By: Mike Mustiglione
It was a milestone to be proud of, as Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan released its one-thousandth recovering coronavirus patient this past week.
Ramdeo Radhay, 61, was wheeled out the front door by hospital staffers to the sounds of boisterous applause.
In a video of the event, Radhay flashed a thumbs up sign, shook hands with cardiologist Dr. Shankar Thampi, and declared, “I want to thank Dr. Thampi and everyone in this hospital a million times.”
“Radhay, an immigrant and former farmer from the South American country of Guyana, moved to the US in 2011 and worked in auto repair until he lost his job because of the coronavirus, hospital officials said,” reported the New York Post. “He has five kids, two of which are adopted — and lives with his wife, a daughter and two of his sons, who work as medical assistants for the hospital, officials said. Two of his sons, as well as his wife and daughter, who both work in a nursing home, tested positive for the disease, officials said. Fortunately, only the father needed to be hospitalized.”
During his stay at Lenox Hospital, Radhay “had been doing poorly. He required oxygen for most of the time he was hospitalized. Doctors had considered placing Radhay on a ventilator when they opted to start him on plasma instead,” said amny.com. “Once the plasma treatment started, Radhay’s condition turned around almost instantly.
“Over the last 48 hours he has had a remarkable recovery,” Dr. Nazish Ilyas, Division Chief of the Hospitalists and Associate Chair for Inpatient Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital, told amny.com “Today was the first day that we were able to take him off of oxygen completely. From where he came in two weeks ago to today, the progress he has made has really been remarkable.”
There have been other inspiring tales to come out of the hospital during the pandemic. The New Yorker, just days ago, profiled an intensive-care nurse named Cady Chaplin who has been on the front lines there combatting the virus, and her colleague and friend Karen Cunningham. Both live in Brooklyn.
“When I wear a uniform, I put it on and take on my nurse self,” Cady Chaplin said during the interview. “But you lose your personal eccentricities, so I like to wear weird T-shirts underneath my scrubs, even if it’s just for myself.
“Sometimes, after my shift, I walk in my apartment, slide down the door, and cry,” she added. “After I take a shower, I can’t quite figure out what it is I am supposed to be doing. Coming down from these shifts, hearing codes all day on the intercom, it’s hard to get out of that fight-or-flight response. I’ve been eating a lot of salted black licorice.”
