Man who died at home leaves wife and daughter
‘My husband is gone when we need him most,’ woman says of self-isolating care worker
Buried in the statistics, in the daily updates of COVID19 cases and deaths, is the heart-wrenching human loss of a loved one.
There were 43 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in B.C. as of Tuesday afternoon.
Like all those who have died, death No. 39 had a name. It was Warlito Valdez. He had a wife. He had a fouryear-old daughter.
Valdez was 47 and he died sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning as he self-isolated on the top floor of his three-storey Richmond townhouse.
Valdez’s wife, Flozier Tabangin, found her husband unresponsive on Sunday morning, after he did not return her text messages asking what he would like for breakfast.
“I was running upstairs, ‘Please Lord, please Lord, please Lord,’ ” Tabangin said. “I shouted, I screamed, ‘Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me!’ ”
Chest compressions did no good and he was declared dead by paramedics.
“My husband is gone when we need him most. What is the future for my daughter? How will I pay for our townhouse with just one paycheque? Who will help me?”
Tabangin is not casting blame, but she wants this to be a lesson about the grave danger posed by COVID-19.
Valdez’s home death from COVID-19 was the second in B.C.
How did this happen? Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial medical health officer, on Tuesday talked about the protocol in place for people who test positive and are sent home.
“There are ongoing follow-ups,” she said. “When people test positive and they’re well enough to be at home they have daily follow-ups, it’s what we call active daily followup with public health. It can take a variety of different sources.”
With some people it’s a phone call, she said, with others it’s a check-in.
“So there are many different ways it’s done, but people are followed up regularly.”
In Valdez’s case, that meant daily phone conversations with a Vancouver Coastal Health nurse, Tabangin said. With her, not him. The only advice she was told was for Valdez to keep taking Tylenol.
The only symptom her husband complained about was a fever that would go away, then keep recurring. The VCH nurses told Tabangin they couldn’t tell her when the fever would subside for good.
Valdez had taken a drivethru test after the home for disabled adults he worked at, Pendleton Home, was hit by COVID-19 cases.
“We are all devastated,” said Shannon Crofton, acting executive director of Richmond Society for Community Living, which runs Pendleton. It’s an extremely difficult time for everyone there, she said, but could provide no more information, citing privacy rules.
Tabangin’s grief is heartrending. Her pain unimaginable, her sobs uncontrollable.
She doesn’t know how, where or when she’ll be able to pick up her life again without her husband; not physically, not emotionally, not financially.
Valdez had asked his wife if she could grab a takeout hamburger for him on Saturday afternoon, and had some chicken-noodle soup with that burger around 3 p.m. Come dinnertime he said he was full and wouldn’t be needing supper.
“He was such a nice man,” Tabangin said. “I said, ‘Please make sure to watch out for shortness of breath and please let me know, don’t hesitate to call me.’
“He said ‘I’ll be fine,’ and we said good night. That was our last conversation.”