‘A God thing’: One Greeley man’s journey from COVID-19 coma to Turkey Trot honorary chairman

Darlene Schroeder, left, and her husband, Errol pose for a photo. Errol came down with COVID-19 in March 2020. Now, he’s set to be the honorary chairman of North Colorado Medical Center’s 2021 Turkey Trot.

By Dan England

With the last words she would say to him before doctors put him under, Darlene Schroeder chose to urge her husband, Errol, to keep fighting the mysterious illness that had crippled him and the world around them. 

Then, while he spent two months in a coma, every day, she would say the same thing when nurses held the phone to his ear.

“You have to be strong,” Darlene said to him. “You can do this. You have to fight. Don’t give up.” 

Darlene got sick first, probably from a co-worker, and she gave it to her husband of 25 years. This was in March 2020, when the world was just beginning to understand the gravity of the coronavirus and act accordingly. She recovered well, but the virus left Errol in bed having an increasingly hard time just taking in a breath. By the time she had to bring him to the hospital, she could barely get him up the basement stairs. 

Errol doesn’t remember much about the ordeal, other than going to the ER.

“I tell people it’s really more her story than mine,” he said.

Two days later, doctors told Darlene and Errol to say their good-byes before they put him on the ventilator and in a coma. Doctors told them they had high hopes he could come out of the coma in a week. 

It would be much longer than that. 

Strange and scary 

Errol and Darlene were married more than 25 years, with six kids. Three of them still live with them, ages 16, 17 and 24. They have five dogs and a cat or two. Errol had never been seriously ill in his 65 years. Despite all that energy going to all that life and his job as an operations manager for Northstar Homes and their church, Journey Christian Church of Greeley, Errol always seemed to have a bit more. They had a simple, comfortable life, with their God and their family and their boat, which they would take out on summer weekends.

It was strange and scary, then, to see this new illness, called a name they faintly recognized from the news, weaken him, then leave him barely cognitive. He gasped like a fish at times, once leading Darlene to call the paramedics because he just couldn’t breathe. 

On the third day of him refusing to eat or drink, his oxygen levels fell dangerously low on the pulse oximeter they happened to have in the medicine cabinet. She knew it was time to go to the ER at North Colorado Medical Center. A nurse monitoring his condition agreed with her. Two days later, they put him in the coma. 

Every day, Darlene tried to talk to him on the phone and allow the kids some time since protocol wouldn’t allow him any visitors. Whenever the nurses put the phone to his ear, Darlene told him she was his wife, that he was Errol, and that he was safe and needed to fight. When the kids talked to him, Darlene told them to do the same thing. The nurses encouraged her to keep calling. 

“He can hear you,” they told her. 

Errol doesn’t remember the calls, but he does remember a vivid dream once, of nurses rolling him down the hall in his hospital bed so he could see his family. He may not have been able to answer, or even really know they were there, but they must have been in his subconscious every day, he said. 

Two weeks after doctors put him under, Darlene was on the phone with a doctor for her daily update on him when she heard an alarm in the background. His heart had stopped. Doctors call this “coding,” and it essentially means he’d just died. 

Darlene ran up the stairs and told the kids to pray, saying their father had just coded. The doctor remained in her ear, calm and reciting a play-by-play, as if she was an announcer for a sleepy baseball game. They’re getting out the shock pads, she told Darlene, and now they are using them. 

This sounds awful, but Darlene called it a God thing. The doctor was wonderful, and prayers went out across the world for Errol. It was terrifying but comforting at the same time, especially at a time when human connections were fraying everywhere. 

“I didn’t necessarily want that to happen,” Darlene said, “but it was good to have that connection, to have everyone praying.”

Darlene would need their support, as three times, doctors told her to let him go and put him in Hospice. They didn’t know what to do for him. They wanted to keep him comfortable until he died. 

No, she said. 

Every day she told him to fight. Now she needed to fight too. 

Getting his life back

More than two months after doctors put him under, Errol began to come out of it, and when they took him off the ventilator, he seemed to do a lot better, from what Darlene could see on the phone.

He spent 80 days in the hospital. Now it was time to get his life back. Errol remembers more of this journey. 

“First, I couldn’t even get out of bed,” Errol said. 

They had to teach him how to feed himself, and how to walk, but those came back soon enough, and after a month in rehabilitation, he was back home. He was nervous — there was no nurse waiting at the press of a call button — but he was also glad to be home. Neighbors in his Poudre River Ranch in west Greeley lined welcome home signs up the street. 

He recites his progress like he was a student. 

“I was still in a wheelchair,” Errol said, “and then I graduated from that to the walker and then the cane, and then freestyle.” 

It was another month before he began driving, and then several months before he went into work with Darlene’s help, and then a few more months before he went him by himself. 

Journey, where Darlene works as the finance manager, visited many times to help with simple house projects, and Northstar paid him the entire time. Both those gestures took a lot of stress off his recovery, he said.

He also credits the time he got to spend with the CardioVascular Institute of North Colorado’s rehab program at NCMC. He qualified for it because his heart stopped during his illness, and it’s why he’s the honorary chairman of the Turkey Trot in Greeley, a race that raises money for the program. He will be there to see the runners off on Thanksgiving Day. 

He liked everything about the program, from the patients to the trainers to the music they played, although he had a hand in that: Errol loves early 70s music and pop, such as The Beach Boys. The gym played “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James, his favorite, on his last day there.

“I really enjoyed going and the discipline that it took,” he said. “It was a huge part of the recovery.” 

Doctors still don’t know a ton about the long-term effects of COVID-19, and Errol is still feeling its grip. His kidneys, he said, are at 35 percent, and he gets tired a lot sooner than he did before. He doubts they will go out on the boat as often as they did, if at all. He also forgets things easier. His memory, he said, is more of a cloud than the clear blue sky it used to be. He’d like to keep working, but he may have to retire sooner than he’d like. 

“I still don’t feel like myself,” he said. 

Errol smiles when he’s asked if the experience changed him. His answer is different than most: no, not really. He was already a man of God who volunteered with the children’s ministry at the church and went to a men’s Bible study Wednesday nights. 

“What am I really doing with this second chance?” Errol said. “I think I’m doing enough. I don’t feel like there’s some grand scheme.” 

Errol calls this story Darlene’s story more than his own. The time she momentarily lost him and so many responded in prayer stands out, of course, but the moment he came back still makes her tear up when she talks about it. 

One day, for her daily update, the doctor told her he wanted to show her something. They held the phone up. There was Errol, awake and waiting to talk to her.

They warned her that it might be a whisper. His vocal cords were weak, they said. But when he spoke, his voice rang out, loud and clear. 

“I love you,” he said to her. “Thank you for fighting for me.” 

About the Turkey Trot

Errol Schroeder is the honorary chairman of this year’s NCMC Turkey Trot, the annual 2K and 5K on Thanksgiving Day. The race is at 9 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day at 1801 16th St., Greeley. For details go to https://ncmcfoundation.org/event/ncmc-turkey-trot, and to enter, go here.