Left: In April 2020 Debbie Kosta was on a ventilator for almost a month. Right: I m pushing through this COVID long-hauler disease by biking each day, says Kosta. Going from learning how to walk again to learning how to bike again took me a few months. Now I bike 24 miles up and down the Hudson. Image: Debbie Kosta; Agni Zotis
Updated July 17, 2021 at 7:38 PM ET
Debbie Kosta almost didn t survive COVID-19. In the early days of the pandemic, the 52-year-old was kept on a ventilator for over three weeks.
When she emerged from a coma and learned that she would pull through while another person in the hospital with her had died, Kosta was racked with guilt. She found herself asking, Why me?
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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: Anxiety, tension, helplessness - those are just some of the symptoms people with survivor s guilt experience. Survivor s guilt is known for affecting people like soldiers who come home from war or first responders who feel a sense of, why did I make it? - after a traumatic event. Now, after over 600,000 people died in this country, survivors of COVID-19 are asking themselves similar questions. Debbie Kosta of New York said when she got sick with the virus, she begged doctors to do all they could to keep her alive.
The story Tony Robbins told on his podcast was harrowing if also a little convoluted. One of his staff members had come down with a fever of 102 when she started watching the news and freaking out. She went to the hospital, presumably with COVID-19, and began to hyperventilate. The doctors put her on a ventilator then in a medically induced coma. “The doctor said … ‘If she doesn’t wake up in three weeks, we’ll declare her dead,’” Robbins recounted.
The self-help guru had been researching coronavirus treatments and decided pressure from ventilators could damage the lungs. “I’m not saying these people are trying to harm. I think they’re all trying to help, but the research is now showing a very different component there,” he said on the