One More Empty Chair at the Table Tonight

Trump doesn’t want to hear about families whose loved ones are hospitalized with COVID-19. Our stories must be told.

She went into the hospital a week after she got the positive test.

It wasn’t an easy decision. She knew it would mean she’d be alone, in pain, unable to advocate for herself.

Yet she just couldn’t seem to get better.

The fever brought chills and body aches. And no matter what she did, it wouldn’t break, even with 800 mg of ibuprofen every hour on the hour. Then the symptoms started multiplying, and she just couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

Her husband dropped her off at the emergency room. He was turned away at the door. He had COVID-19, too. And despite the fact that he felt fine, they couldn’t risk having him spread it to anyone else. It is, after all, a highly contagious and deadly disease.

“This is like a flu. It’s a little like a regular flu that we have flu shots for.” — Trump in a White House briefing February 26

So he, too, would have to go it alone.

A nurse, she had spent the early part of her career working with premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Often weighing little more than a pound, the premies must be kept away from infections and in incubators to stay warm. This means the parents can’t hold their newborns.

Instead, they are advised to visit their babies often, look into their eyes, sing to them, play music, hold hands near them and stay close by. This isn’t to make the parents feel better. It has been proven to enhance survival rates.

Humans need other humans in order to thrive. It’s why quarantines are so difficult for us. It’s why isolation is the worst punishment you can get in prison. It’s why we worry when loved ones withdraw or isolate themselves from the world.

And it’s another reason COVID-19 is so deadly.

It took 21 hours for a hospital bed to open up. She spent a day in the ER alone, fighting to breathe, unable to talk.

They started giving her oxygen, X-Rays, tests.

Did she know what they were doing to her? Did they explain why they needed the lung X-Ray? What would happen when she fell asleep, then woke up, confused? Would someone be there to tell her where she was and what was going on?

The first day seemed okay. Talking was impossible for her, but she could text a little. Her husband encouraged us to text her.

No one was allowed in — not even to drop off a card or flowers. Even the nurses couldn’t stay with her long.

Yet we remained positive. Trump had just finished his Superman tour at Walter Reed, and she was getting some of the same treatments he got: remdesivir, convalescent plasma, steroids.

If an obese 74-year-old could recover from COVID-19, surely a 61-year-old mother of three could battle it and win.

Still, her breathing was a problem.

“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” — Donald Trump in a tweet, October 5, 2020

Her husband set up a CaringBridge site to keep us informed. We got updates on how much oxygen she was getting, what interventions they were trying. At one point they turned her on her stomach to make breathing easier. That seemed to help.

Then it didn’t.

On the eighth day, the X-rays showed the viral pneumonia was worse. Her blood pressure was dropping. A ventilator was the last option.

She remained lucid while the doctor intubated her. Then her blood pressure dropped again.

Now she is sedated. And scared. That was the last thing she texted. Her husband is terrified. We all are.

“Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” — Donald Trump in a tweet, October 6, 2020

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