Dying of Coronavirus: A Family’s Painful Goodbye | NYT News

00:00:25
It’s Thursday morning, and we’re at the North Shore University Hospital, just across the border from Queens on Long Island. I’m Sheri Fink.
00:00:34
I’m a correspondent at The New York Times, and I’ve been reporting on the coronavirus pandemic. “Hello.” “Hello.” This is a tiny little office in the intensive care unit. “I just want you to tell us a little bit about her.” And what’s happening in this office right now is that a doctor and a social worker, Dr. Eric Gottesman and social worker Elisa Vicari, they’re connecting on a conference call with the family of a patient.
00:01:03
Her name is Carmen Evelia Toro.
00:01:06
She is the beloved matriarch of a family that stretches across South America and North America. They don’t have a lot of hope for her to recover from this very severe lung damage that she suffered from the coronavirus.
00:01:51
And they want to talk with the family about what to do next. “And it’s not like her lungs have collapsed.
00:01:56
They’re just very stiff, kind of like an old sponge that won’t work anymore.
00:02:01
We are trying right now a last-ditch effort to give her some high-dose steroids to see if we can get her lungs any less stiff. If they don’t work, there’s nothing else really that we can do to help her.” Because of the coronavirus and the risk of contagion, family members aren’t being allowed in the intensive care unit.
00:02:21
And so Elisa Vicari is going into Ms. Toro’s room and then she’s connecting with Ms. Toro’s family so that they can actually see their loved one. And they’re wondering if maybe this is goodbye because they don’t know how long she’ll live.
00:02:52
Ms. Toro’s family is scattered across the U.S. and in Colombia. With the pandemic, there’s no way that they can fly to come together and they want to be there for her.
00:03:44
The only local family member of Ms. Toro is her granddaughter, Marcela Rendón. It’s Friday evening and she and her husband are at the kitchen table, and they have Ms. Toro’s well-worn Bible next to them. The whole family is connected on the Zoom app.
00:04:04
They’re reading Scripture. They’re singing. They’re praying.
00:04:15
Ms. Toro is still receiving the steroids, and the family doesn’t know yet whether or not they have worked.
00:04:38
It’s Sunday morning, and Marcela and her husband are in the parking lot of the North Shore University Hospital. Unfortunately, news came in that the steroids had not had an effect.
00:04:55
The doctors, the medical team are going to remove the ventilator that has been supporting Ms. Toro’s life. “She doesn’t want her to suffer. That’s her concern.” “No, no, she’s not going to — so she’s not going to suffer, and we already gave her some medications already before we take the tube out to make her comfortable.” “Is everybody on Zoom already?” “Yes.” It is the first time that she’s going to get to see her grandma.
00:05:19
She dropped her off four weeks ago, and that was the last that she got to see her.
00:05:26
She’s there to be with her grandmother.
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She’s the one who has to take on this responsibility to be the person at the bedside.
00:05:36
And as she’s walking into the room, there’s a part of her that knows the likely outcome, and there’s a part of her that has a deep faith that somehow it won’t happen.