An Illinois woman spent 30 days in a medically induced coma fighting for her life, but everything changed the moment she woke up.
Victoria Cupay was diagnosed with lupus, but in 2019 she reacted to a medication that caused her skin to shed and organs to deteriorate.
She spent the month hooked up to tubes, a breathing machine and family and friends praying she would survive.
Doctors eventually began to reduce the medication that put her into a coma and on August 19, Cupay opened her eyes see to her boyfriend Nick Baldo standing at her bedside with a diamond ring and a question to ask.
‘He actually asked my mom before he proposed, because that was one of my requests way before I got sick. He respected that wish,’ Cupay told DailyMail.com.
‘He decided to do it then because I had a lot of close calls to death. And he said that if I don’t make it, I will at least have a good memory.’
The couple married on August 19, 2022, exactly three years after the proposal to allow Cupay to recover and the COVID pandemic to subside.
They also welcomed a baby boy this year, Peter, which Cupay previously believed would never happen.
‘Lupus patients are prone to miscarriages, and so it was a high-risk pregnancy. We wanted him for the longest time,’ she said.
‘He loves playing with books, and he loves steak and asparagus. He’s just a joy in life.’
She was put into a medically induced coma but could hear nurses
Cupay, who is now age 28, was a nursing student in 2016 when she was hospitalized for a fever and given the Lupus diagnosis.
The condition happens when the body’s immune system mistakes its tissues and organs as foreign, making proteins called autoantibodies that attack them.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the disease causes inflammation, affecting joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs.
It’s still unknown what causes lupus but sunlight, stress, smoking, certain medicines, and viruses may trigger symptoms in people who are most likely to get lupus due to their genes.
Hormones such as estrogen. Lupus is more common in women during their childbearing years when estrogen levels are highest.
There is no cure for the disease but treatments can help reduce symptoms.
‘I went from taking no medications to taking more medications than my grandmother. It was such a big change, they told me that it’s incurable,’ Cupay said.
‘No one in my family has it, so I didn’t really know what my life would look like.’
She began living what she describes as a ‘new normal’, although her medication had side effects including weight gain.
On August 19, Cupay opened her eyes to her boyfriend Nick Baldo standing at her bedside with a diamond ring and a question to ask
The couple were married in 2022, three years after he proposed
‘There were side comments such as, ‘Oh, are you Victoria? You gained so much weight. I can barely recognize you. You look pregnant,’ said Cupay.
But in 2019, things took a turn for the worse when she was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis.
Both are life-threatening skin disorders caused by an immune system overreaction to a trigger, such as medication, resulting in blisters, peeling and rashes.
‘My mom brought me to the emergency room and everything just went downhill,’ Cupay explained.
‘I was put in an ICU Burn Unit. I’m not technically a burn victim, but what happened to me was I was burning inside out from inside out.
‘What was happening on my skin, it was sloughing off. That was also happening in my intestines and other organs.’
The couple now have a baby son Peter who loves to read and eating steak
The couple say their baby is a ‘joy in life’
At the time, Baldo was living in San Francisco and the hospital where Cupay stayed was outside of Chicago.
Cupay, born and raised in the Philippine province of Bohol, immigrated to Beach Park in 2011, but seven years later she was visiting California where she met Baldo at a nightclub.
She asked him to dance and he asked for her phone number.
The two met in April 2018 at a nightclub in the California City while she was visiting.
Cupay asked Baldo to dance and he then asked for her phone number.
As fate had it, he was from a suburb of Chicago and planned on visiting two weeks later.
The two met again after Baldo arrived in Illinois and took turns visiting each other.
But Baldo booked a one-way ticket when Cupay was admitted to the hospital.
‘He knew it was going to be a long, long journey,’ she said.
Last year, Cupay graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in public health
From June 2019 to February 2020, Cupay was in and out of eight different hospital facilities and I had to learn how to walk, talk, and eat again through physical and occupational therapy.
She spent 240 days in the hospital – with issues including vomiting every day because her intestines were affected and having a tracheotomy failed to heal due to malnourishment.
Baldo officially moved back to Illinois during the pandemic.
‘Throughout all of that, Nick was beside me. We were together during the pandemic, and that was a very crucial moment in my recovery,’ Cupay.
And last year, Cupay graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in public health.
‘It’s been a long journey, but I definitely had a lot of down moments, moments where I wanted to give up, yeah,’ she said.
‘I would not have made it without my support system, I would say that I wouldn’t have survived this without them.’
She shared her story on TikTok, becoming an instant star sparked by a proposal video and a wedding video in 2022.
‘I did not expect it to go viral, and it just snowballed from there,’ said Cupay.
‘People started asking about our love story, and when it went viral, I took that opportunity to raise more awareness about lupus and what really happened to me
‘I thought maybe this is the perfect time for me to really get serious about raising more awareness.
