The First COVID Patient in Burbank: Gregg Garfield’s Fight to Survive

which is full suits, has Matt gear, the whole mind you're just to come see you.

“Just to walk in the room, to address whatever I was going on with me.”

So I code it, I'm done if they weren't ready. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 888-831-1581, and if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. One call placement is affiliated with Carrera Treatment Wellness and Spa and One Method Treatment

Centers. Today's guest on the show is Greg Garfield. He was patient zero at the very beginning of COVID, but to open the show today, I just wanted

“to say one thing about the anniversary of COVID coming up, you know, it's six years now.”

There is no anniversary, but the anniversary in my mind is March 11th, and that's because there was a guy by the name of Adam Silver that saved thousands and thousands of lives on that day. He's the commissioner of the National Basketball Association, and he halted the league on March 11th.

What followed was every university, every sports league, the whole world checked out. He saved thousands and thousands of lives, and let's not rewrite history. Although the variants got weaker and weaker and weaker, and today we'd rather have COVID than a beasting, okay, it wasn't that way at the beginning.

The first variant was killing everybody, and anyway, thank you, Adam Silver, all right, let's

get going. In 2020, Greg Garfield was the first COVID patient at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Urban, California. Dr. Sadie had a 1% chance to live. He spent a month on a ventilator over 60 days in the hospital, lost most of his fingers and toes, and still got back on skis that same year. Greg built Greg's village and runs chip in, giving back to nonprofits

with every transaction.

“Today we talk survival mindset and building your team before the storm. What's up, Greg?”

Yeah, so little transparency, right? Greg and I went to high school together, and you're a very fit guy, like I look fit, okay, but if I walk up to flights of stairs, I'm gasped, right? You're doing double diamond runs, you know, skiing half the year, traveling all over the world to do it. So, your lungs are like iron lungs. So, when you were on a ventilator, everyone who knows you, right? Me, Adam, Chris, everybody, scared to death,

because if it's putting you on a ventilator, we're all dead, right? And this is the very first COVID case in LA, right? So, you went with a bunch of buddies to the Italian Alps, tell me about the story and how it happened, just laid it all out for me. Yeah, so every year we go on a guy's trip, put on by my friend's dad, and 13 guys were this trip. We, it's the second time going back to Valgardina, Italy, skiing the Dolomites,

always really excited to do that. Got there on February 22nd, 2020, and I got a call

from AJ, my girlfriend at the time. Now, my fiance, I get a call from AJ, and she says, are you aware of this thing called the coronavirus? It's where you are in Italy. Like, hi, you know, it's, we're not worried about it, or all athletes, you know, were outdoors, were specifically around us, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So we really have too much to worry. So I said, she goes, be careful, keep an eye out, and turns out three days in,

we all start getting flu-like symptoms. So I was a little sicker than a couple of the other guys. I laid up in my room for a couple of days, and specifically, because I was supposed

So I wanted to get better. And three of the guys that live in Sweden went home a couple days early, one guy checked into the hospital and was set home with the flu, so we supposedly had the flu at this point. So we weren't worried about it. So we're getting, we're leaving, we're leaving Valgaard dinner, leading Italy through Munich. The night before we hop on a plane, our friend Peter checked into the hospital the night

before.

Hold on, I just want it. So you guys went from this place to that place to you guys basically

infected the entire planet? No, no, sorry. No, really. The great part about what happened is we were very isolated. And so the virus was transferring from all these people from the Chinese came into Italy

“on, you know, from I believe, from the, uh, the Shmont of business, right? And probably”

happy new year. Up in here. So it was going around, but nobody really had any idea of exactly what this was. So in Munich, our friend Peter checked into the hospital the night. We were so the night before we were leaving, uh, for back to LA. So we wake up in the morning. We heard he checked in

the hospital, a double pneumonia. He misses our flight. So three quarters the way through the flight. By the way, when we got on the plane, there was no worry whatsoever. There was nobody can checking people or anything. It was way before anything was this was in January, February, February that was actually February 29th, February. Oh, wow. So this is right before because didn't add them silver, uh, uh, postponed the NBA season.

“I think on March 11th or March 13th or March 11th, I was a member. Yeah, that guy saved millions”

of locks going absolutely. So we're, so the morning of the first, we're leaving. I'm sorry,

not millions. He said he saved countless lives that will never know how many he saved, but

that remember when he did that and then college football was was postponed. And this one was postponed. And, you know, he's the one that had the intestinal fortitude to stop that thing. At that particular time, I was on call. So I had no idea what was going on there. Okay. We're going to get to the corner. So, so back to Munich. So we get on the flight. Three quarters of the way through the flight. We got a text message from Peter saying that he

tested positive for COVID. So we're on the we're about three quarters away through the flight about to land in LA and everyone on the planes infected. It's not your fault, too. Right. I mean, who knows what's going on? Right. We're all sick. Right. Um, they, we land, get off

the plane. I call AJ don't come to my house. Obviously, um, I call my doctor who called

the CDC. They sent a hazmat team to my house, picked me up, took me to their office in Oklahoma. There was no random testing back then tested me 24 hours later. I tested positive, quarantine myself in the house. Uh, that was on March 2nd. March 4th. I was on the phone, the buddy of mine, who called another friend. That's a breast hired physician because I was out of my mind. I didn't. I'm that person that knows all the details. And he was asking me,

“he was who picked you up. I don't know where did they, where did you go? Who was testing?”

He blah, blah, blah. So you couldn't think I was so brain-fogged. It was crazy. I just didn't have any understanding really while was going on. And he said to me, there's dude, you need to go the hospital and I was pushing back. So he gets my friend on the phone, our friend Peter, our friend, a John, uh, the physician. And he started calling around to all the hospitals. UCLA, seeters, uh, Saint John's. Nobody would take you. Nobody would take you. They said, go to

the emergency room without ready for a COVID patient. Saint Joe's in Burbank was the only one. Well, if you go to the emergency room, I'm COVID positive. You infect everybody. So that's why isn't there an option? That's right. So Saint Joe's in Burbank was the only hospital ready with an inflow rope. With a what? An inflow rope. It was, it's a sealed room. You go in, when I checked in the morning of the fifths. It took them 15 minutes to gear up, which is full

suits has Matt gear, the whole mind. Just to come see you. Just to walk in the room to address whatever I was going on with me. So I code it. I'm done. If they weren't ready. So it was, it was a pretty for the result. What's coded? Uh, flat line. Okay. So if you flat line before they were dressed, you're finished. You've got it. Okay. So, so you can't, you were, how long were you nearly from what date to what date? So we were there the 22nd to the 29th. Okay. Okay. So back on the

roughly right? Okay. So if you're from the 25th, you've got five and then you came in on the fifth.

“I got in into the hospital on March 5th. Okay. So that's your 10 days in. So you're suffering from”

10 days and you're not yet on a ventilator. I got put on a ventilator. So I got admitted to the hospital on the fifth. On March 7th, they came in and said, your oxygen saturation is so low. We have to intubate you. I have no idea what that means. Me neither. I'm going to be offline for a couple of days. And that's all you told her. Oh, I told you. And I went into a medically induced coma for the next 31 days. And everything under the sun happened to me from mercy, sepsis, a pulmonary embolism, ARDS,

which is acute respiratory distress syndrome. I blood clots throughout my body. I had collapsed lungs for different times. I was two days shy and going on ECMO, which is my own lung. I was in van shape. I should not be here medically speaking in today. They literally don't know why I survived. So on that, prior to that 48 hours, that next day, they had a meeting. They brought the family in. And they said, if he doesn't change in 24 hours within 24 hours, you'll probably want to

start saying you're a cabiah's right now. And on that next day, everything started turning,

“and I started kidding better. And they have no concept of why. So it firmly, I believe it's number one,”

because I was a very incredibly healthy person. What did re-entry feel like? Let me see your hands first.

Okay, you didn't lose some of them. You lost parts of all of them. I lost all my fingers on my right hand, half my thumb, and half the fingers on my left hand, and just the tip of my thumb. So at your middle knuckle, that's where I lost all the fingers on this too, baby. Yeah, that's the middle knuckle. That's the middle knuckle. She lost the knuckles. What happened with this as I had, once I got out of the hospital, I was put on what they call "pressors," which forces your

blood to your known organs first survival. So I was also, I had Oregon failure ahead. I was put on 24 hour dialysis. My kidneys were failing. I was in Batche when that had out. So they put me on presses. It forces your blood to your vital organs for survival. Compromises your extremities. My fingers went black, a couple of my toes went black. They were more worried about saving my life than saving my fingers and toes. For sure. Made the right decision. Of course, how did

it out? So coming out of the hospital, I then went to a couple of specialists, a couple of hand surgeons, to really figure out exactly what was going on. And the guy that we chose is a doctor-day

we called around a seater's amazing, amazing hand surgeon. And he said to me, he goes, "We're

going to go in. It's going to check it out and save whatever we can and take off whatever's dead." So I had, I challenged him to say, "I need to be back on skis by the end of 2020." And he thought I was Batche at nuts. I was barely able to walk when I got out of the hospital. Right. I had to learn how to eat, chew, swallow. Why? Why? Because do we are on the incubator for so long? I was on, I was intubated for 31 days. I lost over 50 pounds.

Everything atrophied. So I went in at 197 and I came out at 147. I looked like a kid from Auschwitz. Right. I could barely, when I was going through physical therapy, I was able to only walk three steps. That was like running a marathon. And I was hooked up to so many tubes. I was on.

“Why did you have to learn to re-walk because of the toes? No, because of my muscle.”

Everything atrophied. Oh, so it was just right. But how fast did it come back? I took two weeks for me to get into rehab and then another two weeks in rehab to be able to walk

out of the hospital. And the first two weeks was to be able to get up and walk across the road.

I was on a track. I was hooked up to all these tubes. A life support. So you're pushing the whole thing. I was carrying tubes around with me. What motivated me, then I really realized this, it's setting realistic goals for yourself. You have micro goals, but we go to macro goals.

was in next to impossible for me. But I didn't want to take a shit in a bedpan again.

That was 15 steps across the room to get into the, into the bathroom. I kicked my physical therapist out of the room multiple times because I was exhausted. And AJ looked at me and said, you got to,

“you got to get, you got to get them back in here and keep going because you have to be able to walk”

across that room to get into rehab to get you out of the hospital. So I said during going up, I didn't want to go back in the bedpan again. I said, get them back in here. He goes, Greg, that's 15 steps across the room. I go get them back in here. So I made by 15 steps. And I was able to go to the bathroom. And that was the highlight of that journey to get out of that hospital. She actually was saying to me, I want to wheel you out into the atrium to get fresh air. I said,

babe, I'm going to walk out of this hospital across that threshold once. And when I walk over that threshold, I'm going to come back in. So my focus was to get and do the work, get busy to do the work,

“to get to be able to walk out of the hospital. How is your mental health during this period of”

time? It was really great. Because you were just going to run through that wall. You weren't going to. You were just on fire to get well. Yes, and it helped me with my village. And you all took a part in this. The love that I received from everybody and it came from a few hundred of my closest friends, two thousand nationwide. Right. Because my story went worldwide. That's right. There was so much love and support that I did not want to fail for them as well. First and foremost for myself. Right.

But I didn't want to fail for them. It's amazing how many people loved you up when you had this.

I got probably 25 calls and we hadn't seen each other in 30 years. Yeah, true.

“Everybody from school. Yeah. Everybody was praying for you. And worked.”

Whatever it did, it worked. Okay. So you had nine surgeries and eight months. Right. Yeah. Okay. Getting back on the mountain. When you're going up the chair lift. Okay. What's going through your mind? Oh, man. It started when my first carried my skis out and just stepped into the skis ran on the deck. There were tears flowing because there was a slight part of me that didn't think I was getting there because of the struggles that I was going through. Right. There was

always that little bird in the back that's saying that I didn't listen too much to it. But it was always

there. I wasn't blinded by the possibilities that that wouldn't happen. When I was going up, it was the most freeing feeling ever because it was getting back to reality, getting back to what I found as like my foundation. Are you, are you as good a skier now as you were before COVID without a doubt? For sure. 100%. You can all this, you know, all the pulse. So for the first four years, four and a half years, I skied with one pull and perfected it. I skied everything I did before.

It was definitely a little challenging balance wise, but I had to put myself in the uncertain positions to really meet my expectations for myself. This past year, I found an adaptive piece that was able to put a pull in my right hand and it took everything to the next level. You didn't want to make a piece for yourself? I tried to find to figure it out and I Glenn Plague who's, I don't know if you know who he is. He's one of the innovators of

extreme skiing and an all the more familiar films, the guy that had the mohawk, friend of mine in mammoth. He's also an engineer and he was trying to put something together for me. And there's a couple of people that actually were trying to figure a couple of things out. And then another buddy of mine put me in touch with somebody at disabled sports up in mammoth. And they had a product that's already ready to go. So I didn't take the time to research it

because I didn't want to figure it out. I just wanted to do it on my own. When I put that that pull in my right hand, everything clicked. And I'm 110% on skis. How many toes do you got?

right foot. Okay. Not even an issue. So it's not so you're totally fine. So when you were walking,

“it was about the atrophy. It wasn't about. Well, I also had something called”

what about peronial neuropathy. When I was put on, when I was in sedation, under sedation, they put like compression sleeves on my legs for blood clotting. And it pinched my peronial nerve on the right side of my knee. And what that did was it eliminated my foot to retract the ability to retract. Think of it as putting pressure on your gas pedal, but not being able to pull the pull your foot off of your gas pedal. So there was a 90 plus percent chance that my

peronial nerve would heal, but there was also a chance that it wouldn't. And it took about six months. And all of a sudden it came back. I had to walk around with a plate in my shoe, which was

“hooked on like a shin guard, which loads up the foot and then really it pushes it back so that I”

could walk with a normal gate. Once that healed, game on. Good for you, man. You know what I want to talk about next? I want to talk about the support you received from your girlfriend who is now your fiance. Because I heard that she was the most extraordinary woman without a doubt. Okay. Tell me how that support looked and how that brought you guys closer. And if there was any challenges during the part like so for example, you could be forgiven for being mean or or short with people during

this period of time. I assume that happened a couple times. I mean look, we also live in fall.

We all have moments. I always say that through this journey, I never had a bad day. Ever. I had bad

“moments, but I never had a bad day. So you're like my grandpa. You're like everyone's grandpa. You're”

like seriously. I don't you you remind me of our greatest generation, our grandparents. That's it. This is how our grandparents would have behaved. They would have, it wouldn't have been like, oh, I'm depressed or oh, I'm you know, I'm a victim or any of that. They would have dusted themselves off and ran right through that wall. Okay. So tell me about tell me about AJ, tell me how she supported you through this process. So AJ and I were to only together for 18 months when this happened.

Wow. Oh, yeah. So it was it was fresh. We were not looking to find we weren't each other's person in the very beginning. But we had so much fun together because we both were just fresh out of relationships that we weren't looking for another relationship. But we met because she was out of friend of mine's restaurant who friend of mine called me and actually said, I found her. I found your girl. I'm like, okay. So I Facebook's doctor. Good. No interest to me at all. Right. And then it

turned out that she, another friend of hers actually gave her the give her the give me the green light of me being a good guy and then we started dating. And I read in the between the two of us, we just had a lot of fun together. And it wasn't I wasn't looking for somebody at that point. But I found somebody that was really special. And this was the ultimate test. And when I was put in the hospital and put under sedation, my sister who lives up north in Palo Alto moved in with AJ. And the

two of them, obviously they had met, you know, sporadically, it turned into family dinners and whatnot. But the two of them became sisters. And they were, they quarterbacked with my medical team and were the liaison between me and the hospital and the world, my village first and foremost. What's the village? My friends are family. Okay. So we call them the village. Good. And that's kind

of an incredible meaningful thing in my heart. And my in the village, because you need a village

idiot. We're all village idiots, my friend. Okay. Yon. She was there. Everybody was in shock at how she was on point. Giving updates four times a day to our village. That's who we were getting

Yes. We all went to high school together, folks. Sorry. Yep. Yeah. And they kept everybody

abreast my situation from having the most incredibly successful moments to 15 minutes later. It was, you know, my blood pressure would crash and I would code flatline. I died four different times on the table. Did you see anything? Didn't see it. Well, it's not that I saw. I didn't see something.

“What I did see was I had, I believe it was when I was coming out of sedation. I was on so many”

freaking drugs that I was in different places, man. I was, I was in Utah. I was in Vegas. I was in, I was in our buddy Strauss's house. I'm the Richard's kids. Godfather. So I was in his extra room where

my night nurse was with me and he and I was, I was hanging out there and that night he let a

couple of his friends in the nurse, a couple of his friends and they killed Richard and my god daughter. I didn't happen but I was going through this ICU psychosis when I was coming, coming too. I was losing my shit and, um, I was a mess. Did you know in that moment, like, you aren't to drug addict, too? Okay. Like, when I was on drugs and if we overshot the mark, we knew that we were going insane in that moment and instead of panicking, we just leaned into it. Is that kind of how you did it? Or, oh, I actually,

“I was the opposite because I was coming off all the drugs. So I wasn't an insidation anymore. And”

I was wanting to, I was wanting to rip somebody's head off. But, you know, I, I thinkers were

all decayed. I mean, I couldn't do anything. That was a life support, man. I was strapped down for Christ's sake. There was, I actually saw one of the nurses. So I thought this one guy, this nurse, was put away. And what do you mean, put away? In jail. A nurse? What I thought, when you were, when you were hallucinating, hallucinating. Right. So I was, I woke up one night, um, or one afternoon and they were doing the, the change of the guard, so to speak, with the nurses.

And I saw the guy walk by and I'm like, oh my God, he's out. He's out of jail. And I freaked out. And I called, you know, call one of the nurses in and he comes out, call 911 and blah, blah, blah. And they were trying to calm me down. And I was just losing my shit. Well, if you recall, nobody was allowed in the hospital. That's right. When AJ and my sister were allowed in the hospital on my birthday on April 16th. And that, I was, that was

“right when I was coming around. I was, I think I woke up on the 12th. Um, um, and they were allowed in”

the hospital. And this was right when I was going through all my psychotic behavior. And I snapped out of it. The day AJ got there and AJ walked over to me and I said, how's Allison, Richard's wife? And she goes, she's fine. I'm like, what do you mean she's fine? Her husband and her daughter, Dad, she goes, what are you talking about? I just talked to him in the morning. And I literally snapped out of it. And my mental state was just from disarray to focused at that particular time. And the

administration looked at AJ and said, we're going to allow you to come in every single day. Because his mental health is just as important as a physical health. And we need to give out a hospital. So she was allowed to be in the hospital every day and she was there every single day for 30. Did she take, uh, this is in April. And the vaccines were available in December. When did she take the vaccine? The right when it was available the day we both did in January.

Well, you probably got it in December. No, well, whenever it, whatever it came to, so we both, we both were able to get it at the same time. That's fantastic. Yeah. That's fantastic. Because I was thinking, you know, this is, you just went through something horrific. And she was in a frayed. She went on to the room. Yeah. Yeah. That one really loves you. She's a beast. Um, this is really funny. Uh, it was a really funny story. So when I checked into the hospital, um,

well, prior to checking in, I had to have my dog get taken care of because my, my dog bear is a 90 pound half new from 1/2 lap on a huge dog person. She was like the kid. And um, she, at the time, she was great trait. So I was calling around, but this was before I was even thinking about going in the hospital.

Obviously, because everybody thought that COVID was letting on the fur. Remember, we were wiping

down her grocery all that that was that crazy moment. So I called the CDC. I called the animal control. I called my dog trainer. I called my vet. I called everybody under this. Nobody will take

“the dog. We would go to the dog. So um, what about, what about, what about friends and family?”

Nobody would go to the dog. Everybody was fearful of the, the, the, the virus potentially was living on fur. So that the dog was exposed. So everybody was fearful and justifiably so. So the hospital, uh, the administration with the nurses were willing to go get get the dog out of the out of the house. Um, but the administration would not allow them to for liability reasons. So AJ, because I, I, I, I locked the dog in her crate when I went to the hospital. She was in her crate

for about eight hours. And AJ said, I'm not letting this dog die. And she's like, I'll do it. So the hospital brought her in, gave her two and a half hours of hazmat training and sent her in full hazmat gear to my house. Now here's a crazy story. My house is like Fort Knox, because I had a burglary. My house was, you're familiar with ring video doorbell, obviously. Yeah,

where, where is the house? Instant, uh, do you use it? Okay. So my house was the very first documented

rest ring video doorbell ever had. Did your first for everything? You're like, you're like a little crazy. You're like a, you're like a unicorn gone. It was a little crazy. So AJ, my house is like Fort Knox and the sensors eight foot fences. There's, you know, alarm systems, the whole nine yards. So I said to AJ, do me a favor when you go to the house, don't lock yourself in the backyard, because it's going to be very difficult for you to get out. So she had to go through the house

through the garage, get the dog out of the crate and through the process of doing hazmat training. They had to take, takes the dog outside, in full hazmat gear, washes the dog with anti-viral shampoo, goes to go back through the house and lock yourself in the front backyard. All right. So she had to climb an eight foot fence through a tree and she's about as fit as you can get in a hazmat

“gear stripped but naked in front of my house, because you have to get all that stuff all out.”

And then got dressed, went back in the house and let the dog back in and then put take took her, took my dog to, uh, to her house for the next 64 days while I was them houseble. So she saved bear's life and in turn, bear saved hers. How did bear save her mental? So she was that loving, um, that loving creature that, uh, that she, she delved into because it was a part of me.

Four years later, what's the biggest change in how you live day to day and what drives you now?

I truly have always been this kind of a person, but I, um, I've always lived with, uh,

the purpose of living life, how with the glass half full without a doubt.

“Um, it's emphasized tremendously, um, every day I wake up in the morning, life is a gift.”

You are the most upbeat, um, grateful, um, you just, you have this joy of living, right? That is intoxicating and what you've been through shows such resilience and to come out of this thing, completely, mentally, healthy is unusual. It's like your stellar Greg, you did, you did great man. Okay. You walked out of this thing. You got any trauma over it? No. Yeah, he wouldn't admit to it if you did. In fact, you wouldn't even recognize it. You, if, if you had it. Seriously, that's how,

that's how, that's how button down you are. I'm telling you, man, you remind me of my grandfather and that's the highest compliment I can give anybody, unbelievable man. I think we're going to exit on that. We'll see you next Tuesday. That's right. We're out of time. Please subscribe on YouTube, click the thumbs up and leave a comment. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast and Spotify and leave a rating and a review and share the

we're out of time podcast with others. You know who will get value out of it. See you next Tuesday.