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A 24-year-old man with COVID-19 wishes he was vaccinated after spending months in hospital and needing a double lung transplant.
Blake Bargatze was the only one in his family not vaccinated and was infected with the virus in April while in Florida, his family told WSB-TV.
For more than three months, Bargatze stayed at three different hospitals in Florida and Georgia before landing in the intensive care unit at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
“I just don’t want anyone else to go through this,” her mother, Cheryl Nuclo, told the station.
His mother said Bargatze vaped regularly but did not have diabetes or high blood pressure, underlying medical conditions that can worsen symptoms of COVID-19. As for getting the vaccine, Paul Nuclo, Bargatze’s stepfather, said his stepson wanted to wait.
“He wanted to wait a few years to see, you know, if there were any side effects or whatever,” he told WSB-TV. “As soon as he got to the hospital, however, he said he wished he had received the vaccine.”
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Days after contracting the virus, Bargatze was having difficulty breathing and was put on a ventilator in an intensive care unit in South Florida, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.
Doctors wanted to place him in the most aggressive form of resuscitation – an ECMO circuit. The ECMO machine works by pumping blood out of the body, re-oxygenating it, and then returning the blood to the body, so that the lungs and heart can rest.
When doctors struggled to ventilate him in Florida, he was airlifted to Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta.
Dr Peter Barrett, ECMO director at Piedmont Healthcare, told the family that Bargatze’s lungs are not going to recover and his only hope is to have a lung transplant.
“I was like ‘No, no,’” Nuclo told Fox 5 Atlanta. “Because I know this is probably the most difficult transplant to go through and longevity is not good. But there are also some people who have lived for many years.”
Bargatze was taken to the University of Maryland, where he underwent a double lung transplant on June 28. Last week he was still on a ventilator and unable to speak.
Nuclo said his son had a long recovery ahead of him and wanted his situation to be a wake-up call to young people.
“Blake isn’t the only 24-year-old that’s happened to, or younger ones,” she told Fox 5 Atlanta. “Like I said, COVID is real. It hasn’t gone away. People need to be aware and careful.”
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Follow reporter Asha Gilbert @Coastalasha. Email: [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Georgia man receives double lung transplant and regrets COVID-19 vaccine
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