New dad, NCDOT employee survives COVID-19, spent 59 days on ventilator – WRAL News
Castle Hayne, N.C. — Daniel Perry, a bridge maintenance engineer with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, was days away from welcoming his first child into the world when he got COVID-19.
Daniel, 34, said he was “living the dream” back in July. He was just offered a promotion at work and his wife was pregnant with their son.
When Daniel’s supervisor called him to offer the promotion, the soon-to-be dad had a fever.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to take it, I’m super excited, but (it will) probably be 3-4 days before I get back,’” he recalled.
The mild fever turned into a cough that left Daniel gasping for air. He was hospitalized for COVID-19, where he’d spend almost two months on a ventilator.
Daniel’s wife, Mindy, was eight months pregnant when he was admitted to New Hanover Regional Medical Center. She became infected with COVID-19 and was still ill when she gave birth to their son, Tucker. Tucker was healthy, and Daniel learned of his son’s birth while struggling to breathe in the intensive care unit.
“He knew Tucker was alive. He knew we were both in the ICU,” Mindy said.
Mindy was able to recover from COVID-19 and was able to go home with Tucker. Her mother helped her while they waited for Daniel to recover.
“I’d break one day, she’d pick me back up, and then the next day, she’d break, and I’d be fine, and I’d pick her back up,” she said. “I think having that support… we’d tell each other don’t give up.”
Doctors said Daniel only had a 6% chance of surviving, but Mindy held out hope.
One day, close to the couple’s anniversary, something wonderful happened.
“We had a talking with Daniel, whether he could hear us or not, we say that he did because we said, ‘Baby, you’ve got to breathe,’ Mindy recalled. “I said, ‘All I want for my anniversary is for you to breathe.’ The next day, he was breathing over the ventilator.”
Daniel had a long road to recovery ahead, saying, “I couldn’t lift my hands, my head. I couldn’t hardly move my face.”
“Every morning you get out of bed, and I feel like I ran 10 miles the day before,” Daniel recalled. “Everything hurts, everything is sore, but compared to laying in the bed, not being able to move, it’s amazing. It felt like it would never come back.”
Daniel’s doctors told him it would be at least a year before he could return to work. But in April, he began his new position within NCDOT’s Division 3 headquarters in Castle Hayne.
“When I originally started with DOT, I was with the bridge department. I left for a while and just always wanted to come back – that’s where my heart was,” Daniel said. “Throughout it all I just kept my faith in the Lord. He wasn’t quite ready for me yet.”
