Intensive Care

Dan Radice was an exercise specialist who brought Dr. Rick Pitera through cardiac rehab. Now it was Rick’s turn to save Dan’s life

- DR. RICHARD PITERA JR and DANIEL RADICE

RICK: St. Barnabas felt like a war zone, one of the busiest hospitals in New Jersey for Covid-19 admissions—close to being overwhelmed. I’m an anesthesiologist, a St. Barnabas lifer. The entire postanesthesia care unit had been converted to an ICU. I intubated patients, monitored how they were doing on ventilators. I tried to keep patients’ spirits up and reached out to their families. I’m big on making that human connection, especially after my heart attack six years earlier. But patients were dying every day. We were short on masks, other PPE, ventilators. Hope seemed like one more essential running low.

DAN: I was in the bathroom at home when the walls started swimming. I grabbed for the sink just as my body sank to the floor. “Christine!” I yelled. In seconds, my wife was at my side. It was March 26. Six days earlier, we’d both tested positive for Covid-19. She’d gotten better. But I had a fever of 103.8. Sweating buckets. “I’m calling 911,” Christine said. “We’re getting you to St. Barnabas.” I’d worked there forever, moving up from patient transport to a cardiac exercise specialist. Christine’s a nurse. But we’d resisted going to the hospital. We knew how bad it was there.

RICK: I was doing rounds, checking patient charts. We’d had a couple new admissions.