Mother Reflects On Her Journey To Recovery After COVID-19

After three months and three days in hospitals and rehab facilities at the end of 2020, Laura Kopicky beat the odds by surviving a severe case of COVID-19. She is now at home in Centerville, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton, living her “new normal” with a thankful heart.

“The new normal is not a bad thing,” Laura says. “Given everything I’ve been through, I am really grateful to be here, to be doing as well as I am.”

In the fall of 2020 before the first COVID-19 vaccine had been FDA-approved, Laura’s 96-year-old mother – who had been living with Laura and her husband, Ed – was hospitalized for a bacterial infection. As she was recovering in the hospital, she tested positive for COVID and passed away shortly thereafter.

Laura had visited her mom every day in the hospital. She contracted COVID, as did Ed, her daughter, Lauren, and son, John. Ed spent eight days in the hospital recovering from COVID before being discharged. Laura had a much different experience.

Having difficulty breathing while trying to manage her COVID symptoms at home, Laura was taken by ambulance to a hospital near her home in Centerville. She remembers being intubated and extubated in the first few days, but she was still having difficulty breathing on her own and was reintubated. A pulmonologist said there was nothing more they could do for her there.

Lauren Kopicky, Laura’s daughter and a breast cancer surgeon at Cleveland Clinic, asked about the possibility of using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO for her mother. ECMO is a form of life support that can help a person whose lungs and heart aren’t functioning correctly.

“I knew the risks, but I knew she wouldn’t survive without ECMO,” Lauren recalls. “The pressure of the oxygen she needed was damaging her lungs.” 

After researching the handful of hospitals in the state that had adult ECMO capabilities and capacity in the intensive care unit (ICU) for another critically ill patient with COVID, Laura was transferred by helicopter to Cleveland Clinic’s main campus in Cleveland, Ohio. 

ECMO continuously pumps blood out of the body and then sends it through devices that add oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. It then pumps the blood back into the body. ECMO treatment can be especially valuable in making it possible for the heart or lungs to rest and heal from a respiratory infection, heart attack or trauma.

After nine days on ECMO in Cleveland Clinic’s ICU, Laura regained consciousness. “My brain was fuzzy about everything,” Laura says. “I thought I had died. I was on a ventilator and a feeding tube. I couldn’t lift a finger because I had lost all muscular strength.”

Laura remembers seeing her name and that she was a patient at Cleveland Clinic written on the glass window in the ICU. That helped her realize she was still alive. Laura says there was a prayer card, pictures of her grandchildren and their artwork. The note on the glass also said, “Happy Birthday!” The date was Oct. 28, 2020, Laura’s 65th birthday.

Looking back, Laura says, “I know there were a number of times in my whole journey I could have not made it. I understand how some patients don’t make it off the ventilator.”

“When you are on a ventilator, you think about every breath,” Laura adds. “You have to want to fight through it. You have to have a reason to live.”

Laura’s reasons to live include her husband, their four children and five granddaughters. 

“God wants me here still for some reason,” she says. Even when her mind was foggy in the hospital and Laura found it hard to pray, her family, friends, church congregation and people across the country she didn’t even know prayed for and supported her.

On Feb. 4, 2025, four years after being discharged and five years since the COVID pandemic began in the United States, Laura returned to the hospital with Lauren, and her son, John, to meet and thank some of the medical professionals who had taken care of her during the height of the pandemic. 

“I wasn’t looking for anything for myself,” Laura recalls, “but it was so gratifying and healing for me. It was a wonderful experience to meet some of the doctors, nurses and caregivers who took care of me. They saved my life.”

Lauren says she wanted to let the caregivers know how much their efforts meant to the family. “They provided comfort in challenging times,” especially when visitors were not allowed because of COVID restrictions.

Mani Latifi, MD, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at Cleveland Clinic, is part of the medical ECMO team that took care of patients with COVID in the ICU. He now sees Laura as needed on an outpatient basis to help coordinate her pulmonary care. 

Laura says Dr. Latifi has been a wonderful resource since she was discharged because he understands what her body went through. Since recovering from COVID, Laura says Dr. Latifi has helped her get through two very difficult respiratory infections.

“Laura had one of the most severe cases of COVID without dying,” Dr. Latifi says. To her advantage, she was healthy and active before she got COVID and had a limited past medical history, according to Dr. Latifi. “She had an incredible outcome and was motivated. She put in the work toward recovery.” 

“I wish I could thank everybody,” Laura says. “That would be a huge number of people. I owe them everything.”

“No matter what you face in life, you have to make the best of it,” Laura says. “We don’t pick our battles; they fall in our laps. Even in the worst situations, there are silver linings to be found if you look for them.”