According to reports, the 69-year-old woman was on a ventilator for weeks after getting COVID-19. Her son said that his mother hadn’t responded to doctors’ efforts to wake her from a coma, so the family made the difficult decision to take her off of life support. The family also made funeral arrangements and picked out her casket and headstone as they prepared to say goodbye.
Her son, Andrew Lerman, said that on the day they planned to remove her from life support, he got a call from one of her doctors at the medical center in Maine. The doctor told him that he needs to come right away because his mother, Bettina Lerman, woke up. The family was in the middle of buying a headstone on Oct. 29 when Bettina’s doctor called to say she’d woken up.
Andrew said that his 69-year-old mother had a number of health conditions, including diabetes, and had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery a couple of years ago.
The 69-year-old woman from Florida started showing COVID-19 symptoms in early September. Andrew said that she went into the hospital September 12 and went on the ventilator on the 21st. He also said that his mother was not vaccinated. She reportedly was planning to get her shots when she got sick.
Unfortunately, her condition deteriorated and the doctors told the family she wasn’t expected to recover. The doctors told Andrew that they couldn’t get his mother to wake up. The doctors also said that Bettina’s lungs are completely destroyed. There’s irreversible damage. they said.
But, the good news was that the 69-year-old woman didn’t suffer any organ failure and no one really understands how she’s doing so well. Her son was able to talk to his mother for hours Wednesday. Andrew said she was able to move her hands and arms and can breathe on her own for a few hours at a time with some oxygen support, instead of the ventilator.
According to reports, Bettina is already getting physical therapy to help rebuild the muscle strength she lost during the ordeal.
According to reports, Andrew and his mother live in Florida, but they’d both been coming up to Maine a lot to care for his father, who has stage 4 cancer. And, when they didn’t think she would recover, the family gave up his mother’s Florida apartment, collected important family items and donated the rest of her things to other residents in her building.
His sister set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help her mother as she recovers. This story will be updated as new information become available.