Mary Lanning Hospital's First Critical Care COVID-19 Patient Released as Staff Cheer

The first critical care patient battling the coronavirus arrived at Mary Lanning Hospital in Hastings in mid-March. The 54-year old Colorado man was finally released from the hospital Wednesday; after his 22-day stay, doctors were not sure if he would pull through.

Nurses rolled Felipe Chavez-Ramirez out of Mary Lanning Hospital, the same way he came in: through the doors of the emergency room.

In mid-March, he’d come from Durango, Colorado to visit family in the Hastings area. The flu symptoms — fever, aches, and fatigue — got so bad his doctor recommended heading to the emergency room.

"I remember arriving in a car and being put in a wheelchair and taken into a room," Chavez-Ramirez said. "That was it. That's it. That's the last memory I have for several weeks."

Chavez-Ramirez remained in a delirium, hooked to a ventilator for the next 16 days. He spoke to NET News while still isolated in intensive care through video chat, telling us his family and the medical team were not sure he would pull through.

"I think everybody was pretty worried, [listening to] to the doctor’s 90% possibility that I wouldn't be here at this point in time," Chavez-Ramirez said. "I fortunately I didn't know what was going on. So I don't have that, until now, the scary part of what could have been."

Improvement came slowly. He was removed from his ventilator just five days ago.

"I'm feeling great compared to five days ago, and I've been sitting on a chair most of the day, which is doing a new thing. I've walked it several laps with a walker, which is again, way more than what I had been doing in a long time," Chavez-Ramirez said. "The exercises they've been putting me through, both physical and speech therapy, have been really good and make me feel quite well...I've been able to do quite a bit of, well, relatively speaking, physical activity. I mean, I did six laps around the bed. But that's a lot compared to zero activity for several weeks."

In the time since Chavez-Ramirez was hospitalized, the intensive care unit at Lanning filled almost to capacity with others struggling with the coronavirus.

For the staff at Lanning, having the first ICU patient with COVID-19 leave for home safely was a moment they needed. They lined the emergency room exit and cheered.