ST. LOUIS — After her father's May 2020 death due to COVID-19, Holly Edgell sat down and wrote an essay on her blog under the title 'Who brought COVID-19 to my dad's nursing home in St. Louis?'
"About six weeks into the lockdown, we got the word: Dad had contracted COVID-19. He fought for nearly a week at St. Louis University Hospital. Thanks to the nurses and a chaplain there, we were able to FaceTime with him during that period. My brother, a SLU physician, was with him at the end," she wrote.
Edgell called the process cathartic, adding "as a lot of people will tell you, it feels like 10 years ago in some ways and it feels like yesterday."
Al Edgell died May 4, 2020, relatively early in the ongoing pandemic, a health disaster so many didn't realize would last this long, and one that has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918 Spanish Flu.
"In today's age, I don't think any of us expected to see something like we are seeing currently, and it's disappointing that we are in this position," Mercy ICU doctor Karthik Iyer said.
Dr. Iyer said he expected vaccines would be the light at the end of the tunnel, though reality has turned out to be much darker.
"Healthcare fatigue is real," he said. "More than a physical toll, we're seeing the emotional toll."
Iyer said their staff is still committed to helping patients and their loved ones through death and illness, echoing a mantra he picked up from coworkers: "Tough times don't last. Tough teams do."
Edgell said she's still in mourning and bitter that someone let the coronavirus slip into her father's living facility.
She also lost her mother to cancer last year just months after her dad's death, but she now hopes to have a joint ceremony for both her parents sometime early next year.
"He did live a really good full life. He was a great dad, a great grandfather, a great husband. So yeah he was pretty cool," she said, smiling at the memories.