Patients wrote letters of thanks to more than 100 doctors and nurses

Gerson, 45 years old, from Gerson, entered NYU Langone Tisch hospital on March 18 due to difficulty breathing, uncontrolled coughing, and fever of 39.4 degrees Celsius. A day later, he was diagnosed with nCoV infection and had to be on a ventilator.

After recovering, he spent 5 months searching for all the doctors and nurses who helped him during his hospital stay.

`I just feel extremely grateful and lucky. The story is not how I survived, but how they saved my life. I really feel like I have to find them and say thank you,` he said.

Gerson wrote a letter in November thanking doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and other medical staff.

`If you receive this letter, you have contributed to saving my life. After trying my best to look up your names, I realized how many people were involved in my treatment.`

In fact, Gerson spent months searching for the names of the doctors and nurses who treated him.

Jeff Gerson celebrates being discharged from the hospital at the end of April 2020.

He wanted to throw a big party for them.

`I looked out the window and suddenly realized: The world is no longer the same as it was before I went into a coma,` he said.

At the end of May, a month after being discharged from the hospital, a nurse helped him find 60 people.

`Except for the nurses I was exposed to, there really weren’t many opportunities to say thank you to anyone. That left a void in my emotions. I survived, shedding tears.`

His medical team consists of more than 100 people.

It was early March, the beginning of the epidemic.

Angel said both the ECMO and intubation methods used for Gerson were controversial.

`Jeff is one of nearly 50 patients receiving ECMO at NYU during the pandemic,` he said.

When Dr. Angel read the letter Gerson wrote to the medical team, he said he felt great, but also emphasized that the team was just trying to complete their job.

`At the end of the day, we don’t expect anyone to say thank you, owe money or do anything like that,` he said.

After long shifts and weeks without a break, Dr. Angel said the letter was extremely meaningful.

`To see someone who almost died in a hospital room make a full recovery and then be able to say thank you really means something to us,` he said.

Medical staff at NYU Langone Tisch Hospital congratulate Gerson after he was released from the hospital.

However, Gerson was unable to contact a single doctor.

Gerson learned this while re-reading his entire insurance file.

`I suddenly realized that a doctor had sacrificed his life to fight Covid-19. I was one of the last people he treated,` he recounted.

Gerson contacted Dr. Mehl’s wife and daughter by phone, sharing how grateful he was to their loved ones.

The number of thank you letters he has sent has now reached 151.

`Keep doing what you do. Keep being heroes and know that you will forever have my gratitude,` he wrote in the letter.