‘Thank you for everything’: Toronto COVID-19 survivor returns to ICU with message for care team

"Want to say thank you for everybody taking care of me ... thank you for everything," he said.

A year and a half since Mario Castillo was taken off a ventilator at Humber River Hospital after spending nine weeks intubated, fighting COVID-19, he returned to thank the medical team that saved his life.

“Want to say thank you for everybody taking care of me … thank you for everything,” he said.

Seeing Castillo healthy is a huge morale boost for the front-line health-care workers who cared for him during the first wave of the pandemic.

“The team is overwhelmed. I have a nurse that stayed overnight just to see Mario. She took care of him and hearing Mario speak today, I had goosebumps,” said Cecile Marville-Williams, program director with responsibility for critical care, cardiology, respiratory and oncology.

Marville-Williams lost her mother to COVID-19, so seeing Castillo thriving is even more meaningful.

“To see him today walking, talking, to be able to come back and give back to us by sharing his experience just made me feel very overwhelmed,” she said.

Castillo was the first COVID-19 patient to be intubated in the intensive care unit at Humber River Hospital.

In late March of 2020, the mechanic went to the emergency room after leaving work early one day with a fever and runny nose and spending a week sick in bed.