The past 48 hours could be the hardest for Jim (not his real name), who saw his father, a 59-year-old tennis instructor in Cavite province, slip away so quickly and helplessly.

What’s even more frightening, Jim said, was that he himself could be a carrier if not a victim to the very same disease that snatched a loved one away.

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Results of his father’s test for the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) would not be released until Friday, yet Jim, a 38-year-old nursing graduate, said all known symptoms of infection were there—labored breathing, high fever and sudden gush of brownish and bloodied stool.

Jim sat by his father in a hospital tent in Bacoor City and made sure to attend to his needs despite the risk of getting infected himself.

Speed of light

“COVID-19 has taken away so quickly the life of our dearest brother just like the speed of light. Now, I totally understand that it’s not just the virus that is deadly but mostly … the [substandard hospital] care,” Jim’s aunt said.

Jim’s father, a smoker, suffered from asthma triggered by ashfall from Taal Volcano’s steam-driven eruption in January. He had never gotten sick while living only with a 7-year-old granddaughter until April 11, when he was found lying outside their home in Imus City, also in Cavite.

The granddaughter sought help from neighbors and barangay officials to bring Jim’s father on a multicab to the hospital. They were turned away by four hospitals in Imus.

Full capacity

“They (hospitals) said they would not accept any more COVID-19 patients,” Jim said in a phone interview on Monday.

Hospitals running at full capacity and medical front-liners falling ill themselves complicate emergency situations, like that of Jim’s father.

Jim, who lived in neighboring Laguna province, arrived in Cavite just as a private hospital in Bacoor took his father in. But even that hospital refused to admit the patient and placed him instead in a tent outside its building.

“They (hospital staff members) kept telling me to look for another hospital, but I repeatedly asked them to have my father stabilized first. They kept giving him paracetamol, like four tablets in an hour. The fever would go down only to shoot back up to 40 or 41 degrees [Celsius] after five minutes,” Jim said.

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Most painful

Several times, Jim asked the nurses’ permission to leave so he could look for another medical center. The Bacoor hospital would not coordinate with other hospitals for a transfer anyway, he said.

“They said I couldn’t go. They gave me [a pair of] gloves and told me to give my father a sponge bath for the fever. I brought my own face masks with me,” he said.

By then, Jim’s father had been on oxygen support for several hours already and he could only twitch an eyebrow to respond to his son.

“They said [my father] was a PUI (person under investigation for COVID-19 symptoms or suspected COVID-19 case) but refused to treat him like one. I kept saying it was obviously not just fever or stroke but an infection,” Jim said.

His pleas for an isolation room and a doctor were unheeded until the next morning and after his father had had an episode of diarrhea.

His father’s saliva was already spilling out of the oxygen mask. “There was an industrial fan blowing [the fluids toward my direction],” he said.

At 7:30 a.m., April 12, Jim’s father was finally moved to an isolation room.

“I couldn’t leave him like that but I had to. I told him, ‘They’re exposing me to whatever virus you had.’ It was most painful,” Jim said.

Still without adequate hospital attention, Jim decided to slip out of the Bacoor hospital to look for another facility. After two attempts, he finally found one in Sta. Rosa City in Laguna willing to admit his father.

It was too late.

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For more information on COVID-19, call the DOH Hotline: (02) 86517800 local 1149/1150.

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