36-year-old COVID survivor wakes from coma with message for others

Steve Rose was among the sickest COVID patients at the UNC hospital. What started out feeling like "just a cold" ended up putting him in a coma and on life support.

He couldn't get of bed. Couldn't breathe.

When breathing became difficult, he went to the hospital in Statesville. They sent him by helicopter to UNC Chapel Hill.

"My chest was getting so tight," he recalls.

Only 36 years old and otherwise healthy, Rose had a vicious case of COVID.

"It took me down," he said.

He went into a medically induced coma before Thanksgiving, and he just awoke a couple of weeks ago.

"The last conversation I remember having was talking about Thanksgiving dinner, and I was looking forward to it," he said.

Doctors placed him on an ECMO machine – twice.

An ECMO machine supplies oxygen directly to a patient's blood because the virus has so badly damaged the lungs that a ventilator isn't enough. It's only available at the nation's largest medical centers.

He also underwent dialysis twice because of too much acid in his body fluids.

He's finally beginning to recover – but he faces a long recovery process.

"It's not over," he says. "I can't walk. I'm just getting strong enough to sit up."

He faces several weeks -- maybe months -- of physical rehab.

Rose never received the COVID vaccine – something he now regrets.

"You know," he says, "I think that it's almost selfish to not get the vaccine at this point."

He says he had gone so far into the pandemic without getting sick that he figured he could shrug off the vaccine.

He implores others not to have that attitude.

"Would you rather take a chance at dying?" he says. "I just want to put it out there that this stuff is real, and it can kill you."

He says doctors and nurses did a valiant job saving his life – and that he'll treasure his life, with his wife Crystal and two Australian shepherds, like never before.

"It's changed a lot of perspectives, absolutely," he says. "Thankful to be alive. More appreciative of the people in my life."

Rose still has a long way to go – but he's grateful to have a lot of life to live ahead.