PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) – A man who just recovered from COVID-19 says he had a tough time breathing and wishes he had been vaccinated.

Chris Ard, his daughter, and his wife Hannah all got COVID-19 but it hit Chris the hardest.

“I was very short of breath. I couldn’t catch my breath. If I breathed in too deeply, I’d cough uncontrollably.”

Chris Ard

They took a trip to Nashville for the Fourth of July weekend. While there, a friend they were visiting started to feel sick and tested positive. On the way back to Florida, he started feeling symptoms.

“My back was starting to ache. I started noticing regular flu-like symptoms. A headache, back aches, chills, fever…The COVID symptoms weren’t bad but the pneumonia part is almost what killed me.”

Chris Ard

Chris is a healthy 36-year-old. He went to West Florida Hospital and they prescribed him an inhaler which helped for a night. He tried Sacred Heart Hospital, waited eight hours to get in, then they said his oxygen levels weren’t low enough so he went to ProHealth walk-in clinic where he got a prescription.

“I took Ivermectin and Dexamethasone and once I got that prescribed to me, went to CVS, picked it up in 30 minutes, started taking it the next day…it was a five day thing and it pulled me right out of the pneumonia part of it.”

Chris Ard

He says he wishes he had gotten the vaccine and he plans to in the future.

“I would recommend everybody get vaccinated. Don’t wait because when it’s too late, it’s too late and there were times I was going through this that I regretted not getting vaccinated.”

Chris Ard

Chris said he knows two other men, also in their 30s, who were hospitalized in the ICU. One was released but the other one is still at Baptist Hospital.