PITTSBURGH — 54-year-old Brenda Markle is leaving UPMC Mercy Hospital in a wheelchair. Doctors and nurses clapped as she made her way out the door because she spent 112 days fighting for her life against COVID-19. She spent 54 days in the ICU and 25 days on a ventilator.
“I couldn’t leave her side,” said Neil Butler Sr.
He drove from Connellsville to Pittsburgh each day Markle was in the hospital.
The Butler family said although Markle is at home and breathing on her own, she still requires around-the-clock care. She’ll need months of occupational, physical and speech therapy to learn to walk, talk and return to the person she was before COVID-19.
“When I walked past the rooms, and I seen how many people on the ventilator, and I walked past the same rooms the next day, and they was gone, I knew something happened man,” he said.
“It got real rough on her, and it took her down fast. Breathing and everything was real bad being on a ventilator for so long,” Butler said.
The family said they’re working to pay the medical bills they’re now facing. They also need to build a ramp for her wheelchair, buy a van to hold it and make improvements to the house.
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