My father had been in the intensive care unit (ICU) for two weeks struggling to fight off the effects of COVID-19. This was a week after he had contracted the illness. We had been contacting the nurses’ station every day, even multiple times a day, to get updates. On Aug. 26, we arrived at the hospital to meet with the doctors and nurses. We wanted to know when we could possibly bring him home, as he had suddenly hit a stalemate in his progress. In fact, he was starting to regress.
As my mother, brother, and I sat across the table from three doctors and two nurses, we were informed in detail that my father was worse off than we had understood. Approximately four days prior to our arrival, a secondary infection had afflicted his lungs, causing his progress to be halted and reversed. They couldn’t know for sure what was causing the infection.
