered at all, he said.
Both Case and his wife, Anne Costa Case, were ill. But they said it was difficult for them to access a test because they had not traveled and they did not know anyone who had tested positive.
The case could have stopped there, but when her symptoms progressed, they went to the hospital.
“When he started reporting on shortness of breath, we decided that was it, we have to go to the emergency room,” said Anne Costa Case.
He was transferred to a different hospital, put on a respirator, and then went into a medically induced coma for 20 days, he said. Costa Case was not able to be there with him all that time, but she asked the nurses to play her favorite jazz music for him.
When he woke up and she saw him again, he had lost so much weight that it was barely recognizable, he said.
“It was probably the most emotional day of my life. I couldn’t see him for almost five weeks, and there he was. And I kept looking at him because he looked like a different person,” he said.
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