Rock Hill senior who beat COVID-19 calls recovery ‘better every day’

ROCK HILL, S.C. — Four weeks ago Ernest Rodriguez, 65, was in a hospital bed in ICU, on a ventilator. He’d been there 16 days, and didn’t know if he’d ever walk out again.

“I would pray and then I’d just break down crying,” he said.

When Channel 9 first spoke to him by Skype on April 21, it was his first day home from Piedmont Medical Center.

"That first day, my lungs actually hurt. It hurt to breathe. It felt like somebody was actually standing on my back,' Rodriguez said.

Now, he walks his Rock Hill neighborhood, pausing to rest every once in a while. He still has physical therapy because his lungs aren’t fully recovered.

“I have no endurance. I feel like I can walk the neighborhood. I come back to the house and I sit there for half an hour before I want to get up and move again, he said.”

Still, he’s a long way from where he was last month. Rodriguez doesn’t know how he got the virus, but was shocked at how serious it was. He said anyone who thinks they won’t suffer because they’re healthy is mistaken.

“Nobody was healthier than me. Nobody. I mean I was in great shape,” he said.

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Rodriguez was a gym rat. He was at the gym five days a week, worked out, did step aerobics and spin classes. Yet, COVID-19 almost took his life.

“Those of us that have experienced this, I don’t want anyone to experience this. It’s awful,” he said.

The whole time he was in the hospital, he didn’t even know his wife Antoinette had been there too, for three days. She caught the virus as well, but fortunately managed to come home quickly, without ever being on a ventilator.

He couldn’t see her or talk to her during his stay. It was lonely, but he remembers one nurse who stopped to pray with him. He said that moment gave him hope.

“As he was leaving the room he turned to me and he told me, can I pray with you? I said absolutely and he came over, he held my hand and it just flowed out of his mouth like if he was a preacher,” he said.

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Now, being back home, he’s put some weight back on, and has some color in his face again. He wanted to get up on his roof this weekend to clean the gutters. Fortunately, his wife shut that down pretty quick.

“I got a great wife,” he said. “She takes care of me.”

Rodriguez is still doing therapy with a breathing coach. He helps him strengthen his lungs, so he can take in more oxygen and get his endurance and energy back.

Nurse recovering after being on ventilator for weeks Nurse recovering after being on ventilator for weeks

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