A 59-year-old pilot from the United Kingdom has been hailed for having the longest hospital stay due to COVID-19 and recover in the end.
Nicholas Synnott, an international pilot, back in March 2020 caught the virus in Houston, Texas, in the United States, where he was admitted to the UT Health and Memorial Hermann Hospital, as per ABC 13 on Dec. 24.
On why it took Synnott so long to recover, doctors noted that Synnott went into respiratory failure and that “every organ of his body was affected by COVID-19.”
Synott was placed on a ventilator, then on a heart and lung machine, according to the report.
“But yet, because his health was so good as a pilot prior to the illness, he could sustain all this and survive something as serious as this,” UT Health Dr. Biswajit Kar told the news outlet.
“We were firstly overwhelmed by the joy that someone this sick could make it,” he added.
Synnott’s wife, Nicola, meanwhile, spent each day beside her husband as he recovered from the disease, something Synott is extremely grateful for.
“With the support of my wife, and the thought of going back to my kids. It was a tough journey but, we’ve got where we are,” Synott was quoted as saying.
Memorial Hermann’s Dr. Bindu Akkanti, who admittedly had to ask if Synnott was “still in there” amid the huge number of medications and multi-organ issues he had, credited his recovery to Nicola.
“I think all of us on our team agreed that it was his wife,” the doctor told the news outlet.
Synnott returned home to the UK just before Christmas after exactly 243 days or nearly eight months at the hospital, as per The Times via The Sun yesterday, Jan. 19. The average COVID-19-related hospital stay in the US is three to five days.
In an interview with the newspaper, Synnott said he hopes that author Derek Draper, husband of “Good Morning Britain” host Kate Garraway, gets to finally go home to beat his record of surviving the longest stay in hospital due to COVID-19. Ian Biong /ra
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