“This is a bonus life for me” Colorado Springs man gets second dose of vaccine after being hospitalized for 3 weeks with COVID-19

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- One by one, dozens of people showed up at one of UCHealth's vaccine clinics. 61-year-old Hakan Karan is one of them.

Karan said he quickly moved through the line and sat down for his final dose of the Pfizer vaccine. In less than two minutes the shot was in his arm and he was good to go, saying thank you to the nurse who gave it to him.

This last shot for Karan is the end of an incredibly emotional journey from where he was a year ago. "This is a bonus life for me," Karan says. "I almost died." He was one of the hundreds of people in Colorado Springs to get COVID-19.

"I was having a problem with breathing," Karan says. "I had a fever, it went up as high as 103, 104." His symptoms worsened to the point where he was admitted to UCHealth Memorial Hospital North.

Karan saying, "I was in there for about three weeks and half of that was in ICU." Telling KRDO he slipped into a coma and placed on a ventilator. Karan starting to think he wasn't going to be able to make it out of the hospital and not see his family again.

"Probably the worst part of my life," Karan says.

After preparing for the worst, his health improved and he recovered to the point where he was finally able to leave. Karan now wants to thank the staff at the hospital who helped him.

"The people there weren't just doing their job, they actually had care," Karan says.

During the interview with Karan, one of the nursing supervisors, who was there the day he was discharged, was at the clini, giving Karan the chance to thank her in person.

Later, Karan returned to Memorial North and thanked the caregivers who helped him through those three weeks.

Karan says he plans to spend more time with his family and hopes others will get the vaccine so they don't have to go through what he did.