A double lung transplant later, a 43-year-old Texas man who didn’t think he needed a COVID vaccination is now hoping others like him will get inoculated so they, too, don’t learn the hard way that the pandemic that has killed 600,000 Americans is serious.
“If I knew what I know now, I would have definitely went through with the vaccination,” Joshua Garza told ABC News.
According to the Sugarland, Texas, gas and oil industry worker, he had an opportunity to get vaccinated in January and took a pass. Later that month, he contracted the deadly virus. On Feb. 2, Garza fell while trying to walk and was rushed to a hospital, where he was hooked up to a machine that pumped and oxygenated his blood. He said it took three weeks before his lungs were “already shot.”
Garza was put on a transplant list and found a new pair of lungs, which were transplanted into his body on April 13. On May 27, he finally left the hospital with a new lease on life.
“Mr. Garza is an extreme example of somebody who had complete lung failure, and there was really no other way out in the immediate future other than transplant,” Houston Methodist director Dr. Howard Huang told ABC News.
Huang, who was one of the physicians who saved Garza, said it was “almost miraculous” that everything from finding a hospital room during the pandemic to getting a new pair of lungs so quickly played out in Garza’s favor. The hospital reportedly has several patients on life support awaiting lung transplants.
According to Huang, there’s no guarantee Garza wouldn’t have been ill if he’d been vaccinated, but “it’s likely that we would have never gotten to this point.”
He called Garza “extremely lucky” and noted that getting a couple of shots is a lot easier than getting a new pair of lungs.
ABC News reports that Garza is urging others not to follow his lead, though commenters on that media outlets website expressed frustration over the fact that Garza undermined the dangers of the pandemic in the first place and that he was given a pair of lungs that might be needed by someone who behaved more responsibly.
