Hospitalized together, just one floor apart
Following a difficult ordeal, Beach couple overcame COVID-19
VIRGINIA BEACH — Robert Vanderwerff was born in the Dutch East Indies nearly 80 years ago and lived in an internment camp with his mother during Japanese occupation.
He was too young to remember. But recently, Vanderwerff learned a little about what it might feel like to be imprisoned.
A few weeks ago, he broke his hip while battling the coronavirus, a hellish ordeal that combined hospital isolation, wrenching pain and an inability to walk.
At the same time, his wife, Ioanna, contracted the illness and came within an inch of her life. And though they were never more than one floor apart at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital, they couldn’t see each other for weeks.
Personal experiences with the coronavirus aren’t often volunteered. Even as it becomes more widespread, many of the recovered still aren’t comfortable talking about COVID-19, fearing judgment for having had a disease that has caused so much devastation.
Their story came to us through other reporting on this public health crisis. Roger Gauthier, a chaplain at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital, spoke to The Virginian-Pilot about a patient he had met who was unable to see his wife, also sick from the virus. When all seemed lost, he prayed with Vanderwerff and offered a simple kindness — his phone — so he could have a video call with her.
She couldn’t speak, but he spoke to her.
When we first connected with Vanderwerff two weeks ago, he had been discharged and was staying at his daughter’s home. Ioanna, who goes by Anna, was out of intensive care but still in the hospital. Gauthier continued to check in on her and the family.
A few days later, she was released.
“He probably saved a life, I’m pretty sure,” Vanderwerff said of the chaplain.
Where he caught the bug is anyone’s guess — he wondered if he was exposed to it at a concert in Williamsburg. In early March, he started to feel ill and went to his primary care doctor. It was probably a virus, she said, and advised him to self-quarantine for two weeks while watching for serious symptoms.
“I didn’t think much of it,” said Vanderwerff, who was a nurse for 16 years. “Usually when doctors don’t know what it is, they say it’s a virus.”
About two weeks later, though he hadn’t completely bounced back, he ventured to Chesapeake to pick up a piece of equipment for sleep apnea. When he returned home, he missed a step and hit the sidewalk, crushing his right hip.
He fell about 24 feet from his front door. He screamed for help for over an hour. Finally, Anna, who had been sleeping because she was sick, heard and called for an ambulance. He was admitted to Virginia Beach General on March 12. While he waited for surgery the next day, Anna, who is 76, was getting worse. She called one of their daughters, Marieke Jones, to take her to the emergency room.
The medical staff gave Anna some potassium, then sent her on her way. But one day later, when she had grown weaker, she asked Jones to take her back. This time, they admitted her.
Robert and Anna were tested for COVID-19 on March 15, but wouldn’t get positive results for about a week.
“Mom and Dad were one floor apart from each other,” Jones said. “Upstairs and downstairs, I spent the whole day there, making sure they were OK, being a voice for them.”
Then, the nurse told Jones they were shutting down the hospital to visitors. That was the last time she got to be with her parents in the hospital. She had to suit up in protective clothing to be in the same room with them.
From then on, she called to get status reports.
While Robert was recovering from surgery, Anna spiraled downward. In the ICU, staff intubated her to help her breathe.
Feeling beyond hopeless, Robert, who is Christian, asked to speak to a chaplain. Gauthier arrived, wearing gloves and a mask. Even with his face partially concealed, Vanderwerff recognized him.
“Where did you get your training?” he asked.
The two had worked
at
Maryview Medical Center Portsmouth.
A day after Anna was put on a ventilator, Robert got a glimpse at his wife’s situation, through a few square inches of Gauthier’s phone screen.
A week later, they tried to take Anna off the machine. They removed the breathing tube, but she was doing badly. Three or four hours later, medical staff said she needed to be reintubated.
She refused.
A doctor called Jones and told her to talk to her mother. If she didn’t allow them to intervene, she would die.
“I just begged her,” Jones remembered. “I said, ‘Mom, please just let them intubate you. Please, please.’ ”
Anna caved to her daughter’s wishes. She allowed them to put the tube back in.
About a week later, staff said it was time to try again. Jones and her siblings waited for news. With the possibility of Anna not making it off the ventilator, Robert said the hospital allowed him to be in her room.
This time she managed. Deep breath in. A breath out. Repeat.
While Anna graduated out of the ICU, Robert headed to his daughter’s house, where a physical therapist came to help him transition from walker to cane.
Defying everyone’s expectations, Anna eventually joined him. Robert greeted his wife as staff wheeled her out the door, after four weeks in the hospital.
She was with her family to celebrate Easter. Last Sunday, her oldest daughter polished her wedding ring. The couple had renewed their vows for their 50th anniversary six years ago. But it felt like the right time to do it again.
She doesn’t remember most of the details of her hospital stay — the intubation, the video call or Gauthier praying with her. The medication made it a blur.
Anna has started physical and occupational therapy to build up her strength. A speech therapist also will be part of the regimen. Her voice, marred by the intubation, is barely above a whisper. Robert describes it as talking through a hollow tube.
But Anna, who has the longest road to recovery, is excited. Deeply religious, she recently quoted a Bible verse from the Book of Jeremiah that gives her confidence another chapter is in store for her.
“Being home is the closest thing to heaven,” she said. “I almost went to heaven, but they brought me back.”
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