Supporting life after the ICU [Video]

When Ashley Comrie contracted COVID-19 in the early days of the global pandemic, it began a journey in critical care at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto that continued long after she left the hospital.

She and her husband Kirk came down with the disease in late April 2020, and within a few days he rushed her to UHN’s Toronto General Hospital (TGH) suffering from a high fever and shortness of breath.

She was treated in a general COVID-19 ward, isolated from Kirk and the rest of her family and friends, which was the norm in the early days of the pandemic. Then on day four her oxygen levels suddenly plummeted, and she was transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) with acute respiratory distress syndrome.

“I was scared, completely alone and in terrible pain,” she recalls. “I was coughing up blood, had fluid on my heart and I wasn’t …