A COVID-19 patient who spent eight months on life support at a San Diego County hospital to overcome the obstacle in a miraculous way reached his goal Tuesday: he finally had to go home.
“It feels like a dream,” the patient’s mother, Cecilia Amador, told reporters standing in front of Scripps Memorial Hospital in Geneva Avenue in La Jolla.
The hospital has been home to her son, Eduardo Moreno, since he was admitted on July 19, 2020 – eight many, many months ago.
Eduardo Moreno has been at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, San Diego County, since July 19, 2020 – three of those months were spent in a coma, reports Claudette Stefanian, NBC 7.
Amador fought back tears, saying she could not believe Moreno would return home after everything – including three months in a coma and three surgeries.
“He got it right,” she said. ‘He’s here; he walks. He remembers everything. He is 100%. ”
He made it.
Cecilia Amador, mother of the surviving COVID-19
Moreno, in a wheelchair and with a face mask, sat quietly next to his mother after he was discharged on Tuesday. It was an emotional day – a lot to take in after everything he went through.
“We’re going home, thank God,” Amador said.
NBC 7 San Diego Eduardo Moreno and his mother, ready to go home, on March 23, 2021.
Moreno’s delivery from Scripps Memorial Hospital was filled with balloons, cheers and lots of nurses holding signs to say goodbye to the man they had come to know so well for the past eight months.
‘Congratulations, Eduardo. You’re a fighter, ‘reads one sign.
“ECMO graduate. You did it! “Read another.
Moreno was driven through the foyer, through an arc of white and light blue balloons. At the end of the aisle hangs a colorful chain of paper link. Moreno happily broke through it.
It was the finish line for a medical marathon.
The nurses and hospital staff applauded him.
He was wearing a mask, but in his eyes you could see traces of a smile.
His mother was there to take him home.
Eduardo’s long battle against COVID-19
Moreno contracted COVID-19 sometime in late June 2020 or early July 2020. He was first admitted to hospital on 13 July 2020. Six days later, he was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit at Scripps Memorial Hospital.
Things did not look good for him.
“He was very critical,” his mother recalls. “They told us he was not going to get it.”
They told us he was not going to get it.
Eduardo Moreno’s mother, and recalls the beginning of the hospitalization of her son mid-July 2020
Dr. Scott McCaul, MD, is the Medical Director of Scripps ICU and ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation). He’s been a lung ICU doctor at Scripps since 1987.
McCaul was one of Moreno’s top doctors. He said the young man’s case – 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 – at his worst – depended on machines to survive. When he arrived at the ICU, Moreno experienced an advanced degree of respiratory failure with COVID-related pneumonia.
‘[He had] ‘destructive changes in his lungs – and tubes needed to allow expansion of his lungs,’ the doctor explained.
Moreno was placed on life support and machines took over his lung function.
McCaul said his patient essentially had to ‘learn to breathe underwater’, and had to use a machine to do what his lungs had done before, but ‘without being able to feel the breathing’.
Moreno survived several surgeries. Little by little, McCaul said Moreno left himself paralyzed, numb – out of a coma, walking and regaining his physical ability.
Through it all, mental and physical exhaustion was a daily struggle. McCaul said there were days filled with anxiety and pain – but also an incredible will to fight with his patient.
Moreno’s nurses and doctors stood by him every step of the way.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Moreno’s family mostly had to stick to “visit” him via video calls. There were few hugs.
“Physical contact was so sparse,” McCaul said.
Amador said it was the hardest thing for her to be away from her son as a parent while he was so ill.
She cried a lot.
She prayed even more.
“He went through a lot. His lungs were bleeding. “He had a blood clot in his head,” Amador explained.
When she could not be there to comfort her son, Amador said the nurses and doctors acted like a family to him.
Amador said the nurses ‘spoiled’ him, even brought Moreno In-n-Out burgers a time or two and put a small Christmas tree and presents in his room during the holidays.
Moreno became stronger.
Along the way, of course, there were setbacks.
McCaul said December 2020 – right around Christmas – was one of those moments. Moreno has set some goals for himself – his wish list for Christmas.
“Eduardo’s goals for Christmas included learning how to talk in the fan, walking 100 feet, making a video for his daughter, eating album gas from his mother,” McCaul recalls.
Eduardo’s goals for Christmas included learning to talk in the fan, walking 100 feet, making a video for his daughter, eating his mother’s album gas.
Dr. Scott McCaul, Managing Director, Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla
“Probably my most emotional moment was being in his room and looking at all the personal items – the things Eduardo really did in that room,” the doctor added. “The Christmas tree that the nurses brought there and knowing that the targets were closed.”
But Moreno kept fighting, and made it through another operation.
After the last operation, Moreno’s mother said that McCaul finally told her, “Don’t worry, he’s going to make it home.”
In January 2021, McCaul said that Moreno’s lungs had healed enough for him to be disconnected from the machines.
McCaul said Moreno showed through it all to everyone in the hospital that, even if something seems difficult or impossible, it is possible to go through.
“He’s a model for all of us,” he added.
Since the coronavirus pandemic reached San Diego County a year ago, public health officials in San Diego have detected 267,917 positive cases of COVID-19 in our region. A total of 3,494 COVID deaths were reported in San Diego County. Click here for the latest daily updates on the coronavirus crisis in our region.