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'I was scared he was going to die': Boise family on the coronavirus after father was hospitalized for 2 weeks

The family says their father continues to consistently cough after surviving COVID-19.

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BOISE, Idaho — Gabino Gonzalez thought he could kick COVID-19 on his own. He was a healthy father in his early 40s who exercised regularly. That changed the day after Father's Day.

Gabino's son, Alex Gonzalez. told KTVB that he, his girlfriend, and his family, stayed in on Father's Day, opting to stay in and watch movies and eat pizza all day. It was shortly after that that Gabino's health began to deteriorate.

He went and eventually tested positive for COVID-19 and that's when the symptoms started to worsen.

"At first he was coughing more consistently throughout the day," Gonzalez said. "The two days before he went to the doctor, at night he was gasping for air like he couldn't breathe." 

"My mom was urging him to call 911 and go to the hospital, but he would just proudly state that he's fine and he's gonna get better. He had difficulty talking he wouldn't even talk. He had trouble mustering just like one word and it was just really hard to see." 

Gonzalez said by the time he and his mom convinced his father to go to the hospital, they worried it was too late.

"He couldn't even get up really," he said. We'd have to like carry him to the car and my mom had to like carry him in a wheelchair to the hospital basically. He couldn't really walk on his own." 

"It had gotten so close at that point to the lung infection they didn't know how he was breathing without oxygen," Gonzalez's girlfriend Adrianna Crowe said. "Even to like to wait to leave he had to sit down cause he couldn't even stand to wait to leave the house like that's how bad it was his breathing at that point."

Once admitted, only Mrs. Gonzalez was allowed inside.

"I was scared he was going to die and we were like one morning going to wake up and like 'Mr. Gonzalez, sad to hear that your father passed away in the night,' something like that. I was so scared every single night because of that."

Things finally started to improve on the third day of Gabino's hospital stay.

"On the third day in, he called me and he could actually like speak full sentences and he sounded like he was getting better and recovering," Gonzalez said. 

Gabino spent two and a half weeks in the hospital before he was released. Since then, he has regained his sense of smell and taste, while his coughing, though improving, remains consistent.

"It's been really sad just depressing there's this gloomy energy in the house because it feels like someone passed away, but no one has," he said. "It's like him being gone it already feels like he's gone so when he came back it felt like he came back from the dead almost."

Gabino's doctors are encouraging him to go for walks to get his lung capacity going again.

RELATED: 'I was so fatigued': Boise man describes COVID-19 recovery after experiencing mild symptoms

RELATED: 'I stopped breathing': Nampa woman describes her COVID-19 near-death experience

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