A Long Island man returned to Long Island Jewish Medical Center during Thanksgiving week to thank the medical team that saved his life using a rare life-support therapy after a violent coughing fit led to respiratory arrest on New Year’s Eve.

Sean Jordan, 52, of Bayshore, was hospitalized at Northwell’s South Shore University Hospital with pneumonia right after Christmas 2024 and was nearly ready to go home when complications nearly killed him. The married father of two coughed so hard that he fractured a rib, which punctured his lung and triggered a bronchospasm that caused his oxygen-deprived organs to shut down.

Northwell’s mobile ECMO team transported Jordan to LIJ Medical Center on New Year’s Day, where Dr. John Goncalves Jr., chief of cardiac surgery at South Shore University Hospi

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