VIDEO: A Miami fire captain survived COVID-19 after being hospitalized for 60 days at Cleveland Clinic.
Javier Valdes, 42, was once a healthy and active Miami fire captain. However, COVID-19 sent him to the emergency room after he couldn’t break a fever.
“I kept praying to God 'please don’t let them intubate you for my birthday at least,'” Valdes said.
His lungs hardly worked and he would spend his birthday intubated, plus an additional 57 days.
“The ventilator was no longer working. My body was shutting down. It was giving up already,” said Valdes.
That was the point when Valdes says doctors felt the need to use the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to keep him alive.
Cleveland Clinic Weston is one of the few hospitals that use the ECMO machine, which is the highest level of life support, on COVID-19 patients.