She spent seven weeks in a Lexington hospital with coronavirus. Now she’s going home.
After more than seven weeks in a Lexington hospital, a woman from New York has overcome COVID-19.
Baptist Health Lexington said Zoila Laserna was one of the first patients in the country to receive the plasma of another person who had already recovered from the coronavirus, a treatment referred to as convalescent plasma therapy.
Laserna left her home in Syosset, N.Y., on Long Island and came to Lexington March 11 to visit her brother, Baptist Health said in a news release Tuesday.
She began experiencing fatigue and initially thought she had a cold, her husband said in the news release, but it turned out to be coronavirus.
While her husband remained at their home in New York, Laserna was admitted to Baptist Health on March 22 and placed on a ventilator in the intensive care unit the next day, the hospital said.
“She persisted through an arduous course during her illness but is now recovering rapidly,” Dr. Mark Dougherty, an epidemiologist at Baptist Health, said in the release. “She received one of the first doses of convalescent plasma given in the country and we think that intervention, along with other innovative care, assisted in her recovery.”
The hospital said Laserna also received dialysis and was placed in a RotoProne bed, which turns patients to a face-down position to help improve lung functioning.
Dr. Yuri Villaran, an intensivist who cared for Laserna, said her positive attitude also played a major role in her healing.
“One of the things I remember the most, is once she was awake, and off the ventilator, seeing her trying to smile, still weak, but highly motivated, giving us all the reassurance that she would be fine,” Villaran said in the release.
Laserna was released from Baptist Health Tuesday and reunited with her husband, Diego Laserna, for the first time in two months. They have been married 23 years and have two grown children.
Diego Laserna said it was hard being separated from his wife during her illness, but he was glad she was in Lexington when she became ill.
“The blessing for my wife is that she was there,” he said. “There are no words that I have to commend the team that my wife had, all the doctors, all the nurses.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 10:52 PM.
