Downers Grove native still on road to COVID recovery

In the five years since the U.S. first reeled from COVID-19, leaving no one unscathed, the novel coronavirus has remained all too familiar to one Downers Grove native, former village commissioner Rich Kulovany.

“Family became so much more important after all of this,” Kulovany said. “They gave me something to fight for and something to get back to.”

That family includes wife Kathleen, three adult children, 10 grandchildren and his first great-grandchild, whose third birthday he recently celebrated with his heightened sense of thanksgiving.

Following 99 days in hospitals and extended reliance on a ventilator for every breath, his is one of the remarkable recoveries, even as he continues to improve from long-lasting repercussions of the virus.

After falling ill in early December 2020 after exposure at his workplace, he was hospitalized on Dec. 11 at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, with a fever topping 103 degrees and worsening pneumonia.

In one mixed blessing, instead of the common isolation of hospitalized COVID patients, his wife was able to visit him because she also had COVID. Additionally, the virus hit his daughter hard, and she spent three different nights in the same ward as her father.

On Christmas Eve, Kulovany, then age 69, thought he was on the mend, but by that night, his oxygen level had dropped to 62% (anything below 92% is cause for alarm).

“They put me in a medically induced coma, intubated me and put me on a ventilator,” he said. “I was unconscious for 16 days, on a ventilator for 56 days. I knew from previous orthopedic surgery, once you wake up you have to start fighting. This one has been the toughest and longest fight of my life. It was harder on my family."

On that Christmas Day, as he lay comatose, his family gathered with him remotely on a Zoom call.

“One grandchild sang to me,” he said. “All thought they were saying goodbye to me that day. When I found out they had their call, it broke my heart to think what my family was going through at that time.”

As he lay unconscious, his family encouraged the hospital staff: “My dad’s a fighter,” one son told them.

Kulovany said he contracted COVID a month before the newly developed vaccine became available to the public instead of only health care professionals and first responders. He’s taken advantage of the vaccines ever since.

“That disease caused so much damage,” he said. “I know there are side effects to vaccines and I don’t minimize that, but … when a disease takes you to death’s door, you take all the steps you can take.”

During the course of the disease, he was put on a feeding tube and underwent a tracheostomy, which kept him from speaking for about two months. The more serious of two COVID-related strokes affected his peripheral vision. There’s been gradual visual improvement, Kulovany said, adding, “The brain has to rewire itself.”

His lung capacity, which had dropped to 20%, eventually returned to normal.

“The damage to my hands and feet was caused by a combination of nerve impingement and oxygen deprivation to my extremities,” he said, noting he required carpal tunnel surgery on both hands among various repair procedures to his body.

“This has been quite a journey,” he said of the many symptoms and complications. “I’ve shaken most of them.”

The 99 days of hospitalization began with 40 at Good Samaritan, followed by a transfer to RML Specialty Hospital in Hinsdale for 45 days, to be weaned from the tracheostomy and feeding tube, capped by two weeks at the Northwestern Medicine Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton.

Physical therapy began at RML.

“I didn’t realize how much my muscles had atrophied,” he said. “It took two people to get me up out of bed. [I took] three baby steps forward and three baby steps backward and collapsed on the bed and I was done for the day.”

But each day would see progress.

“Ten steps was a milestone, actually getting out of the hospital room door – that was a big deal," he said. “Even when I was able to walk down the hall, [it was with] IVs on one cart and the ventilator on another cart.”

Kulovany served as a Downers Grove village commissioner from 2019 to 2023, and remembers participating by phone from his hospital bed for three meetings before arriving back in person to a warm welcome.

Kulovany has relocated to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, but frequently is back in his hometown and stays deeply involved with the Downers Grove Historical Society, serving as one of nine directors and on its events committee, as well as assisting the Downers Grove Historic Home Program, presented by the society and the Downers Grove Museum.

Kulovany believes he benefited from his philosophy of “taking care of yourself.” He had a fitness routine five days a week, and took supplements for years, he said.

“I’m also an advocate for going to a doctor sooner than later if I have a medical issue,” he said, comparing it to hearing a noise from the car brakes and choosing to either turn the radio on or get it fixed early.

Something he took from the experience is an even greater belief in the importance of making a difference “in whatever you’re doing small or large,” he said, adding, “Because hundreds of people were praying for me all around the country, I believe my recovery was in a big part [an] answer to prayer.”

Kulovany still looks back at social media posts his family made during his hospitalization.

“It was humbling … it just touches my heart."