In the time it takes CDC advisers to meet today, about 180 people will die from Covid-19, official says
Lizanne Jennings knew it was time to let her husband go. Dennis was suffering in the hospital, sick with Covid-19.
“I leaned down to him and I said, ‘Baby, I’m here.’ I said, ‘You remember our talks?’ And he said, ‘Uh-huh.’ And I said, ‘Are you ready to be at peace?’ He said, ‘Uh-huh.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ I said, ‘Mom’s fine she’s back at the house. She’s going to stay with me.’”
But that was not true. Just three days ago, the Oklahoma intensive care nurse’s mother had already passed after battling Covid-19.
“I knew he would keep fighting if I told him my mom had already died. So I started giving him morphine and Ativan. And I turned him over and rubbed his back and I said, ‘I love you.’ He said, ‘I love you.’ I said ‘you’re going to go now, OK? You can finally be at peace.’”
Dennis took his final breath about 30 minutes later, she said.
Now, it’s just her and her two sons.
“I feel like we’re both drowning but as we go down we’re trying to push the other one back up to take a breath. It didn’t have to be this way,” she said. “Everybody talks about it’s 0.1 whatever percent. Well, it’s 40% of my family that’s gone.”
Speaking through tears, she said they did everything right and yet the virus came into their home and claimed two of her family members. People should “stop being selfish” and “just wear a mask,” she said.
“I couldn’t save either one of them,” she said, recounting everything she and her husband had done together. “I’m in a 2,500-square-foot house with a mother-in-law suite and everything he wanted. And I’m alone.”
