HGTVs ‘Love It Or List It’ Star Eric Eremita Talks About Beating COVID-19 – Update

Eremita, age 51, was in a New York hospital for three weeks, two of them on a ventilator. He tells People magazine that he had no underlying conditions, but began to develop a high fever, then spiraled down into dizziness and lost focus.

“For me, I’m a guy who does things with precision,” Eremita said. “I’m a contractor, so for me, an eighth of an inch makes a difference. When I couldn’t zero in on things, I knew something was wrong.”

Eremita and his wife, who also developed symptoms, self-quarantined on separate floors of their home, with their three children staying in the basement. His efforts to get an immediate test for the coronavirus were unavailing.

“They didn’t get back to us, and I started getting worse and worse,” he said. When he started turning blue, his wife called an ambulance.

“I got to the hospital and, believe it or not, it’s kind of a blur from that moment until I woke up off the ventilator,” Eremita said. After two weeks, they removed the ventilator and moved him to ICU. There, he could Facetime with family and coworkers, and gradually regained some strength.

“They’re calling me their miracle,” Eremita says. “No one else in the hospital that I was in that was on a ventilator walked out alive. I’ll be honest with you, it made me very, very humbled, and reminded me to appreciate life.”

While Eremeita is alive, he is not out of the woods. He’s undergoing therapy to learn to walk again. He is also taking antibiotics to help with pneumonia that he caught after the virus.

“Every day is getting better,” he says. “They told me I wouldn’t walk without a walker, but now I walk just fine. I got a bit beat up, but I’m the comeback kid.”

EARLIER: Eric Eremita, the contractor who plays the main foil to designer Hilary Farr on HGTV’s popular Love It Or List It show, has been discharged from Staten Island University Hospital in New York after being successfully treated for COVID-19.