COVID-19 Killed My Grandfather. But My Dad Was Too Busy Treating Patients to Grieve Him
In early February, I got the call I’d dreaded for months: my 82-year-old grandfather, Charlie Law, had died. I’d tried to prepare myself as best as I could; Grandpa had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and he had been in physical and mental decline for about four years. Still, I hadn’t seen my grandparents in person for two of those years because of the pandemic.
Once the initial waves of shock and sadness had washed over me, I was surprised to find I was angry. Losing my grandfather was inevitable, but it felt as if the disease that finally took his life—COVID-19—was not. Although my grandfather was vaccinated and boosted, his dementia had confined him to a nursing home, which meant that he was at the mercy of the assisted living facility and the surrounding community to protect him from the virus. While I’d accepted that my grandpa didn’t have long to live, and I knew that he was suffering, I’d hoped (naively, maybe) that he’d slip away in his sleep. COVID-19 had robbed him of even that.
Shortly after Grandpa passed, I asked my dad, Dr. Kevin Law—a doctor specializing in pulmonology and critical care at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton in New Jersey—about how he is coping with losing his father to COVID-19. He has helped lead his hospital’s response to the pandemic through surge after surge for the last two years and has treated about 1,200 patients with COVID-19 at the hospital.
Grandpa getting COVID and suffering was the thing I was hoping wouldn't happen.
KEVIN LAW: I had an educated guess that he was going to get a life-threatening infection this winter: either a urinary tract infection, pneumonia, or COVID. I wasn't there, but I really don't think he suffered. Maybe that's my mind playing tricks on me, but I've seen patients like this. When they're very infirm, they become unconscious and go quickly.
Unfortunately, this latest iteration of COVID is very infectious. If you're susceptible, I don't think there's any escaping it, whether you're out in public or in an institution.
Has being on the front lines of the pandemic made it harder for you to cope with Grandpa’s decline?
KL: I don't think I was as present for my parents as I would have been ordinarily, and that that was frustrating. I'm very busy, they're in another part of the country, and at times it’s been risky to travel.
I was surprised that you worked on the day that Grandpa passed. lt must have been hard for you.
KL: For your own mental health, you have to learn how to separate work, play, and personal life. I compartmentalize. You have to be able to do your job. You learn over time—as hard as it is, sometimes—to not let it interfere with your professional functioning. If I did, it would be very difficult to function.
A lot of people said I should have taken the day off, I should have taken a week off. I certainly contemplated that, but it would have just been way too much for the people I work with. They would have been overwhelmed.
I have pretty complicated feelings about the circumstances of Grandpa’s death, because like you, I expected he would pass anyway. But it just feels bad that people didn’t try harder to stop the virus from spreading.
KL: Over time, I learned not to waste a lot of energy on people’s behavior that I can’t change. I try to work on it with individuals, and I do get frustrated at times, dealing with individuals that don't have a good explanation for why they're not getting vaccinated. The fact that some people are going to be resistant to it is just human nature, and there's nothing I can do to change that.
How do you deal with your own anger at people for not getting vaccinated?
KL: There are times when I have empathy fatigue: when I don't feel as empathetic as I would normally feel for a sick, infected patient if they're not vaccinated. I have plenty of empathy for people who did get vaccinated but got sick in spite of it.
Anger is a strong word. It’s more frustration and the feeling of impotence over the situation at times. The time I most feel it is when we’re very busy in the hospital. I've seen 30 hospitalized COVID patients in a single day, sometimes 35. It wears you down. Maybe my experience helps me to handle the pain of my dad’s death a little better. And it helps minimize my anger and frustration.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 429 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 12 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 5.9 million people have died. On Feb. 23, there were more than 1.8 million new cases and 11,215 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending, in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 5.5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 78.7 million coronavirus cases as of 12 a.m. E.T. today. More than 941,000 people have died. On Feb. 23, there were 84,793 new cases and 2,825 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Feb. 24, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Russian invasion of Ukraine may be worsened by the high levels of COVID-19 cases in both countries, and the low levels of vaccination compared to other nations. Both countries have reported record numbers of new cases in the past month, with nearly 4.5 million reported in Russia and 957,000 in Ukraine. In Russia, about 50% of the population is fully vaccinated, while about 34% of the population in Ukraine is fully vaccinated.
Pregnancy-related maternal deaths in the U.S. increased during 2020, rising to 24 deaths per 100,000 births from 20 per 100,000 the year before, according to a government report released yesterday. In total, 861 women died in 2020 from pregnancy-related causes; nearly three times as many Black women died as white women. The pandemic was likely a major contributor, since pregnancy is a risk factor for severe COVID-19 and access to healthcare was limited during this time.
Although cases in the Caribbean have declined by 44% in the past week, COVID-19 deaths are increasing in some of the region's countries and territories, and the area is still “especially vulnerable to COVID” due to low vaccination rates, warned Dr. Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, at a press conference yesterday . “Out of 13 countries and territories in the Americas that have not yet reached the WHO’s goal of 40% coverage, 10 are in the Caribbean,” said Etienne. She noted that vaccination rates vary widely across Caribbean countries because of different vaccine distribution tactics, vaccine hesitancy, and other factors; while 91% of people in the Cayman Islands are fully vaccinated, for example, less than 1% of people in Haiti are.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed the recommended wait time between the first and second doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines for many Americans on Tuesday. On its website, the CDC wrote that people between the ages of 12 and 65—especially men ages 12 to 39—should consider waiting eight weeks, rather than the three or four weeks (for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s shots, respectively) that it had originally recommended. The CDC said that the increased interval may reduce the risk of myocarditis, a rare but serious side effect from the vaccines. However, it still recommends the shorter interval for people who are immunocompromised or who need rapid protection from severe disease.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Tara Law and edited by Mandy Oaklander.
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