Tammy Deans of Sault Ste. Marie doesn’t know how to articulate how she feels about her mother dying from COVID-19, because it just all seems so unfair to her.
Linda Drouillard died Jan. 28 at Windsor Regional Hospital, as roughly a half-a-dozen family members in both Windsor, Ont. and Sault Ste. Marie comforted her virtually.
Drouillard was 72 years old.
“We were all online talking to her, and playing music through the computer - things like that, just trying to keep her calm, and letting her know that she’s not alone,” Deans said.
But nothing could really prepare Deans for what came after the family made the decision to have Drouillard removed from the ventilator.
“For three hours after they took the ventilator off her, she was alive and gasping for breath, and trying to cough,” she said. “We just kept telling her, ‘it’s okay mom, we’re here, we’re here,’ but we were doing it virtually, because nobody’s allowed in the room.”
“It was horrible. I assumed that she was going to put in a medically-induced coma where yeah, okay, she’s going to have trouble breathing, but she’s going to sleep through it all. But she didn’t - she was opening her eyes and everything,” she continued. “She could hear us, she was responding to us - but she couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t imagine knowing that I’m dying and gasping for breath for three hours. It was just horrible.”
A brief battle with COVID-19
Deans tells SooToday that just over a week had passed from the time Drouillard began developing COVID-19 symptoms to her death. Her husband - Ray Drouillard, owner of King Siding & Roofing in the Sault for more than three decades before retiring to Windsor - had already been battling COVID-19.
Dean’s mother also lived with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which she says was manageable and under control.
“The family doctor was calling them, to see how my mom and dad were doing, and my mom was saying that she was having a really hard time breathing, and a lot of chest pressure,” she recalled.
The doctor, Deans says, advised her mother to manage the symptoms at home with the aid of medication for as long as she could before going to the hospital.
“In the middle of the night, she got up out of bed and went to sleep on the Lay-Z-Boy, and my dad - who is not in good health at all, plus battling COVID at the same time - seen that she got up in the middle of the night,” Deans said.
The next morning, Drouillard was discovered unresponsive by her husband.
“She was putting it off for as long as she could, and in the middle of the night, there was nobody there to help her,” said Deans. “She couldn’t talk. She was in a walker, she couldn’t get to my dad. She basically sat there suffering.”
Deans says COVID-19 has impacted a number of family members down in Windsor, in a region that’s regarded as a hotspot for transmission of the virus. She says that has presented a number of challenges in terms of making funeral arrangements virtually.
Until her father and sister down in Windsor can pass a COVID-19 test, they are not permitted to enter the funeral home.
“Her husband and her daughter wouldn’t even be allowed in, so there’s no sense in having a memorial service yet,” said Deans. “So everything’s just kind of in limbo.”
Deans says by all accounts her parents rarely left their home in Windsor, and took all the proper precautions when they did.
“It’s not like they’re out and about and not being good. Unfortunately it hit, and it’s very contagious,” she said. “It’s really scary, especially how fast it hits.”
'You don't hear about it in Sault Ste. Marie'
Deans is sharing her story because no one else talks about their experiences with COVID-19 locally.
“You don’t hear about it in Sault Ste. Marie. All you hear is people complaining about all the precautions and the shutdown,” she said. “It’s frustrating for me too. I get it. My husband just got laid off last week because of it.”
Deans maintains the province should remain in lockdown until the health sector gets a handle on the COVID-19 situation, saying that “it’s too big of a gamble” not to.
She’s also urging the public to wear masks for the sake of others.
'She was full of life'
Deans feels as though her mother would’ve had years left to live if she had never acquired COVID-19.
“She was full of life. She was very generous, very kind,” Deans recalls, when asked how she would like her mother to be remembered. “She told it like it was, though - you always knew where you stood with her.”
“But that’s one of things that I think everybody liked about her, because if Linda had a problem, she would tell you, and then it was no longer a problem.”
