18 YEAR OLD DIES OF COVID ILLINOIS HOW TO

She wonders whether medical science would have moved faster if “we would have taken this more seriously or with a sense of urgency when” it first appeared. Still, she can’t help but remember that her daughter died just as the first shots were being given. Deborah doesn’t know of any contacts with people who tested positive and acknowledges that knowing how Sarah got the virus wouldn’t mean much now.ĭeborah appreciates the availability of vaccines. The teen was careful, and she was grounded for getting a speeding ticket until a few days before she got sick. Her mother does not even know how Sarah got the virus. The teenager was a hostess at a local restaurant and cared for her goldendoodle, Bailey, who hasn’t set foot in Sarah’s bedroom since she died. She remembered her daughter as a fun, caring person who would grab a favorite box of candy for a friend who was feeling down. There’s no words to describe what her loss has done to me and.

18 YEAR OLD DIES OF COVID ILLINOIS HOW TO

“I truly don’t know how to answer that question most days.

People often ask the mother how she’s feeling. Lately, Deborah finds herself talking to her daughter and turning to her phone for pictures of Sarah. Her mother said no doctor has been able to explain why the virus took her seemingly healthy daughter, a senior at Lincoln-Way East. The teenager and her loved ones were robbed of that future when she died the day after Christmas of respiratory failure after contracting COVID-19. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune) Pictures on a phoneĭeborah Simental mourns the loss of a chance to see what her 18-year-old daughter, Sarah, would have done with the rest of her life. Sarah Simental, 18, died of COVID-19 in December. On this solemn anniversary, here are the stories of 10 families and how they are facing life after COVID-19 claimed their loved ones.ĭeborah Simental inside her late daughter's bedroom on March 10, 2021, in Tinley Park. “I don’t know what our lives will look like without Tonia here, but I do know that she will keep a constant watch over each of us.” “On Christmas Eve she went in to the hospital and never came out,” said Jeff Grace II, of Elmhurst, whose 49-year-old wife died late last year. Even as vaccines promise an end to the pandemic, their pain isn’t going anywhere. To them, it looms each day through text messages that don’t come, homes that feel barren, memories that arise from old jewelry or new tattoos. More than 20,000 have died in the state, but that number, horrifying as it is, doesn’t begin to capture the loss felt by those left behind. The virus has been a dread force ever since, taking as many as 238 lives in a single day, sparing neither children nor centenarians. One year ago, on March 16, COVID-19 claimed its first victim in Illinois, 61-year-old Chicagoan Patricia Frieson.

18 year old dies of covid illinois