A father who has watched his 15-year-old daughter be hospitalized for days with complications from COVID-19 is serving a warning to young people who might feel invincible in the face of the virus.
“The majority of young people are somehow invincible in the face of the virus. The only thing is you never know who is going to be really sick. We cannot predict who it will fall on, but it can be anyone, ”says a father.
For fear that he or his teenage daughter would receive slurs on social media, he requested anonymity in order to tell his daughter’s story.
Like a dagger
The 15-year-old was hospitalized last week for more than five days, just hours after testing positive for COVID-19.
“She was no longer drinking, because as soon as she put something in her mouth, she was very nauseous. She also had severe back pain. She had difficulty breathing, it was like a dagger in the back, ”he explains to the Journal.
The secondary 3 student at Cavelier-De LaSalle school, in the borough of the same name, in Montreal, was finally able to leave the hospital last Friday, but her fight is far from over.
“As soon as she gets up and activates a bit, she goes back to bed afterwards because she is in pain. She still has not found the smell or the taste. She is on the right track, but her pain is still problematic, ”he says.
The father also contracted the virus, a likely British variant, and he went into isolation with his teenage daughter until at least mid-May.
“My symptoms are mild. I have a cough and a little sore throat. I have pain in my back, but never as bad as my daughter. So I’m not complaining, ”he laughs.
The hardest part for him was watching his teenage daughter suffer so much while she was hospitalized.
“It hurt to see her like this. It broke my heart, ”he reports.
“It’s another thing, we must not forget that we can give the virus to someone at home who is at risk of suffering from the symptoms and who may even die from it,” adds the 48-year-old man.
Freedom to choose
The latter is difficult to understand why secondary schools have reopened by forcing the presence of students.
While it’s unclear exactly how his daughter got infected, he wished she could take her classes online. Especially since she is immunosuppressed due to drugs she takes for her Crohn’s disease.
“I would like us to be able to exempt our child from attending school without necessarily completing a medical document that must be approved by the ministry. I would have preferred that we were left free. We are in the best position to know the health of our children, ”he said.
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