Alpine man gets Christmas miracle

ALPINE, Texas (KOSA) - Robert Fierro has diagnosed with COVID-19 in mid-October. It didn’t look good for him then, but it looks much better now.

“What I’ve done, where I’ve been, is basically a miracle,” Fierro said.

Ten days after his diagnosis, Fierro was taken to El Paso and put on a ventilator.

“Doctors told my wife that I would need a miracle to survive,” he said.

A miracle is what they got.

After being intubated for over a month, Fierro woke up.

He’d lost all his strength. He’d also lost 50 pounds, nearly a quarter of his body weight. But it was what he gained that meant the most.

“When I saw my wife and child come into the room, it put everything into a different perspective for me,” Fierro said.

It wasn’t just family. People he didn’t know reached out in support.

“I didn’t know I had that many people behind me, and I’m thankful to them and to everybody who said a prayer, who said a good thing, who thought about me,” Fierro said. “And I made it!”

His journey is not over. Thursday afternoon, Fierro experienced a minor miracle. He found out he’d be discharged from the hospital in El Paso, able to return home for Christmas.

And once home, the man who describes his past self as “standoffish” has a new lease on life.

“It was a blessing and a realization that you have a second chance,” he said.

Fierro’s road to recovery still has some miles left.

He will check into a rehab hospital in Alpine, where he’ll have to relearn to walk.

If you want to learn more about what you can do to help Fierro, you can go here.

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