My 2020 Story: 23 Days in a Coma With COVID-19

At age 34, Marvin Pena was healthy and running a successful wood flooring business—until he became seriously ill with COVID-19.

Marvin Pena was young, healthy, and running a successful wood flooring business with 10 employees—until he tested positive for COVID-19 in early March 2020. In this harrowing account, published recently in Wood Floor Business, Pena - who at the time was a perfectly healthy veteran with no pre-existing conditions and two tours of duty in Iraq under his belt - tells the story of how he contracted the disease and became seriously ill, and how the illness has affected him and his once-booming flooring business. Even now, nine months (and a $500,000 medical bill) after being released from the hospital, Pena still is dealing with physical and psychological aftereffects. He writes, "I'm lucky that I survived, but if I get that sick again, that will probably be it."