LaSalle cross-border nurse spends 7 weeks in ICU recovering from COVID-19
Wife says Torry Robertson's journey to recovery is still far from over
A LaSalle resident and cross-border health-care worker who was diagnosed with COVID-19 in late March has been released from hospital and is finally beginning rehab after spending a total of seven weeks in the intensive care unit, as well as almost two more months recovering in hospital.
And though Torry Robertson — who works as an ICU, ER and interventional radiology nurse at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit, Mich. — was cleared to enter rehab on Tuesday, his wife Heidi says his recovery journey is far from over.
"He had renal failure, he had blood clots and [his] blood pressure [was] up and down," Heidi said, adding that he was also diagnosed with MRSA and bacterial pneumonia, in addition to pneumonia brought on by COVID-19. He also spent 38 days connected to a ventilator.
"Then once things started to settle down a little bit, he was moved to the seventh floor, but he ended up getting infections on the seventh floor of the hospital," Heidi said.
Heidi said she'll forever be grateful for the medical staff who cared for her husband while he was in the ICU, as well as the team of medical professionals who encouraged them and continued to provide support while Torry recovered once released from the ICU.
"One of the doctors once told me … 'Imagine a big tidal wave and Torry's in a boat. He's made it over the big tidal wave now. So he's still on this boat, he has a little leak in his boat and he's trying to make it to shore and he's working on patching that leak up,'" she said.
"Ever since I had that conversation with that doctor, it just seemed like I could think more positively."
WATCH | Torry Robertson released from hospital:
Despite having tested negative for COVID-19 three times, it's still not clear how long it will take Torry to recover in rehab.
"Because he has even the brain bleeds, he's not all the way coherent like how he used to be," Heidi said. "But that'll just take months and months of rehabilitation."
Torry doesn't even remember getting sick, she said.
"At first he didn't remember why he was in the hospital," Heidi said. "And I tell him, but he doesn't remember being at home and having fever and being so sick at home and being taken [to hospital]."
As for why Torry had such a difficult experience with COVID-19, Heidi said medical staff told her it likely had to do with the significant quantity of coronavirus — the virus responsible for COVID-19 — in his system.
"Because Torry's a nurse … they suspect he caught it from a patient that he was doing chest compressions on at the hospital," she said. "They just explained to me that the amount of the virus, or the viral load, that he took into himself was very, very great, because it was coming out of the breathing of somebody who was so close to him."
Having witnessed the devastating effects of COVID-19 in her husband, Heidi said others need to protect themselves completely against the disease.
"Anyone that knows our family knows how scary [COVID-19] is," she said.
With files from Jonathan Pinto