DUBLIN, Ohio — Last month we brought you the story of Nick Butler. 

10 years ago he was diagnosed with Common Variable Immune Deficiency, also known as CVID, which weakens the immune system 

In early April, the 17-year-old tested positive for COVID-19 and spent two weeks recovering at Nationwide Children's Hospital. 

    What You Need To Know


    • Doctors at Cleveland Clinic continue to stress the importance of convalescent plasma donations 

    • The treatment method was recently approved for adults and has been used for thousands of cases across the country

    • After 5 convalescent plasma treatments, doctors say Dublin Jerome Senior Nick Butler has recovered from COVID-19

Family and friends say the success of convalescent plasma therapy derived from recently recovered donors may have helped save his life.

“He goes from again, a cough, to a fever, to the ICU on a ventilator, to plasma therapy, and now home. Within the confides of being quarantined, he is as active as he normally would be,” said family friend, Erin Galloway. 

“The help that we got, it was like winning the lottery 18 times in a row. Cause everything that I needed I got just in time and it was just so helpful,” said Nick Butler. 

Cleveland Clinic Pulmonologist Doctor Simon Mucha says the antibodies in the convalescent plasma directly attack the virus and help the immune system of the patient fight the infection and recover sooner. 

However, he says more donations are needed, so convalescent plasma can be more readily available.

“There's simply not a lot of plasma and if we wanted to do a study, we sometimes have to wait several days for a unit to become available, which makes it very difficult to study this in a good scientific way,” said Dr. Mucha. 

Dr. Mucha says the FDA approved convalescent plasma treatment has been used thousands of time around the country and a handful on times in Cleveland Clinic. 

He encourages recovered patients to reach out to your local American Red Cross to donate.

If you have recovered from COVID-19 and haven't had symptoms for 14 days you are eligible to be a potential donor.

“I think Ohio did a fantastic job in flattening the curve with the efforts that we've done. Haven't seen a huge surge, but I think certainly there we still see a lot of patients that are very sick. We want to make sure we stay as healthy as we are now,” said Mucha. 

“Starting the process with the Red Cross and being able to see if they're a donor for anybody, I wish more people took that first step,” said Galloway. 

For Nick Butler, well he's looking forward to what the future holds, turning 18 later this month, graduation from Dublin Jerome High School, and the start of College in the fall at Michigan State University where he plans to study math and finance.

But before then, he's looking forward to enjoying life as a teenager and skiing and boating with family this summer. 

“I can't express in words how thankful I am, because it's literally like a miracle everyday,” said Butler.