A man from South Carolina is speaking out to tell the world that his wife’s voice lifted him out of the coma that he had been in for two months.

Don Gillmer, 43, was rushed to the hospital just a few days after he tested positive for COVID-19.

“Didn’t sleep that night,” he recalled to WKRC. “Woke up early the next morning, packed a bag and knew it was time to go to the hospital.”

Gillmer had never had to go to the hospital for one of his own illnesses or injuries before, but it would be his home for the next 63 days.

“I received convalescent plasma twice, Remdesevir,” he recounted. “Nothing was working. Nothing was helping me recover, so I’ll really never forget when they came in with papers I needed to sign to go on a ventilator. That scared me.”

Doctors eventually felt that they had no choice but to put Gillmer into a medically-induced coma. They called his wife Lacy, who rushed to his side along with his father. Gillmer now claims that his wife’s words of love and encouragement helped get him through this.

“I just told him that he was doing great, that they were taking such good care of him. He was in amazing hands,” Lacy said.

Gillmer said that despite being in a coma, he could hear his wife’s voice, and he credits this with saving his life.

“I swear I heard her voice and, by the time she left, I was stable,” he said, “She’s my angel, you know. She’s the reason I’m here.”

Once Gillmer was out of the coma, it took weeks for him to learn to walk again, and he had to attend grueling physical therapy sessions twice a week. He credits his wife for getting him through these challenges as well, saying that he would not have made it without her.

“I think about her drive to the hospital the night they told her that I may not make it,” he said. “You know, can’t imagine that, so tell her often, I don’t know that I could have been as strong as her.”