A COVID-19 patient who spent 8 months life support at a San Diego County hospital miraculously overcame obstacle after obstacle and reached his goal on Tuesday: he was finally allowed to go home.
“It feels like a dream,” the patient’s mother, Cecilia Amador, told reporters outside Scripps Memorial Hospital on Genesee Avenue in La Jolla.
The hospital has been home to her son, Eduardo Moreno, since he was admitted on July 19, 2020 – eight very, very long months ago.
Eduardo Moreno had been at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, San Diego County, since July 19, 2020 – three of those months were in a coma, reports Claudette Stefanian of NBC 7.
Amador fought back tears, saying she couldn’t believe Moreno was coming home after all – including three months in a coma and three surgeries.
“He made it,” she said. “He’s here; he’s walking. He remembers everything. He’s 100%.”
He made it.
Cecilia Amador, mother of COVID-19 survivor
Moreno was in a wheelchair and wore a face mask quietly next to his mother after being fired on Tuesday. It was an emotional day – a lot to take in after all he’d been through.
“We’re going home, thank God,” said Amador.
NBC 7 San Diego Eduardo Moreno and his mother, ready to go home on March 23, 2021.
Moreno’s broadcast from Scripps Memorial Hospital was filled with balloons, cheers, and many nurses saying goodbye to the man they’d gotten to know so well over the past eight months.
‘Congratulations, Eduardo. You’re a fighter, ”a sign said.
“Graduated from ECMO. You did it! ”Read another.
Moreno was driven through the lobby, through an arch made of white and light blue balloons. A colorful paper link chain hung at the end of the path. Luckily, Moreno broke through.
It was the finish of a medical marathon.
The nurses and hospital staff cheered him on.
He was wearing a mask, but there were traces of a smile in his eyes.
His mother was there to take him home.
Eduardo’s long fight against COVID-19
Moreno contracted COVID-19 sometime in late June 2020 or early July 2020. He was first hospitalized on July 13, 2020. Six days later, he was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit at Scripps Memorial Hospital.
It didn’t look good for him.
“He was very critical,” his mother recalls. “They told us he wouldn’t make it.”
They told us he wouldn’t make it.
Eduardo Moreno’s mother, recalling the beginning of her son’s hospitalization in mid-July 2020
Dr. Scott McCaul, MD, is the Medical Director at Scripps ICU and ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation). He has been a lung ICU physician with Scripps since 1987.
McCaul was one of Moreno’s primary doctors. He said the young man’s cause – and his determination to survive – was nothing short of a miracle.
“It’s a phenomenal recovery – and a lot of work on his part,” McCaul said.
McCaul said Moreno was – at worst – completely dependent on machines for survival. When he arrived in the ICU, Moreno was suffering advanced respiratory failure from COVID-related pneumonia.
[He had] destructive changes in his lungs – and necessary tubes to expand his lungs, ”explained the doctor.
Moreno was given livelihood and machines took over his lung function.
McCaul said his patient essentially had to “learn to breathe underwater” and use a machine to do what his lungs used to do, but “without being able to feel the breath.”
Moreno has survived several operations. Little by little, McCaul said Moreno got himself out of the paralysis, sedation – out of a coma – to standing, walking, and regaining his physical capacity.
Despite all that, mental and physical exhaustion was a daily battle. McCaul said there were days of fear and pain, as well as an incredible will to fight in his patient.
Moreno’s nurses and doctors followed him every step of the way.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Moreno’s family usually had to stick to virtual ‘visiting’ him via video calls. There were a few hugs.
“Physical contact was so scarce,” McCaul said.
Amador said the hardest thing for her as a parent was to be away from her son while he was so sick.
She cried a lot.
She prayed even more.
‘He has been through a lot. His lungs were bleeding. He had a blood clot in his head, ”Amador explained.
When she couldn’t be there to comfort her son, Amador said the nurses and doctors stood up for him as family.
Amador said the nurses “spoiled” him – they even brought Moreno In-n-Out burgers a few times and hung a small Christmas tree and presents in his room around the holidays.
Moreno got stronger.
There were, of course, setbacks along the way.
McCaul said December 2020 – around Christmas – was one of those times. Moreno has set himself a number of goals – his wish list for Christmas.
“Eduardo’s goals for Christmas included learning to talk to the fan, walk 30 meters, make a video for his daughter, eat his mother’s albondigas,” McCaul recalls.
Eduardo’s goals for Christmas included learning to talk at the fan, walk 30 meters, make a video for his daughter, eat his mother’s albondigas.
Dr. Scott McCaul, MD, Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla
“Probably my most emotional moment was when I was in his room looking at all the personal items – the things that really made Eduardo in that room,” the doctor added. “The Christmas tree the nurses had brought there and knowing those goals had been set.”
But Moreno continued to fight and got through another operation.
After that latest operation, Moreno’s mother said that McCaul had finally said to her, “Don’t worry, he’ll be home.”
In January 2021, McCaul said Moreno’s lungs had healed enough to disconnect from the machines.
McCaul said that through all of this, Moreno showed everyone in the hospital that even if something seems difficult or impossible, getting through it IS possible.
“He’s a model for all of us,” he added.
Since the coronavirus pandemic reached San Diego County a year ago, San Diego County public health officials have tracked 267,917 positive cases of COVID-19 in our area. A total of 3,494 COVID-related deaths have been reported in San Diego County. For the latest daily updates on the coronavirus crisis in our area, click here.