Help Jeff DiLazzero Recover From COVID

Our dear friend, husband, father, son and brother, Jeff DiLazzero, needs your help!

Two days after Thanksgiving, Jeff started having some shortness of breath, and his symptoms began. His first rapid COVID test came back negative, and it was a couple of days before the PCR confirmed what he was already feeling. He was positive for COVID-19. Within days, his wife Kim and daughter Isabella tested positive too. However, while they were getting better over the next few days, Jeff felt progressively worse. Sleeping all day, feeling weak, feverish and achy, wheezing.

When Jeff was finally able to get an appointment to receive the monoclonal antibodies, he got in his car and drove to the hospital where his treatment was scheduled to take place. He was told that his oxygen was too low and the hospital could not administer the antibodies. Jeff had to be admitted. That was 12/7/21, and he has been in the hospital since then. It has been 12 weeks so far.

Once hospitalized, Jeff’s journey progressed from bad to worse. He went in with an oxygen saturation level of 82%, and when his breathing continued to worsen, he ultimately ended up on a ventilator just two weeks later. This stint on the ventilator lasted six weeks, and during this time, his body endured the worst beating of its life.

During the six weeks, Jeff had several medical complications, including secondary bacterial pneumonia, a fungal infection, and a severe pressure wound. He also endured five separate incidents of pneumothorax—in other words, his right lung collapsed once, and his left collapsed four times. He had several life-saving procedures, including the placement of a cumulative 12 chest tubes between the five incidents. On more than one occasion, his family was told that the staff was uncertain whether he could survive another pneumothorax or if the treatment would even work. They sat anxiously by, waiting to see if Jeff would make it through the hour, the day, the weekend, the week.

After experiencing a 70% collapse of his left lung that did not respond to interventions, Jeff was moved to Cooper Hospital for lung surgery. When he was finally evaluated and found to be a candidate, the surgeons found that his lung was so severely damaged and diseased that they had to remove 15% of his left lung. After the surgery, the surgeon described the situation to Kim—“this was my hail Mary pass.”

Thank goodness he was able to successfully make that pass. It is now two weeks since his surgery, and Jeff is doing significantly better. He is conscious, eating real food, talking and able to breathe. But, he has lost over 80 pounds, and while he often had a belly, much of that is muscle mass that he will need to rebuild in order to walk, sit and even use a computer. He is going to need a lot of help getting through this—even though he is a stubborn and strong guy! Before he got sick, Jeff was active in mixed martial arts with his daughter, Bella, and we believe that this cardiovascular conditioning was a major factor in him being strong enough to fight this horrible disease.

Jeff’s next step will be to recover to the point that he is considered medically stable enough to be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital to work on regaining his strength and physical conditioning. Once there, we hope that he can hold on to his therapeutic gains, get a little stronger every day, and go home to Kim and Isabella.

As many of you know, Jeff is an attorney in solo practice, and he has been out of work for over three months. While we hope that he will be able to get back to work in the future, we know that it will realistically take several months for him to reach that level of recovery. Many friends have expressed interest or even a desire to lend a helping hand financially, and in response, we are offering this GoFundMe page for those who are so inclined.

Jeff's family and friends are grateful for your help and support!