NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. (WCBS 880) — The lawyer from New Rochelle who became known as Westchester County's "patient zero" is telling his story.
Lawrence Garbuz tells the "Today" show that when he woke up one late February morning with a cough and low grade fever coronavirus never crossed his mind.
"Look, I'm a lawyer. I sit at a desk all day. I think at the time we were sort of focusing on individuals who maybe had traveled internationally. Something that I had not done," he told host Savannah Guthrie.
His wife, Adina, thought he had pneumonia.
"Over the weekend it increasingly got worse and worse. He was struggling to breathe. I was trying to keep him calm. You know, you feel awful and it's scary," she said. "He was suffering and I couldn't watch it."
When her husband was diagnosed, his wife quickly reached out to everyone she could who may have been exposed.
"Sharing everywhere we went, that was most important, I didn't want anyone else to get sick," she said
The congregants that attended a bat mitvah and funeral at his synagogue were immediately quarantined and a containment zone was set up in his New Rochelle neighborhood.
Doctors put Garbuz in a coma and a ventilator did the breathing for him for three weeks.
"Healthy vibrant person all of a sudden, overnight, gets so sick, so quickly. I know that at this point we're not so surprised by that, but at that time it was shocking," his wife said.
Garbuz says the near death experience taught him what is really important.
"We need to appreciate our family and our friends and to live life," he said, adding that his wife saved his life. "I'm thankful that I'm alive, it's been quite a journey."