COVID nearly killed this PSW three years ago

A double-lung transplant saved him, but now those organs are also failing

- AMY DEMPSEY RAVEN

Clockwise from top: Edwin Ng shares a laugh with his massage therapist during his twice-a-week physiotherapy sessions. He sometimes gets distracted by trying to help others, especially if they are feeling down. Ng travelled to Jamaica with his family in May to celebrate three years since his double-lung transplant. On June 2, 2021, his wife Samantha wheels him out of the EW Bickle Centre for Complex Continuing Care after months in hospital.

Three years ago, Edwin Ng was lying in a hospital bed with tubes running from his neck and chest, connected to machines that were keeping him alive.

At 48, Ng, a father of three, had become one of the sickest COVID-19 patients in Ontario after contracting the coronavirus at the Barrie nursing home where he was a personal support worker. He was not expected to live.

But luck, a surgeon’s instincts, and a series of medical triumphs — including a double-lung transplant — set him on a different path. In June 2021, Ng went home after 137 days in hospital and started a new life.

“I call it an extension,” Ng said last week, reflecting on his survival. “Bonus time.”

Over the past three years, Ng, now 52, has watched his teenage son thrive in basketball, winning league MVP running offence for his team. He has seen his grandchildren start kindergarten, perform in dance recitals and run around his backyard with an energy he finds exhausting even to witness. He has spent so much time at home with his wife, Samantha Ng, 49, that she has taken to complaining, in jest, “I can’t get rid of him.”

Last month, Ng spent a week on a beach in Jamaica with his family, celebrating three years since the surgery that saved his life. His wife and their three children, ages 28, 23, and 13, spent much of the trip laughing and shaking their heads at his twisted sense of humour, and his tendency to befriend everyone he meets.