Gregg Garfield - COVID Patient Zero in LA Given 1% Chance of Living

Chris Waddell Living It

Along with twelve buddies on a skiing trip to Val Gardena in Italy, Gregg contracted COVID before anyone knew what to make of it. He’d spend thirty-one days in a coma, waking to an entirely new world, and sixty-four days in the hospital, having to learn to swallow as well as walk. He lost all the fingers on his right hand and all to the one knuckle on his left as the drugs tried to save his internal organs, leaving the extremities vulnerable. He had MRSA, sepsis, kidney failure, liver failure, pulmonary embolisms, and burst lungs — four of them. The first major victory, walking out of the hospital, was more will than skill, then, a little more than nine months after contracting the virus, he returned to skis. The guy with a 1% chance of living felt the wind on his face and the snow below him from the top of the mountain.