A woman from Chula Vista has been fighting and is now recovering from COVID-19 at Kaiser Clairemont Mesa Hospital.
Matilde Perez, 62, has been at the hospital for 35 days. Her daughter, Juliet Burgos, said she was admitted on July 18.
She said her mom was feeling sick for more than a week. She wasn't eating well and eventually couldn’t get out of bed.
“She was maybe sick for about a week and a day. I called her, and she didn’t want to wake up. She was shaking, and I called my sister and said, 'It’s time to take mom to the hospital,'” Burgos remembered. "She's everybody's mom. She always takes care of everybody.”
Which is why Burgos said it was tough to see the roles reversed. Perez was relying solely on a ventilator for two and a half weeks.
"There was time she was improving, then the next day she would go back to where she was a week ago," Burgos said.
On Friday, she woke from her induced coma.
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“It took her a while to fully wake up and move her extremities, um, but she did it! She’s getting stronger every day,” said Burgos, who is encouraging people with COVID-19 symptoms to get medical help. “The doctors did tell us that we took her in time."
Shawn Evans, M.D., who works in the emergency department at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, is also encouraging people to get help if they believe they have COVID-19 symptoms. He said four symptoms should require medical help as soon as possible.
“Dizziness, chest pain, difficulty breathing or if they’re unable to nourish themselves with fluid or food, that’s when we want to see you. Those are the people who have early pneumonia and we don’t want that going on for days," Evans said. "We want to get those people, identify them, and have a really explicit plan around going home or staying in the hospital. This virus is a beast."
The Perez family has set up a GoFundMe page to help out with medical expenses.
“It’s a horrible virus. It affects everybody differently. It can be deadly and it can take the person you love the most away from you,” Burgos said.
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