A woman made a miraculous recovery after being taken off of a ventilator.
Rhonda Withem tested positive for COVID in early November.
Her symptoms were mild at first as she experienced a headache, cough, and congestion.
But when her condition worsened about a week later, she was taken to the hospital and put on a ventilator, CNN reports.
When Withem didn’t respond to efforts to wean her off the machine a few weeks later, doctors said she would likely never be able to breathe on her own again.
Her family made the tough call to remove her from the ventilator and prepared to say goodbye. They were told the 62-year-old would likely only have a few hours to live without respiratory support.
However, the opposite seemed to happen.
Withem’s daughter, Nicole Brewer, who was watching through a glass door with her sister and brother-in-law, said that her mother came “alive” after being taken off the ventilator.
"When they pulled everything off, she started waking up and saw my sister and [was] raising her hand to wave at us," Brewer recalled.
The reaction made the family hopeful, but they weren’t sure if Withem was out of the woods just yet.
With each coming day, Withem grew stronger. First, she was moved from the ICU into a regular COVID-19 room, and eventually, she made it into the rehabilitation room to regain strength from being bedridden.
On December 10, her daughter Rebekah Goshien got her birthday wish and was able to hug her mom.
"I was the first one who got to go see her, so that was a good birthday present for me," Goshien told the outlet.
Goshien says her mother is making great progress; she’s standing up in therapy, using a wheelchair to increase arm strength, and playing bingo to move her elbows and build endurance sitting up.
The family, who has set up a GoFundMe to help Withem with medical bills, calls her recovery a “miracle.”
“It's just all the glory and everything to God," Goshien added.
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