Three weeks after her release, Diana Aguilar's recovery is mercilessly slow. She still feels weak, with a shortness of breath and vivid nightmares that she’s back in the hospital, tied to the bed, unable to breathe NEW YORK : Her fever hit 105 degrees.
In her delirium, Diana Aguilar was sure the strangers hovering over her, in their masks and gowns, were angels before they morphed into menacing aliens.
As a doctor prepared to slide a ventilator tube down her throat, all she remembers thinking was: “I cannot breathe. I have no air.
I give up, I give up." Aguilar, in the throes of Covid-19, was starting her 10-day descent into ventilator limbo. The mechanical device to which her tube was attached is coveted for its ability to push