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A man who was hospitalized with COVID-19 was released on Friday after more than 6 months, reports AL.com.
Ricky Hamm, 50, was the oldest COVID-19 patient at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Ala.
“When it started we just thought we would be here for a few weeks and it won’t be that long,” his wife Shannon Hamm said of his hospitalization. “But it turned into a long ordeal.”
Hamm ultimately called his discharge “surreal” as he was released from the hospital with the help of a walker.
“It’s been a long journey,” he told AL.com. “I guess I didn’t quite understand this is coming to an end. But it’s slowly starting to give me butterflies.”
While in hospital, he spent nearly five months on life support, according to the report. He was attached to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to help him breathe for 147 of his 187 days in the hospital, according to AL.com.
“ECMO is a complicated and complex procedure,” Keith Wille, UAB medical director, told AL.com. “It’s invasive and not very fun for the patient. In this case, it saved their life. But trust me, you don’t want to take ECMO.”
Hamm, a medevac helicopter pilot, first became ill with the coronavirus in January, just after receiving the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Hamm is still promoting the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I believe in the vaccine,” he said, according to AL.com. “I believe I already had the virus before I got the vaccine, before it could work to protect me. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I’ve been through.”
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