The first-ever recipient of a double lung transplant following a battle with COVID-19 in the United States is Mayra Ramirez, a 28-year-old woman.
On April 26, Ramirez arrived at the emergency room of Northwestern Memorial Hospital with COVID-19 symptoms. Her encounter with the disease quickly turned dire.
“All I remember was being put to sleep as I was being intubated and then six weeks of complete nightmares,” she shared with CNN on Monday, August 3, 2020.
“Some of the nightmares involved a lot of drowning, and I attribute that to not being able to breathe.”
Ramirez revealed that COVID-19 had caused irreversible damage to her lungs, and her other organs were also starting to fail.
She spent over a month on a ventilator, and her doctors informed her parents, who flew in from North Carolina, to say their final goodbyes because they were uncertain if she would survive.
However, the doctors provided a glimmer of hope: The only chance of saving her life was through a double lung transplant.
“Without the transplant, she would not have made it,” stated Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of Thoracic Surgery at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
Her young age and lack of significant medical history worked in her favor, increasing her chances of survival.
“I looked at myself and I couldn’t recognize my own body,” Ramirez expressed after waking up in the hospital following the procedure.
“I couldn’t talk, I could barely lift a finger, I couldn’t move. I was in a lot of pain, I was very confused.”
“This is not a hoax,” she emphasized. “This virus is real; it happened to me.”
Two months post-surgery, Ramirez still struggles with weakness and breathing difficulties as she undergoes rehabilitation at home.
Ramirez holds the distinction of being the first recipient of a lung transplant in the US while battling COVID-19, according to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Approximately 4.6 million people in the US have been infected with COVID-19.
