The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Community mourns Danbury veterinarian’s death
Leaves behind 6-week-old son
— A local mother who was a familiar face to area pet owners at Noah’s Ark Animal Hospital in Danbury has died at 39, less than three weeks after giving birth to a baby boy.
Kristin Sobel (Boyd), a resident of Ridgefield who worked as a veterinarian at Noah’s Ark for almost five years, died Dec. 31. She left behind a husband and a son, who was born Dec. 12 and is now 6 weeks old, 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 and did not perform an autopsy.
Her husband, Jeffrey Boyd, described their son, Andrew Owen Boyd, as “a very content, happy little boy.” He said he’ll tell Andrew about how 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, her humanity and her ability to relate to other people, he said.
Boyd said 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.
“Danbury Hospital has not explained what went wrong,” he said in a text message this week.
“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 Hospital) to spend as much time at Kristin’s bedside as visiting hours would allow,” Boyd added in a text message on Wednesday
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 the 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.
‘Dedicated veterinarian’
Boyd said he and Kristin were introduced by a veterinarian friend whom Kristin interned with, and they went on their first date on Dec. 31, 2014.
On top of remembering her sense of adventure with trying new foods on that date, Boyd said, “On that night in 2014, we kind of realized separately, quietly, that this was the big one.” The couple married in September 2017.
Sobel’s colleagues and clients said they are extremely 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 also 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 resident Alicia Ghio, one of Sobel’s clients. “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, another client, 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 1/2 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.
Following Sobel’s graduation from veterinary school, she completed a one-year small animal medicine and surgical inment ternship 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 moRIDGEFIELD for her potential reward to her future self is pretty remarkable.”
She became a resident of 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.