David was a healthy man, we danced every weekend together.  I tested positive on 11/6/20 and he tested positive on 11/8/20.  We had all the symptoms (coughing, fever, headache, achy, stomach issues, etc.).  By 11/12/20, he asked me to take him to the hospital because he was having a hard time breathing.  They put him on oxygen right away and took an x-ray of his lungs and said he had a lot of Covid in them.  They said they were going to admit him, but he had to wait in the ER for a room to open up.

I think he waited several hours and finally got one by evening.  Of course, they told me I had to leave and could not see him while he was in the hospital due to the hospital Covid policy in place at that time.  Little did I know when I left that day, that I would never see him again.

It makes me sick now that I couldn’t be his advocate or have a voice on his behalf.   We talked everyday until they put a ventilator on him.  They encouraged him to talk to the hospital Chaplain, so he did.  He told me he didn’t like hallucinating on the Covid medications they were giving him.  He said they got mad at him because he accidentally pulled out the oxygen when he was hallucinating one night.  It was a day later, they put the ventilator on him, which I did not authorize them to do.

They said they tried calling me and couldn’t get me so they had to go ahead because he was having problems breathing.  Everyday, I would call if I hadn’t heard anything from a nurse or doctor on how he was doing.  I would ask if that nurse would be there tomorrow and they would tell me – no, it would be someone else because the nurses move around to other hospitals (which seemed very strange).  It seemed some days, there were little signs of hope in his “numbers” and other days he was going backwards.  His organs were shutting down because he didn’t have a bowel movement for 9 days and nothing they were giving him was working.

They told me the weekend after Thanksgiving, that he wasn’t responding to commands very well.  On 12/1/20, I got a call from the doctor that they didn’t think he was going to recover from this and there was nothing more they could do for him, Therefore, it was time to take him off the ventilator.

The next day the family came to the hospital to say our goodbyes.  He was struggling breathing even on the ventilator and his eyes were not blue anymore – they turned brown.  Since I recently had Covid, they called the CDC and they approved that I could be in the room with him while they took off the ventilator.  The hardest day of my life!