On Easter Sunday, Michael Kevin Rathel opened his eyes after a week in a medically-induced coma at Orlando Health. Just a few days earlier, the father of three tested positive for the coronavirus and fell ill. “The virus just accelerated so quickly,” his wife Stacie Rathel said.
Stacie Rathel said after he was admitted to the hospital, she decided she wouldn’t stand by and watch him spiral downward. She pressed her husband’s doctors to use an exploratory plasma therapy she read about before the invisible virus infected her husband. “I was relentless, I was not about to give up and I was so lucky and really fortunate to find a plasma donor,” Rathel said.