HUMMELSTOWN, Pa. (WHTM) — Julie Brown spent nearly nine months in several hospitals recovering from covid. She was released from the Pa. Health Rehab Hospital in Hummelstown on Tuesday afternoon.

She was admitted last February, before the vaccine roll-out. “I tested positive and tried to fight it at home, but was sent to the hospital when I began to have oxygen problems,” Brown said. “A short time after, I was in the ICU and on a ventilator.” Brown says she was told that she may need lung transplant surgery. “That was stressful. We know the survival rate is very low, so we kept at it, and we didn’t need to get it done.”

Brown says staff at all five hospitals were a support system that she never imagined. “They did their jobs as medical professionals and the nurses and therapists are underrated,” Brown said. “They are there for you to talk to and they help you mentally and physically get past some dark and uncertain days.”

Julie was greeted at her home by friends and family members. She will require homecare services and ongoing therapy, but she says she is looking forward to stuffed cabbage as her first meal when she sits down at the dinner table for the first time in nine months.