Collected Item: “Suffering and Loss”
Give your story a title.
Suffering and Loss
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
text
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
I work as an investigations contractor assigned to assist my county health department with interviewing positive covid-19 patients. I recently spoke with an 85-year-old C19 patient who was hospitalized and awaiting surgery for a brain bleed at the time of our conversation. She explained that she had fallen in her backyard trying to retrieve her feral cat's bed from a rainstorm, tripped, and laid in the rain for almost two hours before anyone found her. Both she and her late husband contracted covid-19 around Christmas, and he died soon thereafter. The hospital where he received his final treatments allowed her to visit him just before he passed, which is an unusual and gracious blessing at this time. The medical interview that normally takes 30 minutes required almost two hours and tears from both of us. When we finished, I wished her well, offered that I looked forward to speaking with her soon, and asked God to bless her. I called her hospital gift shop and ordered a carved wooden angel to be delivered to her room, as she’s a woman of faith. I had the card signed from me and the Health Dept, so I suppose I’ll find out this week if anyone complained about it. More than anything else, I’m hoping her file shows a successful discharge and recovery by now.
She told me she looked forward to trading in the cafeteria food for her son's gourmet cooking, and I pray she's already done that.
She told me she looked forward to trading in the cafeteria food for her son's gourmet cooking, and I pray she's already done that.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
hospital, healthcare, deathways, death, surgery, emotion, suffering, elderly, HST580, Arizona State University
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
James Rayroux
Give this story a date.
2021-01-31