In the recent past, we were grieving the sudden passing of my father who collapsed unconscious as soon as he got off a motorcycle on which he was a pillion rider. We rushed him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. He had had no significant medical problems to speak of. They couldn't determine the cause of death as the facility was understaffed and overrun with patients battling the Covid-19 pandemic or other infectious diseases. We had to get out of there in no time.
A week after my father's untimely demise, my mother suffered a massive stroke and went into a coma. We brought her home after the doctors treating her at the hospital had declared her brain dead. During the hospitalization, she was diagnosed with Covid-19, which we were told caused her the ischemic stroke.
Of note, we live in a village where we have no access to healthcare at all.
As her caregivers at home, my wife (42) and I (48) were exposed to my mother while she was still comatose and recovering from the infectious disease, and subsequently both my wife and I tested positive for the coronavirus. With no one else around to help us except my daughter who we had kept in isolation, we continued caring for my mother, giving her nothing but thin liquids via a feeding tube.
The symptoms my wife and I experienced through our recovery lasting a week to 10 days included a low-grade fever, loss of taste and smell. It took us about a month to regain the latter. Even my mother, who is 68 and otherwise healthy, regained consciousness and her ability to communicate over a month or so and she began taking in food orally after I had no choice but to go ahead and remove her feeding tube myself. She is still paralyzed and bedridden, though.
Well man, mine too. My mother already had a poor health and even before covid I was aware that any respiratory infection like the one she had two years before covid could be fatal.
But at least in 2018 she was promptly treated, with medicines to avoid the progression of secondary infection and fluid accumulation and despite the scare, was given oxygen, and she was saved.
In 2021, despite her old age, doctors were prohibited in her city to pro-actively avoid secondary infection and in the end when they finally decided to treat her, she was put in a ventilator and had complications commonly associated with the use of ventilators. You can call me anything you want, but I will never stop believing that despite her death certificate says she died of Covid, she was an iatrogenic death.
I read a story about a guy in Italy, he lost both parents, only his father died in the hospital so his mother was not counted in statistics as having died of coronavirus.
So sorry to hear this. My mother also died of covid, and I also feel there's a warning in her story for everyone.
She'd been sad for several months from my father dying, so during the summer she went to visit her sister abroad. Until then she'd been shielding at home. They both knew about the virus but thought it wouldn't happen to them, arranging group meals with old friends.
Three of them went to ICU, and everyone tested positive.
It's of course up to people themselves what risk they want to take, but with this disease in particular the numbers are deceiving. The general figures seem so low but are actually a heck of a lot higher than flu. They're also markedly higher if you're in a risk group.
It's also terrible because as family you think the odds are okay, most people at every stage (cough, hospital, icu) survive, until the doctor calls you and says it's tonight.
my friend's father passed away from covid three weeks after contracting it at a curling tournament which they obviously shouldn't have held, even in a small town in the middle of nowhere. he was 65 years old and had just retired. being dead is also not cool.
Similar story here - a family member contracted COVID in a nursing home, was sent to the hospital due to low blood oxygen levels, and was discharged. They passed away 2 weeks later, but the cause of death was not listed as COVID. I live in a red state, and for some reason, people are very hesitant to admit COVID can kill.
I know of an old man who died last week in an area a short way out of Hyderabad. That area was a Red Zone (presumably due to COVID-19 cases near it), so movement in and out of the area was very much more restricted even than usual. A couple of days before he died, they tried taking him to hospital, but were told that the hospital had no doctors there that could help. Next day ditto. It was only hours before he died that they let him in at all.
In this case there’s a fair probability that he would have died anyway (probable generic cause of death: old age), and there’s no reason to suspect any connection with COVID-19 in his death. But you can definitely have deaths indirectly caused by the coronavirus, because doctors are busy dealing with other things, or even can’t get to the hospital due to lockdown!
Lady calls in, her 450lb 57 year old son with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes and COPD is found dead at his home. Post-mortem test shows he's positive for COVID. You're the doctor, your hospital has had to furlough a quarter of their staff because nobody is coming in for any outpatient care, there's an ICU full of people on vents and you've been there for 18 hours already.
The guys mom is there and you're working up her son's case. You have to fill in the blank for cause of death. What are you going to do? Order an autopsy and possibly cut this family out of government aid for COVID-related expenses and deaths?
My grandfather died in one of these facilities earlier this year from COVID. My great grandmother (his mother-in-law) died of a kidney infection in one about 15 years ago.
He had a heart attack in 2019 that crippled him, so he was in a physical rehabilitation facility because he could barely move on his own. He was making progress right up until the pandemic started. No visitation, and then the staff neglected him, which resulted in him developing pneumonia from laying in bed so much. He recovered somewhat, but then the pandemic hit the facility. He died a few weeks later.
I'll miss the time that stubborn man and I spent together. Rest in peace Pépère.
Hopefully by the time my parents are unable to care for themselves I'll be financially well enough off to make sure they never end up somewhere like this unless I truly can't provide the care they need.
Same here. My grandfather died early in the pandemic (May). He tested positive for a period of three weeks and then tested negative a few times. He started feeling better and we were hopeful, but the damage was too great and his heart failed a few weeks later.
I really just can't put my feelings into words.
He was in a physical rehab facility after surgery. When the pandemic hit, visitation was forbidden. Turns out most of the staff were scared and basically abandoned the patients. The specific facility specialized in elderly patients who had severe mobility issues.
He told us on the phone once at the beginning that he was scared because all he heard at night were people screaming for help as they stopped being able breathe as COVID was destroying their lungs. He figured it wasn't long before he caught it. However, no one would sign off on discharging him, and by the time we got the bare minimum to care for him at home and the legal crap sorted out, he caught it.
He lived practically opposite the country to me (I'm in LA, he was in Boston), so I didn't see him very often. He also wasn't the kindest person to me growing up, so I didn't really talk to him all that often either.
With that, it just doesn't feel real that he's gone. There was no funeral, no memorial service, as everything is tabled until after the pandemic. I don't think it'll really set in until I visit my grandmother and he's not there.
And you see the assholes who want to say taking precautions should be a personal choice or are an invasion of their personal freedoms. I wish every single one of them could experience the fear my grandfather did. Stuck in a bed, unable to walk, waiting for a plague to take them as their fellow patients succumb one by one. It's just disgusting.
My grandmother, wearing a full hazmat suit with an oxygen tank, was able to be there with him when he passed.
Anecdotes obviously don't validate data models, but I do wonder if my personal experience was common.
My mother-in-law passed last summer, alone in her apartment. She was sick beforehand, quarantined, and living in a senior living community. When she was discovered the coroner did not come and investigate because it appears of natural causes, based on the observations of the local police officer. Her body was transported directly to the funeral home.
I insisted they do a COVID-19 test, which the coroner did at the funeral home. The results came back as positive. Had I not pushed them to actually test, it would have been misreported and her death mis-attributed.
It left me wondering if this was common and how many people may have passed in similar circumstances, without family pushing for testing.
I'm sorry for your loss. I had a similar experience in the US. In my case, a doctor flatly contributed the (impending) death a byproduct of COVID. All tests prior to COVID were positive and pointed to many more years ahead.
I'm not certain, but I suspect something was lost in the handoff to the hospice care company where they just didn't have the history and I assume they were the ones that reported the COD. Not certain about this. I plan on looking to see if there's anyway to have this retroactively updated, but I'm not optimistic.
I have a friend who works in a stroke unit and he says almost nobody is coming in for strokes. Instead some people are just suffering or dying at home. Of strokes. Not every single one of them, but some alarming and as yet unknown number.
All that sounds unrelated to Covid-19. But the reason they are not going to the hospital is because they fear going into a medical facility, for fear of Corona virus. Should these deaths be counted as Covid-19 deaths? As shelter in place deaths? Or just as strokes? I'm not sure. It's complicated to sort this stuff out.
Well, my uncle had a heart attack during the covid pandemic but couldn't get a bed in the ICU as it was full of covid patients. Was he a covid death? I'd say yes (he lived in an region of low vaccination).
Personal anecdote: I do have a family member that passed away and the cause was mislabeled as COVID(He never tested positive). So one sympathizes with the 38%
A week after my father's untimely demise, my mother suffered a massive stroke and went into a coma. We brought her home after the doctors treating her at the hospital had declared her brain dead. During the hospitalization, she was diagnosed with Covid-19, which we were told caused her the ischemic stroke.
Of note, we live in a village where we have no access to healthcare at all.
As her caregivers at home, my wife (42) and I (48) were exposed to my mother while she was still comatose and recovering from the infectious disease, and subsequently both my wife and I tested positive for the coronavirus. With no one else around to help us except my daughter who we had kept in isolation, we continued caring for my mother, giving her nothing but thin liquids via a feeding tube.
The symptoms my wife and I experienced through our recovery lasting a week to 10 days included a low-grade fever, loss of taste and smell. It took us about a month to regain the latter. Even my mother, who is 68 and otherwise healthy, regained consciousness and her ability to communicate over a month or so and she began taking in food orally after I had no choice but to go ahead and remove her feeding tube myself. She is still paralyzed and bedridden, though.
reply