For the first time in four months, Texas Sheriff Deputy Jason Jones is not hooked up to a machine to breathe.

To get caught up on my series on Deputy Jones’s case, read the first exclusive story here from early November and the most recent story here when he left the hospital in January.

“Jason is considered weaned off the vent!” his wife Erin texted on Friday after 72 hours without the ventilator at the long-care facility.

“They moved it out of the room yesterday!!” Erin me a photo (below) of the space where a ventilator sat next to her husband’s bed since Oct. 7.

Erin needed a win. She had sued his hospital for his right to try Ivermectin for COVID — and lost — and then the GoFundMe account set up to help their family of six children was deleted because of censorship.

Mary Talley Bowden has been Jason’s personal doctor since his doctor at Texas Health Huguley Hospital refused the multiple treatments for COVID that Erin had researched and wanted to try.

“Jason Jones has surpassed all odds,” Dr. Bowden told me. “For someone with COVID-19 to survive after being on the vent this long is very rare. More than 80% of patients with COVID-19 don’t pull through once they’ve been intubated.”

Here’s what I wrote back in Nov. from an interview with Erin about the day before her husband was forced onto a ventilator:

“He went dark on me that day,” she said. “He talked about his career, talked about distributing things with our kids. I told him to stop it. But he said, ‘Just let me tell you these things.”

Erin said her husband told her that, “They're going to kill me.”

I asked her if those were his actual words. She said yes. “He told me to hire an attorney because they are going to kill him. He felt that. He thought if he went on ventilator he knew the odds weren’t great.” 

Dr. Bowden said, “I know Jason’s wife Erin’s dedication and determination have a lot to do with his ability to come this far.”

Erin had more positive news this past week to share. Now that he’s off the vent. Jason was able to swallow a little bit and speak now with a “trach collar” and a speaking valve.

“He said the ice chips tasted better than any alcohol he could drink!!!” she texted.

The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Deputy clearly has kept his sense of humor through this near-death experience.

However, Erin explained that Jason is getting extra oxygen through a tracheostomy collar. He had to get another chest tube last week because there is still a pneumothorax on one lung (pictured above.)

Fundraiser for Jason Jones and Family that was taken down from GoFundMe is at this link on Give Send Go

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She will meet this week “with different staff to get a better game plan for expectations.” Erin said there is “still a long way to go.”

When I first wrote about Jason, he had been lying on his stomach in an ICU, hooked up to a ventilator and in a drug-induced coma for five weeks. It was an almost hopeless case of COVID. But Erin refused to give up on her husband.

She filed a lawsuit against the hospital for the right to try Ivermectin. She fought for proper medical care. She handled some health matters (ahem)