'We hear you, Dad': A daughter stays on the phone for hours & hours as her dad dies alone from COVID
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'We hear you, Dad': A daughter stays on the phone for hours and hours as her father dies alone from coronavirus
Abby Adair Reinhard pressed her iPhone tighter to her ear, straining to hear the soft rhythm of her father's breath.
In. Out. In. Out.
Five miles away, in a hospital bed in Rochester, New York, her father lay dying.
At first, his breaths were steady white noise that any other day would fade into the background. As the hours passed, his breathing became harder. Tortured. Heavy with mucus.
Reinhard – a mom, a wife and a daughter – spent the next day and a half listening to her father die, praying he could hear her voice. Moment by moment, she detailed those agonizing hours in a wrenching Facebook post.
The terror I’ve felt today is unlike anything I've ever experienced, and I can only imagine how hard it has been for you, Dad. I’m so sorry you are going through this nightmare.
Don Adair, 76, was a father of four and a grandfather of five. A retired attorney who doted on his family, he'd traveled with them to Europe, sat on the floor to open Christmas presents, grinned wide at their graduations and bounced them on his knee.
Now, he lay alone in a bed, isolated from other patients at Highland Hospital. He'd fallen at home a few days earlier, and hospital staffers were helping him fight a minor infection.
Not a problem, Reinhard thought at first. Her dad, her rock, never got sick.
Then he developed a fever and a cough – coronavirus.
Reinhard, 41, called her brother, Tom, in Texas. It was late on April 4. They wondered whether an asymptomatic patient in the hospital had passed along the infection. They talked about how the prognosis was good, how his symptoms were minor.
It's a conversation so many Americans are having, fretting late at night, consulting doctors and scouring the internet for signs of hope, looking at the statistics that say most people will never get really sick.
"He was very strong, physically. I'm sure he'll be fine, is what I told myself," she said. "We went to bed thinking, chances are he's going to be OK."
Her husband made the kids french toast. They watched online Palm Sunday services, in which the pastor urged them to approach uncertainty with faith, not with fear.
Then came the call. A Highland nurse said things Reinhard tried to understand: "Aspiration ... deterioration ... suffering ... not much time.”
The nurse put the phone to Adair's ear. He couldn't talk, but he could listen.
Pacing in her bathroom, Reinhard struggled to catch her own breath, to hide her sobs from her three kids. To listen. To speak.
"I love you," she said.
"Thank you."
"I'm sorry."
"I forgive you."
You settled down in between coughs, and I searched my heart for what to say.
I talked about our precious times at the lake. I remembered you playing your guitar around the campfire, and I clung to that image as if it were my saving grace.
The lyrics of those old campfire songs seemed so fitting now – “Milk and honey on the other side” and “He’s got the whole world in his hands.”
Laundry overflowed the basket in the corner. She talked, listened, prayed. She felt like part of her was outside her own body. It was too much to take in.
After half an hour, she realized she could conference in her siblings – Tom, Carrie in North Carolina and Emily in Denmark. They stayed on the phone for hours, singing more campfire songs, telling stories, remembering their childhood.
Over the next many hours, our conversation with you is one I will treasure for the rest of my life. Although we were each sitting in Dallas, Raleigh, Copenhagen or Rochester, we were together, unpacking memories we had stored away long ago. The lake, the Cape, and our Europe trip. Games, projects and important conversations. We also sang more campfire songs. I pray that you could hear it all.
(The rest at the link)
https://news.yahoo.com/hear-dad-daughter-stays-phone-120345094.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I will not go to a hospital or medical center for any reason. I'm relatively healthy (age 69) and I'll take my chances at home, caring for myself if I should get the virus. For now I have no symptoms and had no exposure that I'm aware of, so I feel relatively safe in saying this. Knock wood.
I do not believe a hospital is where I want to be. That is all.
