FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - A woman has been released from the hospital after a monthslong battle with COVID-19, which she contracted shortly after she came to South Florida to visit family during the holidays.
Donna Whedbee was brought to tears Tuesday as she was rolled out of Fort Lauderdale Health & Rehab in front of family and hospital staff.
“It feels great,” Whedbee said. “It feels wonderful, and these people were wonderful back here. I love them all.”
Whedbee said she was cautious and followed guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid contracting the virus. Unfortunately, shortly after she caught the virus in December, along with her mother and her sister, she slipped into a coma and was hospitalized.
“She was in Memorial Miramar for about seven to eight weeks, put her on the ventilator, and then, they had to trache her,” Jodey Deremigis, Whedbee’s sister, said.
Eight weeks later, Whedbee woke up in the hospital thinking it was still December, unaware the holidays had come and gone.
When asked if there was a point if she doubted she would live past her diagnosis, Whedbee said, “I guess in the very beginning, but after my daughter told me all I’ve been through, no, no. I knew that God brought me through for a reason. If you believe — and I mean in the Lord — that anything is possible and that He has a better thing in mind for me. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know that He has a better path in mind for me.”
After fighting the virus in the hospital, Whedbee had to relearn how to walk, talk and eat.
“It’s been seven long months, and she would take one step forward, and then, you have two steps back,” Deremigis said. “One step forward, three steps back, not knowing really if she was going to make it, and I’ll tell you: she has made it.”
Whedbee plans to spend time with her family in Weston before she returns home to Maryland.
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