A North Texas mother of three has been released from the hospital after battling COVID-related issues for over a year.
Jazmin Kirkland spent 370 days in medical institutions undergoing a series of treatments to combat the illness she contracted while on a family vacation in August 2021.
When Jazmin Kirkland first became ill, she and her husband, Kody Kirkland, left their vacation and drove to their home in Trenton. Kody also caught COVID-19, but his wife Jazmin got progressively sicker while he recovered.
On August 3, 2021, the Kirklands drove to Texoma Medical Center. “I got there, and I could barely walk into the hospital,” said Mrs. Kirkland.
She was treated in three different facilities in North Texas. During her recovery, Kirkland spent 188 days on an oxygenation machine and more than ten months on a ventilator.
“I don’t care if I wake up, and I don’t have an arm or leg, as long as I’m here and I’m able to be with my kids, just please let me live,” Jazmin recalled thinking.
Through the course of her recovery, Jazmin had to relearn essential functions such as walking and eating. She still requires oxygen as her lungs were virtually “destroyed,” according to Yvette Oquin, the family’s GoFundMe page organizer.
Jazmin recalled, “The toughest part of the whole journey was being rejected for lung transplant candidacy due to high levels of antibodies making it nearly impossible to match a potential donor. At the time we thought a lung transplant was the only way forward to survive.”
After surviving the unusually difficult fight with COVID-19, Jazmin credited her survival to doctors, a strong will to live, and prayer. The couple hopes others will gain hope after reading his wife’s recovery story and how she overcame, “even if it’s just one person,” explained Kody Kirkland.
The couple said that, at the time when they contracted the virus, they had not yet been vaccinated.
As she was leaving the hospital, Jazmin Kirkland received a round of applause from Texoma Medical Center staff members.
“I’m so thankful,” she said.