How a 36-year-old Yorkton mother died from COVID-19 at home after trying to 'ride it out'
CBC
Forty-one-year-old Derek Langan can barely remember the week he spent bed-ridden at home with COVID-19 in Yorkton, Sask., but he'll never forget the moment he found his 36-year-old wife unresponsive in the living room.
She was also sick with COVID-19.
A 911 operator told Langan and his teenaged daughter to attempt CPR, but he had no breath to spare.
"I couldn't do it because I couldn't breathe. We had a hard time getting her off the couch, " he said. "I was not coherent. I was in a daze."
Twila Flamont, a mother-of-six, died at home from COVID-19 on Oct. 5.
Saskatchewan health officials first flagged in early October that some people were dying from COVID-19 outside of hospitals.
On Thursday, the province's chief medical health officer said there is no "consistent pattern" of home deaths, but hospital admission data shows too many people with COVID-19 are waiting too long to seek medical help.
In the second week of November, two-thirds of people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 were moved to the ICU within 24 hours of arrival.
"I hope that people who need hospital care show up to hospital and seek testing even before they become seriously ill," said Dr. Saqib Shahab.
An official from the health authority said half of the COVID patients in the hospital did not get tested beforehand.
In April, Ontario officials said they were seeing a similar phenomenon of younger people dying at home. A doctor said people weren't ignoring symptoms, but rather deteriorating from stable to dead very quickly.
Langan said his family was under the impression that people with COVID-19 were supposed to "ride it out at home" and avoid health facilities. He said no one told them differently and he had expected someone to check up on them.
Flamont, a popular Peavey-Mart employee in Yorkton, about 175 kilometres northeast of Regina, began coughing and feeling sick in late September. She went for testing, along with her husband and children, and they all tested positive for COVID.
Langan said they had chosen not to get vaccinated because of what they had read on Facebook, which he now considers to be myths and conspiracy theories.
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