OK, another update on my co-worker, given to me, unsolicited, at work yesterday from the co-worker who has been updating me on her status: She is getting better.  She may have been moved out of the ICU yesterday.  However, she was just extubated (as in they have taken the ventilator out of her mouth) recently, so that means that she was in fact intubated between the last time we received an update about her condition, which was about a week ago, and now.  Less than a week is a hell of a lot better than five weeks, the length of time my friend was hooked up to one in the late spring.  But he said that while he was unresponsive, he could feel the ventilator getting shoved down his throat, and he was subconsciously trying to get it out of his trachea because it was choking him, but he couldn't.  That's the main type of nightmare he still suffers from, to this day, when he's experiencing PTSD.

So my co-worker may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  But she's been in intensive care for so long, people who have been hit with COVID-19 to the point where they wind up where she did become long-haulers.  And she is not a 100% healthy spring chicken, either.  The road to recovery probably is long.  We may not see her back at work for some time.  She may decide she doesn't want to come back.

But, goddammit, she's still alive.  And that's what matters.