Nexstar Media Wire | Dec 7, 2020 |
KXAN – Patricia Perez spent more than a month in an Austin ICU fighting COVID-19, but early last week her family was notified that the end was near.
Her five adult children gathered at St. David’s Medical Center to receive the devastating news from doctors: she was not expected to make it through the night. The update did not come as a surprise.
The previous weekend, on Patricia’s 70th birthday, doctors told her family they had exhausted all options.
By Wednesday morning, the ventilator and all of the other machines that had been keeping her alive were turned off, and the Perez family started making burial plans.
Potential exposure at the polls
Patricia’s children said she had barely left her house since March due to the pandemic, but there was no stopping her from working the Travis County polls during early voting—a job she had performed for years due to her passion for politics.
She wore a face shield, a mask and gloves while assisting voters at the Holiday Inn near Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 290. On Oct. 22 she called her children concerned about a fellow poll worker.
“She was so upset,” said Adrianne. “She had noticed a guy was sick and had been blowing his nose, coughing.”
Perez told her family he was wearing a mask, but kept working that day with symptoms, and then he went to get a COVID test.
Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said:
“The poll worker felt fine when they went to work that morning and felt fine until much later during the day and then began to feel just a little puny.
“And immediately told people there… the poll worker just wasn’t feeling right, and everybody decided that that person should leave immediately and that is what happened … ” Read more.
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