Community mourns Ridgefield veterinarian, new mom
RIDGEFIELD — A woman familiar area pet owners at Noah’s Ark Animal Hospital in Danbury has died at 39, less than three weeks after giving birth to a son.
Kristin Sobel Boyd, of Ridgefield was a veterinarian at Noah’s Ark for nearly five years, died Dec. 31. She is survived by her husband, Jeff, and and a son, who was born Dec. 12, as well as her parents Marek and Krystyna Sobel and extended family.
The cause of her death was not immediately clear. A representative with the state medical examiner’s office said the office did not take the case. A spokesman with the state Department of Health said no internal investigation is taking place.
Jeffrey Boyd, described their son, Andrew Owen Boyd, as “a very content, happy little boy.”
He said he’ll tell Andrew his mother was a happy person who “never complained.” Her face and smile are among the first things that come to mind when he thinks of her, as well as her compassion, humanity and her ability to relate to other people, he said.
“I live in Kristin’s house and look at her pictures and out her windows and take it one day a time,” Boyd said in a text message. “Kristin also gave me resting smile face, and trained me to think about a happy thing at least once a day.”
Boyd said that his wife immediately required medical attention after giving birth and that his wife spent their baby’s “birth day on a ventilator” in the intensive care unit at Danbury Hospital. She was airlifted that night to Yale New Haven Hospital and was sedated from Dec. 12 until Christmas Eve, he said. She held the baby on Dec. 26 and Dec. 30, Boyd said.
“Danbury Hospital has not explained what went wrong,” he said in a text message this week.
Nuvance Health, which owns Danbury Hospital, declined to comment on her cause of death on Tuesday and declined to respond to an additional inquiry on Wednesday about her husband’s comments. Yale New Haven Hospital also declined to comment, citing the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
“HIPPA privacy rules severely limit what we would, could or wouldn’t be able to say regarding patients and protected patient health information,” spokesman Mark Dantonio said in an email.
“Andrew and our dog, Fletcher, went to Nana and Papa’s house to be looked after, and I moved into the Suites at YNHH (Yale New Haven Hospital) to spend as much time at Kristin’s bedside as visiting hours would allow,” Boyd added in a text message on Wednesday.
He said he talked to her “the whole time.”
“We (collective human experience) think people can hear when they are held in sedation,” Boyd said. “Like in and out of light dreams, or a sustained state of dozing off. So I played music and
made sure she could hear my voice and feel my hand all day.”
She was alert when she came out of sedation, he said.
“Nurses were saying she’d be delirious but she woke right up and was ready and willing to do whatever procedure would help her continue healing,” he said. “She was making eye contact and blinking to give yes/no responses, she could point and nod, and she pointed at a picture of her baby and then her belly and she wanted to see him, so we arranged a couple visits.”
She held the baby on Dec. 26 and came off of the ventilator on Dec. 29 and then had a “rough night,” her husband said. She
asked to hold Andrew again on Dec. 30, and during that visit, a doctor said she had to go back on the ventilator, Boyd said. Her condition declined through the night and she died on Dec. 31, her husband said.
‘Dedicated veterinarian’
Boyd said he and Kristin were introduced by a veterinarian friend with whom Kristin interned, and they went on their first date on Dec. 31, 2014.
He recalled her sense of adventure in trying new foods on their first date, Boyd said, “On that night in 2014, we kind of realized separately, quietly, that this was the big one.” The couple wed in September 2017.
Sobel’s colleagues and clients said they are saddened by her death.
In a letter sent to clients on Jan. 18, Noah’s Ark wrote Sobel was devoted to all animals and “provided the best care for every single one of her patients and their pet owners.”
“Anyone who met Dr. Sobel during her more than five years at Noah’s Ark knew that she was an outstanding and dedicated veterinarian,” Noah’s Ark wrote. “All of us who love and had the honor of working with Dr. Sobel at Noah’s Ark are stunned by this heartbreaking and sudden tragedy. Dr. Sobel will be missed immensely by everyone at Noah’s Ark and all those in the community whom she made special connections with during her time at the practice.”
Her clients described a committed veterinarian.
“While my cat Enzo wasn’t her patient for very long, I really valued having her as his vet,” said Danbury’s Alicia Ghio. “She was so kind and caring, not only with Enzo, but also with me as a nervous pet owner … She was patient and took time to go over things with me.”
Veronica Duve, of Danbury, said, “Dr. Sobel not only took great care of all my cats, but her expertise enabled my family to have our most beloved cat with us for 19 ½ years. Dr. Sobel’s passing is a huge loss for many.”
‘A quiet confidence’
Born in Springfield, Mass., Sobel earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. She attended graduate school at St. George’s University in Grenada, West Indies, and earned her doctorate in veterinary medicine in Oregon.
After graduation from veterinary school, she completed a one-year small animal medicine and surgical internship at Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston. She practiced at Randolph Animal Hospital in Randolph, Mass., before moving to Connecticut.
“She sacrificed a lot, financially, but also in terms of time and stress,” Boyd said. “She traveled all the way to Grenada to go to veterinarian school… she did all that on her own, but the sacrifice in the present moment for her potential reward to her future self is pretty remarkable.”
She moved to Ridgefield and began working at Noah’s Ark Animal Hospital in May of 2018.
“She had a quiet confidence about herself,” her husband said. “She had an enormous amount of strength that was all internal and she didn’t need to show it to anybody, but it was there… She never complained. She gave all of herself into everything she did and if she had a bad day at work, she’d recuperate with a strenuous hike or just by thinking about and doing simple things that made her happy.”
Contributions in Kristin Sobel’s memory may be made to Ridgefield Operation Animal Rescue or the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.