A Texas man’s life was put on hold after suffering from COVID-19 for more than a year.
Dub Crochet reportedly had to stay at a hospital for 453 days after contracting a bad case of the coronavirus in August 2021, disabling him from enjoying the holidays and celebrating milestones with his family.
The Bellaire native could not celebrate Thanksgiving with his loved ones last year. He also missed the birth of his new grandson. Worst, he had to celebrate his 70th birthday at the hospital due to his condition, Washington Post reported.
“It was tough for me lying there during Thanksgiving [and] during Christmas because I’m a big holiday person. To miss that was tough,” he told the news outlet.
Most of Crochet’s doctors did not see a positive end to his case, thinking he would not be able to leave the hospital. They even told his wife, Rachel, that he would be in a vegetative state.
“Every organ in his body failed at some point except his heart and his brain. The doctors looked at me and said, ‘He’s not going to survive,’” Rachel said.
It’s a bit of a mystery how Crochet contracted the severe form of COVID-19 when he did not have preexisting conditions and was fully vaccinated when he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 last year.
When he was rushed to the emergency room after developing a fever and his oxygen levels dropped, his supposed short hospital stay landed him in the ICU, where he was placed on a ventilator a few days later.
However, the unthinkable happened after 453 days as he recovered from the viral infection and several complications that came with it. On the day he got discharged, doctors and nurses at the hospital cheered for him as he was finally able to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. He would also be able to return home for the holidays, including Christmas.
But Crochet was not the one who battled the viral disease the longest. In April, U.K. doctors announced that they had documented the longest COVID infection on record — the patient had to be treated for more than 16 months, or 505 days to be exact.
The patient, whose identity was not disclosed, first caught the virus in early 2020. They had symptoms and got diagnosed after undergoing a PCR test. Unlike Crochet, the patient was in and out of the hospital many times for both routine checkups and care, according to the BBC.