'Miracle': 75 Days After Battling COVID, PA Man, 69 & Lung Cancer Survivor, Celebrates Recovery
"After 75 days battling COVID-19, Lower Burrell [PA] man celebrates 'miracle' recovery." By Andy Kostka / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 15, 2020.
As his brother lay in UPMC St. Margaret Hospital in Aspinwall, Ted J. Szoch carried his cellphone with him everywhere. Normally using the phone for emergencies only, the 78-year-old didn’t know when that crucial call might come, or what the doctors on the other end of the line might say when he got it. Besides praying — and just about everyone he knew was doing that — there wasn’t anything Ted could do for his brother. But he still wanted to be ready for the worst, if it came to that. And during a 21-day period in which Fred Szoch, a 69-year-old Lower Burrell resident battling COVID-19, lay in a medically induced coma hooked up to a respirator, the worst seemed increasingly likely.
That call, the one Ted dreaded the most, never came. After 75 days in the hospital, Fred exited St. Margaret on Monday morning to the cheers of doctors and nurses. His dog, a Gordon setter named Brook, gave him a lick on his face as a long-awaited hello. Then Fred stood up out of his wheelchair, lifting his cane in the air, walking and breathing on his own. “I’m definitely on cloud nine,” Fred said. “Right now, I’m looking at the sun coming up again. You can’t ask for more.”
But that joyous reunion outside St. Margaret once was in doubt. Ted began searching for Fred’s last will; he couldn’t find it. Doctors told Ted end-of-life staff might be needed, just in case. “You just didn’t know which way it was going to turn,” Ted J. said. “I never knew what the next phone call was going to bring.” Before Fred’s 75-day spell in the hospital battling the coronavirus — and a C. Diff infection that slightly prolonged his stay — Fred was already at a higher risk to contract the illness. With a weakened immune system after dealing with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2019, Fred also overcame two bouts of lung cancer years earlier.
So when Fred, Ted and two other friends attended the musical “42nd Street” at Freeport High School on March 12 — the day before Gov. Tom Wolf ordered schools to close in the state due to coronavirus — Ted was uneasy. When I saw how crowded it was, it was not a good situation for him to be in,” he said. “But we were there.” About a week later, his brother said, Fred began showing coronavirus symptoms. And after his test came back positive, Fred’s doctor at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center told him to go to the emergency room. Two days later, on April 3, Fred was in the intensive care unit on a ventilator, the start of a lengthy battle. Fred doesn’t remember much after being admitted. He knows some of the details, bits and pieces friends and family have since relayed...
~ Please Read More, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/good-news/after-75-days-battling-covid-19-lower-burrell-man-celebrates-miracle-recovery/ar-BB15vPdA
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