A Chicago woman who became the country’s first COVID-19 patient last month to undergo a double-lung transplant said she woke up days later, unaware of the surgery and unable to “recognize my body.”
Mayra Ramírez, 28, spoke to the media Thursday alongside Brian Kuhns, 62, of Lake Zurich, Illinois, who followed her as the second U.S. coronavirus patient to undergo the procedure.
Ramírez underwent surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago on June 5 and did not wake up until weeks later.
“I looked at myself and I couldn’t recognize my body,” he told reporters. ‘I did not have the cognitive capacity to process what was happening. All she knew was that she wanted water.
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Mayra Ramírez, a COVID-19 survivor due to a double-lung transplant, spoke about her journey through the pandemic during her first press conference at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago on Thursday.
Before contracting coronavirus, Ramírez, who has an autoimmune disease, said she was independent and relatively healthy.
Ramírez said he could not recognize his family members in the images that the hospital nurses had placed around his room.
“I was really upset because I thought it was a different family,” she added.
Ramírez, who has an autoimmune disease, had been intubated shortly after she fell ill with coronavirus in April.
He had run three miles shortly before getting sick and heading to the hospital.
“They told me to hurry up (and) change,” he said. They asked me who would make my medical decisions for me. It was then that I told them that it would be my mother and older sister who lived in North Carolina.
“I only had a couple of minutes to contact them and let them know what was going on before they intubated me.”
Ramírez, who moved to Chicago from North Carolina to become a paralegal in 2014, says he is now slowly regaining his strength.
Ramírez’s family launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for their medical expenses.
Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and chief surgical officer for the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program, said Ramirez, who was on a respirator, fought for her life for six weeks, with the virus completely destroying her lungs.
Doctors would call Nohemi Romero, her mother in North Carolina, to receive updates.
Ramírez, sitting next to her mother during a press conference at the hospital, said her family made the trip to Chicago with the intention of saying goodbye.
“Fortunately, once my mother and my two sisters arrived, the medical team was able to stabilize me,” Ramírez said.
‘The lung transplant option was explained to them and my mother accepted. And then in 48 hours, I received the 10-hour lung transplant. ‘
Bharat is calling Ramirez’s surgery a “milestone” in the care of patients with severe COVID-19.
Brian Kuhns (pictured left Thursday) 62, from Lake Zurich, Illinois, followed Ramirez as the second US coronavirus patient to undergo the procedure.
“Lung transplantation is not for all COVID-19 patients, but it offers some critically ill patients another option for survival,” said Bharat. “Mayra and Brian are living proof of that.”
Ramírez said he is slowly regaining his strength, but says the terrible experience has taken a physical and mental toll.
“It is difficult to deal mentally,” he said. ‘All the time I was in it [ventilator] I had many nightmares and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish the reality of those nightmares. ‘
Thoracic surgeon Dr. Rafael Garza Castillon said Northwestern is now considering performing the procedure on other patients who have cleared the virus and have no other major organ failure.
“We are all learning together and sharing best practices, and now lung transplantation is part of COVID-19 care,” said Bharat.
Ramírez, who is now home, said he feels much better, although he is still working to rebuild his strength and endurance. She said she knows there is a family that cries for their loved one.
“It wasn’t until weeks later that I had the ability to, you know, think to myself that there is a family out there crying for their loved one,” said Ramírez.
“I have that person’s lungs and how lucky I was to have received it.”
Kuhns said he thought the virus was a hoax until he contracted it.
“This disease is not a joke,” he said. ‘It hit me like a lead blow to the head. He was perfectly healthy. This thing knocked me down hard.
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