PHOTO PROVIDED Daniel Bisset, Jr., lays in a bed as his sister, Lisa Harvey, sits with him.

A 48-year-old Clarks Summit man was brought back from the brink of death in his battle against COVID-19 and is now recovering, in part due to technology at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville.

Doctors at the hospital said they gave Daniel Bisset Jr., a construction worker, a five percent chance of surviving as they surgically merged him with an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine, a device which diffuses oxygen into a patient’s blood before recirculating it.

Lisa Harvey, of Centre Hall, is his sister and supervisor of special education at Keystone School District, said her brother was placed into a medically induced coma where his lungs were paralyzed as the machine did the work for 12 days.

“This is a virus that kills,” she said. “It’s not a joke, it’s not a game, it’s serious — people need to understand that right now.”

Harvey and Bisset’s parents had also contracted COVID-19. Their father, Daniel Bisset Sr., 75, died after several days of struggling with the virus, and their mother, Josie Bisset, 73, is now recovering at home

Before the health warnings and stay-at-home orders, Harvey said her brother went to Brooklyn, New York, for a beer festival March 7 and, two days after his return, started feeling “really lousy.”

He spent that week talking to his primary care doctor, and was cleared for a COVID-19 test, which came back negative.

Daniel Bisset Sr. came to his son’s home near Scranton that weekend to get some paperwork.

“He had gone into the house, and even after my brother had requested he not come to the house because he just wasn’t feeling well, my father insisted,” said Harvey.

By March 16, Harvey said her brother was having extreme difficulty breathing and was transported to Geisinger in Danville to be placed on ECMO the next day at the urging of Dr. John Sobuto, a critical care physician at Danville.

“We had to bring essentially an entire operating room to an ICU bed and perform the procedure there to not expose the rest of the hospital,” said Sobuto.

The decision to place Bisset on the machine was one of the hardest Sobuto said he has ever had to make, as data coming in from China indicated that 95 percent of the patients there died despite the procedure.

Harvey said she was with her brother nearly every waking hour as she viewed him from behind a glass wall, and was nearby after he was taken to a negative pressure room.

It was thanks to an iPad that she was able to facetime with him for the remainder of his stay.

“While my brother is in the coma on March 26, he knows nothing about my mom, nothing about my dad, nothing about the fact that my dad has now passed or the fact that my mother is now admitted to the same hospital that he is in,” she said. “We did not share that with him because we didn’t want him to blame himself or have guilt for that.”

Her mother, Josie Basset, spent about a week in the ICU before being released and Daniel Basset Jr. was finally released to a rehab facility April 9 to applause by the doctors and nurses who helped him back to health.

“He is currently working on recovering his strength, getting his senses back, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and getting stronger every day,” she said, though he still shakes and has difficulty bringing food or drink to his mouth.

“He’s really excited,” she said. “He’s going above and beyond what he’s being asked to do and he’s putting in full energy and going full bore because he knows that’s key for him to get out.”

He was recently placed on a list at Geisinger to donate plasma, so that his antibodies may help others struggling to beat COVID-19.

ECMO is not for everyone, but offers some people who have no underlying health issues, a fighting chance in letting their lungs recover.

“It does essentially what your lungs should do for you, but it’s not a flip of a switch,” said Sobotu. “It’s not an easy procedure to go through, it’s an operation that involves placing annulus tubes that are the size of garden hoses in the veins of the groin and neck.”

“It’s a life saving maneuver, but it’s big risk, big reward,” he added.

Evan Gajkowski, Geisinger ECMO coordinator, said the virus toll on health systems has been astounding, but ECMO stands as a last resort for people in our area.

“You see a couple people who have the flu occasionally go on ECMO, but I have not seen whole ICUs filled with flu patients, and I’ve seen that with my own eyes with patients who have COVID-19,” he said.

More ECMO machines have been leased to Geisinger Danville, as they prepare for the worst, he said.

“We’re not running short, we have the machines, we have the supplies and capabilities to run multiple patents if needed,” he said.

For Harvey, she said she is forever indebted to those who helped her family.

“Everyone has made a difference in our lives,” she said. “I want to again thank all the medical professionals, all the staff, all the people that have touched our lives, all the people who have prayed and sent positive thoughts to our family. Thank you.”