Families grieve father, sister as older Utahns see effects of COVID-19

Ruben R. Gallegos was playing 18 holes of golf right up until days before he was hospitalized, his daughter said. He’d decided to get tested for COVID-19 because he was planning to attend a wedding in Colorado, according to his family, and the results came back positive.

The 79-year-old Gallegos died Oct. 6 in the intensive care unit at Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George. More than a month later, his 53-year-old daughter, Angie Schroader, still wakes up in the middle of the night in her Draper home and wonders how it happened and why.

“I truly believe he would be here at least 10, 15 more years if it wasn’t for COVID,” she said.

Utah surpassed 700 deaths from the virus Friday, two weeks after crossing 600 deaths Oct. 30. Earlier that month, the state marked 500 deaths on Oct. 8.

Utahns ages 65 to 84 have made up the greatest share of the death toll, at 352 as of Friday, according to data from Utah Department of Health. While they account for 7% of the state’s COVID-19 cases, they make up 19.9% of hospitalizations from the virus, UDOH data shows.

Meanwhile, people ages 25 to 44 — a much larger share of the state’s population — have the highest percentage of cases, at 36%, but only 2.9% of hospitalizations and 27 deaths, the data shows.

“We have a lot of patients in assisted living, and that’s been our hardest hit group for our practice here,” said Dr. Angel Lybbert, a geriatrician with Intermountain Healthcare’s Utah Valley Senior Medicine Clinic.

Most of the people they’ve seen with COVID-19 have been older than 70, she said, and nurses call patients with the virus every day to track their symptoms.

“The biggest thing I’ve seen kind of consistently is fatigue. Everyone feels just wiped out, exhausted,” Lybbert said. They’re also experiencing fever and cough, she said. Plus, there’s “a lot of anxiety coming with having this diagnosis and wanting to know how to protect others around them."

“The people who are healthy enough to stay at home, we’re just managing with supportive care,” such as ibuprofen or Tylenol for fevers, “typical cough remedies” and rest, Lybbert said.

″For the ones who have had to go to the hospital, it’s basically the breathing issues that are taking people there," she said. “So, my patients with underlying pulmonary issues, we’ve just talked a lot about precautions and trying to protect those patients.”

The older a person is, the more at risk the patient is for severe illness from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and underlying medical conditions can put them more at risk.

“Every older adult should be taking the precautions, even if they feel like they’re in good health,” Lybbert said, because there are “relatively healthy people who’ve had a worse run of it than you would expect.”

On Nov. 5, 70-year-old Martie Jensen Schofield, of Sandy, died of complications from COVID-19. And it bugs Ivy Robertson, Jensen Schofield’s niece, to hear people question whether a person actually died of the virus, or pass off the experience of being sick with COVID-19 as no big deal.

“You were the lucky few," said Robertson, 44, of Sandy. “Regardless of what happened to you, there’s still people dying from it.”

‘Can’t breathe’

Gallegos celebrated his 79th birthday with his family members Aug. 27, Schroader said, and they were looking forward to his 80th.

Gallegos was a retired Salt Lake City firefighter who had grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Schroader described him as “a gentle giant” and fan of jazz music. A few years ago, he moved from St. George to Mesquite, Nev., where he loved to golf and sing karaoke, his family said.

Gallegos and his friends had been “very careful” and wore masks, Schroader said, but then some of them, including Gallegos, caught COVID-19.

After feeling lethargic and not able to catch his breath days after his positive test, Gallegos went to the hospital Sept. 17, and he was moved to the ICU on Sept. 21, according to his daughter. When Schroader talked to her dad on FaceTime, he told her, “I guess I’m not doing as well as I thought."

Four years earlier, Schroader said, her mother was sick with pneumonia in the same hospital, and after her mother chose not to be intubated, she died. So, when Gallegos was given the option of intubation this year, he said yes.

“He did not want to die," Schroader said.

Gallegos had a tube inserted through his airway for 11 days, according to his family. Schroader said, “I could look in his eyes. He hated it.” At one point, a nurse gave Gallegos a paper and pen, so he could write a message.

“He wrote, ‘Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe,'” Schroader said.

Schroader and her brother visited their father in person, wearing protective suits, she said, to talk with him and his doctors. Gallegos asked to have the tube removed, and his children supported him.

At first, Gallegos seemed to be doing OK, but by Oct. 5, Gallegos talked with his family on FaceTime, Schroader said, and he “didn’t look good."

He died early the next day.

When Schroader began to write her father’s obituary, she said, she had to hold back some feelings; she wanted to call out all the people who were not wearing masks. Instead, she wrote how his “death was needless," and that her dad “suffered greatly from the ravages” of the virus and not having his family at his side. She thanked the doctors and nurses “for holding our hands through this nightmare.”

Schroader said she’s had to distance herself from people on social media who post about the coronavirus being a hoax, or how their rights are being taken away by having to wear a mask. Some people might not get sick, but they could make others ill, and they “don’t care,” Schroader said.

“It’s pretty horrid," she said. “I wouldn’t want this for anybody.”

Living without a sister

Jensen Schofield “was just fun,” loving and caring, said Robertson, her niece. She loved to be outdoors, to go camping, horseback riding, Dutch oven cooking, skiing and snowmobiling.

“She was amazing at gardening,” Robertson said.

Jensen Schofield had been living in an assisted living facility in Sandy after she had a stroke about 10 years ago, and that’s where she tested positive for COVID-19, according to her family. At first, she “felt fine and was actually fighting it,” Robertson said, but then “every day was a little bit worse.”

It was hard to know what were the best steps to take or how to comfort Jensen Schofield, her family said. Robertson and her mother, Holly Kasteler, Jensen Schofield’s sister, live in Sandy, too, but they felt far away because they couldn’t see Jensen Schofield in person.

The two talked with Jensen Schofield through their Alexa devices in their homes. As Schofield got sicker, “she couldn’t really talk back,” her family said, but they could at least say “hi” and “I love you."

Jensen Schofield had underlying health conditions, Robertson said, and it was about a week from when they learned her aunt had COVID-19 to when she died Nov. 5.

“It’s weird to have to live in this earth without a sister,” said Kasteler, who was four years younger than Jensen Schofield. “I’ve had one every day of my life.”

As the Beehive State continues to see a spike in COVID-19 cases, Utahns need to respond how they did early in the pandemic, when “everyone was very cautious and concerned,” Lybbert, the Intermountain geriatrician, said. “If you hadn’t really made any big changes in terms of wearing your mask and things all summer long, now is the time to get serious about it."

Lybbert said she knows it’s “hard with the holidays,” but “we’re just urging people to think long term and to make the sacrifices of not socializing over the next couple of weeks.”