Patient Zero

ust before the United States began shutting down to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the spring, emergency physician Dr. Larry Prablek visited New York City. While he was watching a Broadway musical with his daughter, she noted that his hands looked discolored. It odd, but he didn’t give it much thought. After returning to St. Louis, the 58-year-old worked his normal shift and returned home. But the steps between his car and house felt heavy, and he began gasping for breath. Panicked, he drove to nearby Mercy Hospital St. Louis. “The minute they shot my chest X-ray, I knew I had COVID,” he says. Within 10 hours of being admitted to the hospital’s COVID-19 floor, he was put into a medically induced coma on a ventilator. He awoke 22 days later.