It’s been a scary few weeks for the family of Raymond Burdier, the owner of Pizza en Fuga, a popular local food truck spot.
Right now, he’s intubated in a South Florida hospital fighting COVID-19.
“He's got a big heart, which is one of the reasons we call him Biggie,” said Belkys Diaz, his sister.
“On Friday he was intubated,” said Diaz. “The oxygen need he had was just too much so they needed to intubate him because, at that point, it was the only way to save his life.”
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She thinks he got the virus over the Fourth of July weekend. The family went out to dinner, and the group started feeling sick afterward. But Ray was the only adult in the group not vaccinated, she said.
He’s been in the hospital for three weeks now.
“I did say to him, you’ve got to get vaccinated. It’s either a vaccine or a ventilator,” said Diaz. “He was vaccine-hesitant. He kept saying he was waiting for one of us to grow an extra arm or all these things he was hearing. At the end, he was starting to kind of change his mind.”
Diaz says he’s now stable and doctors are optimistic.
She doesn’t want any family to feel this kind of fear.
“If you’re not vaccinated right now, it’s like you're risking ending up in the same situation my brother is in," Diaz said.
Diaz says the family is helping him keep his New York-style pizza business running while he faces this long road to recovery.
