COVID-19 Killed My Grandfather. But My Dad Was Too Busy Treating COVID-19 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. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] 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...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news