COVID-19: Susan Sullivan’s family reflects on her death from coronavirus as UK reaches tragic milestone | UK news

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The scale of losses due to COVID-19 is so vast, a community in the country can hardly be saved.

In North London, John and Ida Sullivan have endured the pain of that loss for nearly two years.

Their daughter, Susan, was among the first to die from the virus, which has so far killed more than 150,000 people.

“It was just beautiful. Our lives were…the end, do you know what I mean?” Her father said through tears.

“I know how these other people feel. The thing is, until it happens to you, you don’t know. You think you know, but you don’t.”

Susan fell ill in March 2020, has been sick and on and off for about 10 days, during which time the Prime Minister announced the first lockdown.

But in the early hours of the 27th, her stomach ache became unbearable and John and Ida decided to call an ambulance.

“We had masks at the time. We sat rubbing her stomach and she kept saying ‘I’m waiting.'” where are they? ‘ said John, weeping as he recalled the terror of that morning, ‘It went on over and over again.

Emergency services were flooded. It took eight hours for the ambulance to arrive.

Photo: John Sullivan with his daughter Susan Photo: Susan Sullivan was 56 years old when she died

Susan, 56, who had Down syndrome, was admitted to hospital but the only contact allowed was by phone.

“As soon as she heard my voice, she said ‘Mama, mama, I don’t like it,’ and that was it,” said Ida.

I took the phone to John, but at the time, Susan was so dazed, she couldn’t speak.

“I never saw her again,” her father said. “I never spoke to her because when they gave me the phone she was just crying.”

Susan hated the oxygen mask and kept trying to remove it. She didn’t understand why it was so important.

Her mother says, if she had been allowed in, she would have stuck with it.

A decision was made to allow one of Susan’s brothers to visit.

Photo: Susan “Beautiful” with her mother Ida

Twenty minutes after he arrived—and 26 hours after Susan was first accepted—she died in his arms.

“When they put her in the ward, obviously we were over the moon, rather than in intensive care,” John said.

“I told the doctor, ‘That’s fine,'” Ida added.

But when we got her medical notes back, John continued, we read in her medical notes titled ‘Intensive Care, ITU Denied Due to Down Syndrome and Concomitant Heart Disease’.

They don’t blame the medical staff. They know the unbearable decisions they have to make.

“Doctors and nurses did not cause a shortage of beds and a shortage of nurses and a shortage of doctors, the government did,” John said.

But their anger is also focused on those who said no to the vaccine.

“Now we have all these people filling the union beds because they chose not to get vaccinated. Susan didn’t have that choice,” John explained.

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The family plans to erect a memorial once Susan’s other brother arrives from Australia.

“She’d be attacked with people because she was just beautiful,” John said.

The tragic reality is that many families untouched by COVID-19 will face their own losses.

One thing is guaranteed, and that is that the bleak toll of this epidemic will continue to rise even now.

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