Healthier corona patients are hard to find. Ahmad Ayyad was a boxer fanatic, very muscular and ran marathons. Still, the 40-year-old American was knocked out by the virus. “I had lost 27 pounds.”
In mid-March, Ahmad Ayyad was the first patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to receive ventilation. He was kept in an artificial coma for 25 days. Doctors feared the worst. The 97-pound sportsman lost 27 pounds. Talking was no longer possible. He communicated in writing. “The last thing he wrote was,” Thank you for taking care of me, “said Dr. Natalie West.
Then he woke up. “I looked at my arms and legs … My muscles were gone.” The metamorphosis is worrying: his body had completely changed in three weeks. On April 22, a month and a half after his admission, he was released from the hospital. There is still damage to the heart and lungs. “But I make progress every day. I slowly regain weight. I eat and exercise a lot. ”
“It continues to worry me that many people don’t take the virus seriously,” Ayyad concludes. “I survived, but I’m still terrified. The virus is not a joke. Even if you’re perfectly healthy, it can be life-threatening. ”
