By BRIAN MARSCHHAUSER
November 23, 2020 at 10:30 AM
YORKTOWN, N.Y. – Vinny Malvarosa, a 51-year-old Yorktown resident, went to the emergency room on Wednesday, March 11, with a fever.
“I thought I would be gone two or three hours,” he said. “Instead, I was gone 103 days.”
At the hospital, Malvarosa was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia and tested positive for COVID-19. Around midnight on Saturday, March 14, he was intubated and slipped into a month-long coma.
“One doctor said when she was given my case, she was told I wouldn’t live beyond the next couple of days,” Malvarosa said. “Somehow, I persevered and woke up sometime in mid-April. I couldn’t lift my arm to scratch my nose, but I was alive.”
Malvarosa spent the next two months in a rehab facility, interrupted only by a week at Yale-New Haven Hospital for an infection and panic attacks. On June 23, he left Gaylord Specialty Healthcare on his own two feet to the sounds of a recording of “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John.