Man Hospitalized For 2 Months Says Wife's Voice Helped Him Out Of Coma

January 7, 2021

A man in South Carolina believes it was his wife's voice that helped him through a coma.

Don and Lacy Gillmer

Don Gillmer, 43, was hospitalized just a few days after testing positive for Coronavirus.

"Didn't sleep that night," he told WKRC. "Woke up early the next morning, packed a bag and knew it was time to go to the hospital."

Gillmer had never had to go to the hospital for illness or injury before, but he would have to stay there for the next 63 days.

"I received convalescent plasma twice, Remdesevir," he said. "Nothing was working. Nothing was helping me recover, so I'll really never forget when they came in with papers I needed to sign to go on a ventilator. That scared me."

Doctors had to place him in a medically-induced coma. They called his wife, Lacy, who rushed to come see him, along with his father.

Gillmer claims his wife's words of encouragement helped him make it through.

"I just told him that he was doing great, that they were taking such good care of him. He was in amazing hands," Lacy told the news station.

Gillmer says he not only heard his wife speaking to him, but that it helped save him.

"I swear I heard her voice and, by the time she left, I was stable," he said, "She's my angel, you know. She's the reason I'm here."

After weeks of learning to walk again, he was finally discharged. He still attends physical therapy twice a week -- which, he says, he wouldn't be able to get through without the support of his wife.

"I think about her drive to the hospital the night they told her that I may not make it," he said. "You know, can't imagine that, so tell her often, I don't know that I could have been as strong as her."