PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — An Ocean County police officer who survived a severe case of COVID-19 returned to Cooper University Hospital Monday to thank the staff who saved his life.
Manchester Township Police Lt. Antonio Ellis was cheered by pompom-waving Cooper staffers as he returned to the place where he spent 45 days in the ICU battling COVID-19 in March and April 2020.
Ellis, 43, suffered three cardiac arrests and lost 40 pounds while he was in a coma for 30 days.
“When I woke up, the world had changed,” Ellis said Monday at a ceremony in the hospital lobby.
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“If you think about it, I got sick in early March and I woke up sometime in April. And I had a full beard and the world had changed.”
Ellis was treated with ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a process that allows the heart and lungs to rest by oxygenating a patient’s blood outside the body.
“It hit me pretty hard, pretty fast,” Ellis said.
“COVID affects the entire body, from the lungs to the kidneys to the brain. He had just about all of it,” said Cooper ICU doctor Jason Bartok.
“As sick as you can possibly be and still be here, is the best way I can possibly express it.”
“In the hospital this is a very sterile environment,.” Ellis said.
“You don’t get to hear birds chirp. You don’t get to hear things go on. So when you can get back out in to the world, you get to really appreciate all of those things that I could have lost.”
Ellis said he had to relearn how to do basic things like walk and write, but he’s since returned to the force and earned a promotion.
“When we say miraculous, we mean miraculous,” Bartok said.
“There’s a part of this that is science and medicine. There’s a part of it that we can’t fully explain. And we are grateful for that.”
Ellis said he didn’t have a chance to properly thank the Cooper staff when he left last year.
But Monday he returned, bringing the staff donuts, as well as heartfelt gratitude.