After 41 days at the hospital, a COVID-19 patient was reunited with his wife and sister as he moved from the hospital to a rehab center, the next step on his journey to recovery.
Jerry Blais was hospitalized at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford with a fever and cough on March 25. His wife Karen said he was put on a ventilator four days later when he developed pneumonia from COVID-19. She described him as “close to death.”
But Jerry improved, enough to be put on a waitlist for a bed at Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford, one of the only rehabilitation centers in the state taking COVID-19 patients.
On Monday, after 12 days of waiting to be moved out of the hospital into rehab, he was transported. It was the first time he and Karen have seen each other in person since he was hospitalized.
Karen and his sister Rita were eager to greet him, joy obvious through their face masks as Jerry waved and asked for lasagna.
“We love you! Now you have to work hard,” they said as he was placed in the ambulance for transport.
