People recovering from 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), especially those who have been on a ventilator, may need the specialized care and attention of an occupational therapist to relearn the basics of caring for themselves. Maura Regan, OTR/L, an acute care occupational therapist at NYU Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation, has been helping recovering patients start to walk, talk, and do other basic tasks before being safely discharged.

“A lot of the patients that I’ve been seeing in the intensive care unit have delirium once they’re more alert, and they also have very profound generalized weakness,” Regan tells the New York Post. “It’s very easy for healthy people to get up out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, get dressed, but for someone who’s recovering from COVID-19, that requires a lot of their energy, and they might feel extremely fatigued after doing those basic tasks.”

Regan remembers one particularly powerful moment with a patient who, using an alphabet board, told her he liked Frank Sinatra. Regan put on some music, and—despite his difficulties with movement—the two of them danced.

Read more from the New York Post.