A seasoned ICU nurse left the hospital this week after eight months of treatment there for COVID-19.
Merlin Pambuan, 66, was on a ventilator at the St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California for four months after being sedated in May, The Washington Post reported.
Nurses and doctors cheered Monday as Pambuan walked the corridors of St. Mary, where she has worked for the past 40 years.
Nurse Merlin Pambuan received applause from her colleagues as she walked away after eight months of treatment for COVID-19 at a California hospital where she worked for the past 40 years https://t.co/YPXNk00mkk pic.twitter.com/tzkcEpAk3k
– Reuters (@Reuters) December 23, 2020
“I am grateful,” she told Reuters. “This is my second life.”
The nurse received COVID-19 after treating infected patients in the spring.
According to her doctor, Pambuan was reportedly near death ‘several times’.
“She was nearly dead several times,” her doctor, Maged Tanios, told Reuters. “I would say this has happened at least half a dozen times.”
Tanios, a specialist in pulmonary and intensive care, said reportedly unaware of other hospital staff who had been admitted to the ICU for coronavirus infections. Still, health care providers are most at risk of contracting COVID-19 because of their environment, prompting officials to make them the number one priority for vaccines.
Pambuan said she has no recollection of the four months she spent on the ventilator from early May to early September, according to the news service, which added that she said she could not feel her limbs after the deep sedation.
She has spent the past few months recovering and undergoing physical and respiratory rehabilitation.
To others like those who suffer from COVID-19, she tells people not to “lose hope.”
“Just fight. Fight, because look at me, you know. I’m going home and I’m walking,” Pambuan said, according to Reuters.