Mesa woman recalls the last moments before her father died from COVID-19 complications
MESA, Ariz. - The daughter of a Mesa man who tragically died from complications due to the coronavirus speaks out about her and her family's experience.
“Initially they thought he had the flu," Taryn Chatman said. "Then he was fine, before that Friday I didn’t see anything wrong with my father, I didn’t hear any sneezing, I didn’t see any coughing, he didn’t have a fever.”
She describes the days leading up to her father dying of a heart attack after he was diagnosed with COVID-19. She last saw him in the intensive care unit at Mountain Vista Hospital in Mesa.
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”I suited up, and I went to go see my dad. My dad looked like he was getting better ...,” she said.
55-year-old Steve Chatman wrote about his experience on his Facebook page. In his last post on March 22, he told his friends that an urgent care practitioner tested and diagnosed him with the flu a week before he was hospitalized, but his symptoms got worse.
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He talked about having pneumonia and disclosed he had diabetes.
Suddenly his condition became unstable and blood pressure dropped. He was put in an induced coma and hooked to a ventilator.
"I spoke to the nurse, she put the phone up to him and that was when I told him that I loved him and I was taking care of things, and that we were ready for him to come back home,” his daughter said.
From diagnosis to death, it took a little more than one week. “It was swift. This thing is persistent. It’s almost like this virus, you fight back then it fights back 10 times harder, [it] does not want you to get back up,” Chatman said.
She sadly will not able to see her father before he’s cremated.
She wants to pass on her father’s last wish: "Love your family. Any type of anger you have with your family, just let it go."