The health battle that nearly took Janice Cockfield’s life has now put the South Fulton woman in the national spotlight and granted her a once-in-a-lifetime trip from her company, Delta Air Lines.
Cockfield spent the better part of the year arduously recovering from COVID-19 after contracting the disease in March. The 59-year-old recently gained the strength to tell her story, which she considers a miraculous yet cautionary one, to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy. Cockfield, a Delta Air Lines customer experience specialist, contracted COVID-19, and her family, including her cousin, Janese, began to see her symptoms worsen in just over a week.
By May, she had spent nearly two months fighting for her life at Emory University Hospital Midtown. She would spend another month and a half in two rehab facilities. During the time, which, Janice Cockfield spent primarily unconscious, her cousin used a journal to record the daily and weekly experience she witnessed with her sister’s coronavirus diagnosis.
“They are running out of things they can try,” Janese wrote in one personal entry. “She could die today, her heart could stop beating. General recommendation is we allow her to die naturally.”
Another lifeline, Alison Gardner, a 33-year-old nurse practitioner, was by her side through her troubling hospitalization. She also had very little hope that Janice would survive.
“I remember several times telling Janese that it was over, that her death was imminent, that we had exhausted every procedure, every machine,” she said. “We never saw anyone survive as sick as she was.”
Credit: Sheila Cockfield
Credit: Sheila Cockfield
Garnering her the moniker of the “miracle” patient, Cockfield’s health improved almost overnight. She recalls, according to her interview with Torpy, waking up on May 24 and shocking her nurses.
There was no “Aha!” moment, she said. As she awakened with machines hooked up to her, her staff expressed glee.
“‘Oh, my God!’” Janice recalls an excited nurse exclaiming. “I’m like, ‘What’s the big deal?’”
After expounding on her life and lessons before and after coronavirus with the AJC, Cockfield was asked to speak with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin.
Janese Cockfield told Baldwin that her faith and relying on the knowledge of the medical team kept her optimistic in some of her sister’s darkest hours.
“Her heart is strong, and until she gives up I’m not gonna give up, until the day that she stops breathing I will never tell you to take her off that vent,”Janese said.
During the interview, Cockfield received a special surprise from Delta CEO Ed Bastian made a surprise appearance to announce a holiday gift to Cockfield.
“Please let Janice know while she was in the coma, we (including myself) were following her progress daily and including her in our prayers. She is a miracle and we are so proud of her strength in this fight,” the statement said, as read on air by CNN’s Baldwin.
It continued, “Also let her know I can’t wait to send her and her sister on a first class trip, on me, anywhere in the world we fly when she’s able to travel. Merry Christmas!”
The sisters were moved by the gesture, especially since they typically travel for birthday celebrations and were unable to due to Janice’s condition.
“When you wake up out of a coma after two months, you can’t move, you can’t walk, you can’t scratch your head,” Janice said.
She added, “To be here having this interview with you now, to me it just makes me realize every morning when I wake up, to say ‘Thank you God for another day.’”
See Cockfield’s reaction during the interview here.
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