Rocco Ward Sr. said his 29-year-old son, Rocco Ward Jr., who works for the postal service, was placed on a ventilator about a week ago due to the coronavirus. Ever since then, the elder Ward has been camping outside of Inspira Health Mullica Hill Hospital.
"I got on Faceboook and started putting posts up and doing everything I can," Ward said. "My truck has become my living command center out here to try to contact everyone I can to get them to get my son plasma, or medicine, and to help save my kid."
He says he's spent a lot of his time researching and trying to find someone to donate the possible life-saving plasma to his son. The younger Ward was approved for the treatment finally received the treatment over the weekend, a week after he was approved for it.
A spokesperson from the Red Cross said, "During this unprecedented pandemic, the healthcare community and blood collection organizations are working tirelessly to help ensure patients have access to the treatments they need." Ward believes that his efforts helped.
"You have no idea what it feels like as a father for all the people that tried to help me," he shared. "I'm just grateful, to every single person that ever shared, or liked, or anything. They called hospitals, they called newsrooms, they called the Red Cross, they called senators. It was shared several thousand times."
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Ward added while he's hopeful now that his son will recover, he's still concerned for others who might also be waiting for a tool that could possibly help save their lives.
"If it's happening to my son and I am the one father that was refusing to take no for an answer and spend a week outside of a hospital, imagine how many other parents are going through this," he said. "I just can’t even imagine. I'm going though it mentally and emotionally sitting here in a parking lot 100 feet from his room. Imagine the people that are sitting home and they have people on these machines too."
Ward continued, "Right now my son has the tool to fight this but there's other people laying in this hospital that don't, that should."
The hospital could not comment, citing privacy concerns.