A Northern Virginia family is sharing its painful experience with the coronavirus in hopes it will reinforce the call to stay home and practice social distancing. Northern Virginia Bureau Chief Julie Carey reports.
A Virginia grandmother lost her fight with the coronavirus after a brief recovery.
“She showed me she was a fighter, she wanted to live,” Joni Blue said.
Her mother, 65-year-old Joanne Blue, started her battle with COVID-19 inside a rehab center where she was recovering from a mild stroke.
Joni Blue says her mother lost valuable time when the facility delayed getting her help.
By the time the former medical worker was hospitalized, she had to be vented and placed in the ICU in grave condition.
Then, on April 18, Joni Blue got some good news. A doctor called and told her he took her mother off the ventilator and she was breathing on her own.
Nurses helped with a Zoom call, and Joni Blue was surprised to hear her mother talking to her.
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The medical team marveled.
“I had nurses call me crying, telling me that they stood at my mom’s window in disbelief that she was awake and joking and making them laugh,” Joni Blue said. “She brought them joy.”
But just days later Joanne Blue’s condition had deteriorated. She was asked if she wanted to be vented again.
“She said no more ventilator,” Joni Blue said. “She wanted to fight it on her own. She tried for two-and-a-half days almost.”
She died late last week.
The director at Lake Manassas & Rehabilitation Center where Joanne stayed before she was hospitalized says they disagree with the family’s assessment of her care there.
A GoFundMe page was created to help the Blue family with burial expenses.
