CLAY COUNTY, Fla. – For the first time in 47 days, Noah Battle Sr. will spend the night at home with his wife after he was released from the hospital on Friday.
“I am headed home,” Battle Sr. said. “I get to put my hands on my beautiful wife and that’s the most exciting part of all this, being able to hug her and just touch her.”
Battle, a Marine Corps veteran and postal worker for 35 years, tested positive for COVID-19 on March 13 and was the first documented case in Clay County. His wife Patricia Battle, who also tested positive in March, brought him home from the hospital on Friday.
For the past several weeks, his body has been fighting COVID-19.
“I am a very healthy person,” Noah Battle said. “I don’t catch flus, I never had a cold that I can remember, no pneumonia, I am not familiar with fevers, it was the fever that started off. A loss of appetite, all I wanted to do was drink water.”
Patricia Battle recalls the moment she knew something was seriously wrong.
“I took his temperature, which at the time was, 103.4,” she said. “I came home on March 7, Saturday, and immediately he said, ‘I need to go to the ER.’”
His condition declined quickly.
He was tested at an Orange Park hospital on March 13. When he was intubated, it came back positive. At that point he had a breathing tube in and he was placed into a medically induced coma in the ICU.
The next morning, Patricia Battle started feeling strange.
“It felt like my face had lava on it, my face was just hot,” she said. “It was just my face. I quickly took my temp, it was 101.8.”
Patricia Battle also tested positive for novel coronavirus. She was hospitalized from March 17 until March 23.
“I was on the 3rd floor, Noah was on the 5th floor. It was during the time I was in the hospital, I got a call from the doctor to do the DNR. I was one floor away from my husband and I couldn’t get to him and I have to let him go,” she said. “That was the hardest part, just not being able to see him.”
She wasn’t sure if her husband would survive.
“I had to think back to a time when Noah told me he never wanted to be on life support,” Patricia Battle said. “He said, ‘If God is calling me home, that’s where I want to be, and that’s where you should want me to be.’”
Patricia said she prayed and her prayers were answered. Now Noah is home recovering and says he feels great.
“I am walking with a walker," he said. “I am learning how to walk again after being on my back for so long. I lost a lot of muscle mass. I lost 47 pounds."
According to the Florida Department of Health, Noah had contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case.
