Winning the Battle Against COVID

Walnut, CA

Giselle Aguirre remembers calling her dad, “I said, ‘Do not give up. Fight like there's no tomorrow.' And he said, ‘I love you, Giselle.’ And I knew that that was gonna be a gut-wrenching last-minute words that I'll never forget.”

Giselle and her adult sisters were sick with worry. Both their parents, Daniel and Maritza Macias, had been suffering with Covid-19 for over a week. Now, their dad was being rushed to a hospital with breathing issues while their mom was quarantining alone at home.

Maritza recalls, “I didn't say bye to my husband. He was rushed right away. There is this-this um an-anxious feeling, this-this heaviness that he's not coming back.” 

A few hours after Daniel was admitted to Pomona Valley Hospital, Giselle and a doctor agreed to put him on a ventilator. Before they did, Giselle asked the doctor if she could pray for her. Giselle remembers the call, “She said, ‘Sure,’ like with a real like timid voice. I started to pray over her, and I asked the Lord to just use her hands and-and may He work through her. And at the very end I said, ‘Amen,’ and she said, ‘Amen.’”

Then the family started a prayer chain that quickly spread across the country. A short time later the doctor called Giselle back. Giselle remembers, “She said, ‘Your dad was intubated, I did not, and I've never done this without doing this, but I did not have to put him in an induced coma.’ And she goes, ‘The God who you are praying to, He heard your prayers.’ We knew that prayer was gonna be the crucial rock to how we were gonna stand in the most darkest of times.”

Over the next two weeks Daniel remained in critical condition. During that time, Giselle and her sisters started having a daily worship and prayer time on their parents' front lawn.

Giselle says, “We sang, and we literally felt like the heavens were just being opened for us. We would just sit there crying, because we knew that mom was standing behind this window and dad is in the hospital where we don't know if anyone's even touching him with a sense of love.”

Still quarantined inside her house, Maritza was anointing family pictures with oil and praying for her husband.

Maritza says, “I would anoint him in the name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit. And I will talk to Daniel, ‘You will live and not die. Daniel, you will live and not die.’ And I asked the Lord to give me a peace in my heart and to remind me constantly of His Scriptures.”

Yet, Daniel was not getting any better. It was during that time Giselle spoke to one of her dad’s doctors. Giselle recalls the phone conversation “He says, ‘We’re really running out of our resources. At this point your dad has a 20% chance of living.’ We were very discouraged. But we had so many around us lifting up our arms. In our weakness, we felt the strength of others.”

With time running out, Giselle and her sisters agreed on an experimental treatment where their dad would receive a plasma infusion from someone who had the Covid-19 antibodies. However, finding a matching donor could take days they weren’t sure Daniel had.

Giselle says, “We fasted from that night all the way to the next day. We just believed that plasma was coming. The very next day we get a phone call and they tell us that a donor has donated their plasma, and it's the exact same match as my dad, same blood type. And we were ecstatic. We were like, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is so awesome, Lord. You are so powerful.'"

Daniel received the plasma after 16 days of being on a ventilator. All they could do now, is wait. Giselle says, “We just prayed and prayed that that plasma would just really work in my dad's blood and would reverse things for the good.”  

And it did! 

The very next day Daniel started to improve. On day 19 Maritza called to check on her husband. She and her family were amazed to learn Daniel was off the vent!

Giselle recalls, “We screamed, my sisters, we were – we called my grandmother, we called all our prayer warriors. I mean, we just told everybody, ‘Rejoice! Thank God. Dad is off the ventilator’!"

There was only one thing Daniel had to do before he could go home. Daniel says, “The doctors told me, ‘Listen, you cannot go home until you start walking and start talking.' I think the Lord just gave me the power. I asked him for the power and He gave me the strength to walk.”

On May 12, just over a month after entering the hospital, Daniel returned home.

Giselle says, “Our dad was here. He was home. This is home now. It was not complete until he came back.”

Maritza says, “I said, ‘Oh God, You did hear us. You did. You were paying attention. You heard our prayers and You answer our prayers.'”

Daniel says, “It made me feel like I was wanted, I was needed.”

Later, the community celebrated Daniel’s recovery with a drive-by parade. He and his family continually thank God for answering their prayers and encourage everyone to call on God for help in their time of need.

Maritza says, “So we do not stop praying. I don't care what the devil says, but the Word says that God heals our diseases.”

Daniel says, “There's nobody else can heal me but the Lord. You just want to yell out and say, ‘Thank you!’ And everybody can hear you like an alarm, you know.”

Giselle says, “There was many hard times, many tears, but when you stay focused and do not allow the enemy to tell you otherwise, you will win this battle through Christ's strength. And that is the only way.”