‘I watched her slip away’: What it is like to lose a loved one to COVID-19

Laura Tanner is one of more than 100 NHS workers who have died from COVID-19.

The 51-year-old passed away at home on 1 April, after both her and her husband Kevin became ill with the coronavirus.

Laura had worked for the Basildon and Brentwood Clinical Commissioning Group for more than 10 years, most recently as an out of hospital commissioning support officer.

Her husband Kevin, who she married in September 2014, spoke to Sky News about his wife’s experience.

On the 18th March we both had a fever. I felt ill and shivery and she felt awful too. We both went into isolation.

Her youngest son Kian also had mild symptoms.

We didn’t try and get tested and we both lost our taste and smell.

By day seven, my symptoms had gone but she had got bad. She was burning up so we called 999.

Her temperature was 40C and the paramedic said she was the fifth or sixth person he’d seen that night with those symptoms.

None of them had gone to hospital because their symptoms weren’t shallow breathing or unconsciousness.

The paramedic got her temperature down but was going by his own protocols and she wasn’t ill enough to go to hospital.

We can’t knock them for that – she didn’t want to go to hospital, she didn’t think she would come back.

We couldn’t take her temperature because we didn’t have thermometers in the house.

She ordered them and they came a week after she died.

Then the aches, cough and shallow breathing started.

I continued looking after her, I was giving her paracetamol, food and water and was keeping an ear out.

She couldn’t go to the bathroom without getting breathless.

She died on the 1st of April.

I heard her thumping down the stairs and then she was on the sofa. It looked like she was having a massive panic attack.

I have seasonal asthma, so have brown paper bags in the house. I tried to get her to breath into the bag. That was for 45 minutes.

I called her sister and told her Laura wasn’t calming down. I thought, this isn’t good.

She wanted me to stay next to her, because it was comforting. I was on the phone to 999 trying to get the ambulance out.

I told them on the phone she was slipping away.

I hadn’t done CPR before. They talked me through it. I watched her slip away. I was holding her.

The ambulance came 10 minutes later. They took her away, still working on her.

Forty-five minutes later two of them came back and saved me getting the phone call.

Laura’s other son Ethan had turned up by then. He had been staying at his place, because we were isolating.

It never crossed my mind this could happen. You never think your loved ones will get it, especially your own wife.

I have always got memories of her in her wedding dress. I love that picture.

I had it blown up for the funeral and put it in the frame. It arrived that day.

There is not enough awareness. There are people who don’t understand how serious it is.

Even on the weekend, so many people are going to beaches.

If they are gathering when they shouldn’t be, they have only got themselves to blame.

This is the true life story of a family that has been torn apart.

In a statement Basildon and Brentwood Clinical Commissioning Group said: “Laura, a warm and caring colleague, will be greatly missed by everyone at Basildon and Brentwood CCG and our thoughts and condolences are with her family at this devastating time.

William Guy, Director of Strategy and Transformation at BBCCG, said: “Laura’s sad death will leave a massive void within the CCG. With her warmth and sense of humour, she was a popular colleague. We offer our most sincere condolences to Laura’s family. “

(c) Sky News 2020: ‘I watched her slip away’: What it is like to lose a loved one to COVID-19