THE ROAD AHEAD
LIFE AFTER COVID- 19 ‘ We need to be better’
He was just the best, he really was.
This is how Melissa Castiglia describes her brother. Her only brother. The younger brother she lost after he contracted COVID- 19.
Looking through a large basket packed full of sympathy cards, she was left wondering how she would write all of the thank- you’s.
The vast outpouring has been comforting for the 32- year- old elementary school teacher. Settling into this new reality has been anything but.
“The thing that was surprising was just how many people, how many lives he’s touched,” she said of her 30- year- old sibling, Dan Spano – one of more than 2,000 lives lost in Connecticut after hard- fought battles with the deadly virus.
This global pandemic has devastated families, communities, while striking fear into everything we knew to be normal, down to the very air we breathe.
As painfully overwhelming as it is now, it also opens the way for a different future.
What does the road ahead look like for Melissa, for us, for the country? How can we honor the many who died?
“We need to be better,” Melissa said.
For her right now, that means knowing how we can care for people who are gravely ill.
“Whether it be through the plasma or medicine, these people, they suffered, whether or not we want to believe it or not, they suffered. They are hooked up to these ventilators and yes, they are sedated, but nobody deserves to be suffering like that,” she said.
It means facing the heart of the coronavirus crisis. “We just need to be better because everything’s just so uncertain with it,” she said, “and we shouldn’t be living in constant fear for the rest of our lives because we’re afraid to walk outside and breathe air.”
For all of us, it means more vigilance. More being better. Never. Letting. This. Happen. Again.
At the moment, the crush of the crisis wields its power.
So many, many sympathy cards.
“I was trying to sit there and count them yesterday and it was just insane. The basket is filled with cards,” she said, speaking with me during her maternity leave as her 3- month- old went down for a nap.
“The things that people say about him, it touches you, and it’s heartbreaking all in the same time because his life was cut so short.”
Melissa’s daughter, Adrianna, will know her uncle by photographs. She won’t grow up as his goddaughter. She won’t see that smile always lighting up the room when Dan was around.
He was only 30 years old. A personal fitness trainer. The one his parents would joke was the good child, who never got into any trouble.
“My brother was my best friend,” she said. “He’s my only sibling, so I am having a hard time with that. I love him with all of my heart.”
If she had to pick one defining memory, it had to be that smile and sense of humor.
“He was always joking and he always had these one- liners that he would say,” said Melissa, who teaches in Stamford and lives in Ridgefield.
“That’s what I am going to remember and miss the most.”
No more knocks at the door to see her and his niece, as he would do so often shortly after she was born. No texts, no FaceTime. The last conversation, by text, will stay with her.
Following a doctor’s advice, she said, Dan was resting up at home in Norwalk after symptoms took hold. She urged him to keep moving, not to lie down too much for fear it wouldn’t be good for his lungs. He sent what would be his final words to her.
“Well, what should I do?” he wrote.
The answer proved to be tragically complicated.
Dan would later find himself in Norwalk Hospital, placed on a ventilator, fighting for his life – all following the initial onset of a cough and fever. Even more shocking given Melissa saying he was healthy, with no known pre- existing conditions.
The family desperately tried to line up donated plasma. But a blood clot formed in his groin, his organs began to fail and, on
April 11, Dan died.
Among its many horrors, COVID- 19 robs families of a proper goodbye.
On what would turn out to be their last Zoom call with Dan, the screen faced the hospital room ceiling so as not to upset the family for what they might see, but to also help them remember him the way they wanted to. That smile.
“We were basically in the beginning telling him to breathe and to keep fighting and at one point the doctor had called and basically said his body is shutting down and there’s really not much more we can do,” Melissa said.
“After we spoke to the doctor, instead of telling him to keep fighting, we basically told him it’s OK, you tried your hardest, we love you, if you need to let go, let go, we don’t want you to be in pain. We love you, we’re sorry.
“We feel like he was by himself, we weren’t there.”
Still, she believes Dan heard his loved ones. The doctor told them they were going to wean him off the drug treatments and give him only pain medications, she said, “and before the doctor even went in there to give him the pain medications, he passed.”
“I truly don’t believe in things like that, but just the fact that kind of happened, gave me a little bit … of comfort that maybe he did hear us.
“Going forward I still feel like for myself, and I feel like a lot of people, are just going to be scared for a long time because there’s just so many unknowns with this.”
At Hearst Connecticut Media Group we are devoting today’s editions, in our eight daily newspapers and websites, to further exploring some of those unknowns. To look at The Road Ahead: Life After COVID- 19.
How do we learn from the lives lost? How can we build a better future – through innovation, preparedness – together? Will the crisis, can it, lead to a better world?
With almost 200 journalists across the state, we have teamed up with some of the foremost experts in key areas that matter most to you. You will find an abundance of stories and expert voices, including our own columnists and student journalists, writing on everything from education to the economy.
We are taking an indepth look at the lessons learned, the innovation that could lie ahead and the obstacles in front of us. How do we avoid more loss and how do we further honor the lives of thousands in Connecticut, and so many more around the world, who lost theirs?
If one thing is clear, we have to move forward with care – together.
“I feel like unfortunately until people have this really hit home they may not be taking it seriously, and they need to because here we have a 30- year- old man who was a fitness instructor who went to his physical and had his doctor tell him that he was super healthy, to have this and then die from it, it can literally happen to anybody,” Melissa said, referencing recent protests calling on the state to reopen.
“I don’t want them to experience that, in terms of where I stand, as having a loved one pass away. But I also don’t want to get sick myself. People need to realize that if it’s not you, it could be somebody you know.”
No more sympathy cards.