A woman who spent seven months in a Phoenix hospital being treated for COVID-19 is urging people to get vaccinated.
Finally back in her Glendale home, 55-year-old Claudia Patterson told KNXV-TV this week that she wonders if her ordeal would have been less severe had she been vaccinated.
Patterson went to St. Joseph’s Hospital in July and had to be put on a ventilator. She says she was sedated for two months. She was then placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO, a machine that takes over respiratory function.
“There were times where I just said ‘God just take me,’” Patterson said.
She was on the verge of needing a lung transplant and “flatlined” four times.
Doctors now say Patterson is strong enough to continue therapy and treatment from home.
“I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to go through what I went through,” she said.
As of Monday, 3,526 people statewide were hospitalized for COVID-19. Of those, 616 were in ICUs.
Since the pandemic began, Arizona has seen nearly 1.8 million cases and over 25,600 deaths.
Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
