Robert 'Boo' Maddox, 7, Home From Hospital After 480-Day Battle With H1N1

March 29, 2011— -- A 7-year-old boy was released from a New Orleans hospital Sunday after a 480-day battle with H1N1 influenza; the once pandemic virus remembered not so fondly as swine flu.

Robert "Boo" Maddox V was admitted to New Orleans Children's Hospital in critical condition Nov. 19, 2009, five months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the H1N1 outbreak a global pandemic.

Boo's epic hospital stay, which spanned two birthdays and included 10 surgeries, was a shock therapy of sorts for a family once unfamiliar with the agony of having a sick child.

"I've got five kids, the oldest being 20, the youngest 3, we never had a sickness," Boo's dad, Robert Maddox IV, told ABC News affiliate WGNO. "So we didn't really realize what went on [in] these places, but God has ... [given] us a valuable lesson that will stick with us the rest of our lives."

H1N1 wreaked havoc on Boo's body, leaving him open to one complication after another.

"There were times when it seemed like he was getting better, and then he'd have a setback," Children's Hospital communications manager Chris Price said.

Machines took over for Boo's heart and lungs while he fought off near-fatal infections, he said. But even with organs failing, the lively "jokester" never lost hope, or his sense of humor, Price added.

"He loved to pull pranks," he said. "He would put little rubber roaches in the bed with him for when the nurses would come.

"That's one of the most amazing things: to spend 480 days stuck in a bed in one room and to still have a sense of humor."

Although no age group was safe from the never-before seen flu strain, children were particularly vulnerable.

"What we had was this avalanche of illness in children that flooded our emergency rooms at children's hospitals," said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

"Most of them got better. But there are those among them that had to be held in emergency room for 24 hours. Some had to be admitted, and some needed intensive care."

The first American H1N1 case, reported April 15 2009, involved a 10-year-old from California. Two days later and 130 miles away, an 8-year-old became the second of what would be 41,821 cases, 2,117 of them fatal.