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Ambler man returns home after spending 13 days on ventilator fighting COVID-19
FOX 29's Jennifer Joyce shares his story.
AMBLER, Pa. - The little things are the big things after spending 20 days alone in the hospital on a ventilator battling the monster that is COVID-19.
"I got out all my important papers and put them on my desktop," Robert Calandra, 68, told FOX 29. "I thought I was dying."
FULL COVERAGE: CORONAVIRUS
He says he was playing a regular game of ice hockey one day and the next he couldn't get out of bed.
Calandra says a device called a pulse oximeter prompted his lifesaving care. His primary care physician doctor Mike Cirigliano recommended his family purchase the pulse oximeter, which showed his oxygen level sitting at a concerning 80 percent.
"If Mike did not tell them to get that. I would've died in bed," he added.
Bob's fiancée Monica rushed him to Penn Presbyterian Hospital.
Calandra called his daughter Lindsey, who is a nurse practitioner at CHOP, and told her he was going to be intubated.
"For me, my thought was is this the last time I'm going to hear my dad's voice," she said.
Lindsey spent the next several days on the phone with her dad's care team, which was an uncomfortably distant position.
After 13 days, he was taken off a ventilator — a sign of hope for the entire hospital.
"One of the doctors came into my step down unit and said do you mind if we take your picture? We wanna show the doctors, nurse practitioners, and nurses in the ICU that there are people making it out," he said.
After nearly 3 weeks, Calandra headed home, 27 pounds lighter, but alive.
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