Since COVID-19 is so contagious, Bill and Joan O'Brien couldn’t visit their dying 35-year-old son Michael in the hospital. “For us, that was the hardest part. Not being able to visit him and be with him, talk to him,” his father says. hereandnow
of Wolcott, Connecticut, DJed an event in nearby Westchester, New York — one of the country's early COVID-19 hot spots.Michael O'Brien worked as a flag-man at construction sites but had a side gig as a DJ. He was the youngest of four siblings.
At first Michael thought he was experiencing allergies. But his sister was concerned for herself and her brother since each of them get bronchitis yearly. Plus, Bill O'Brien says his wife, Joan O'Brien, has lung problems and uses oxygen at night.“By that weekend, I guess, Mike was showing symptoms,” he says. “And over the weekend and then the next week, he got sicker. And, you know, the last we heard was his temperature was 104.5 [degrees].
“For us, that was the hardest part. Not being able to visit him and be with him, talk to him,” he says. “We couldn't talk to him on the phone after the first day. He was on a ventilator.” When the family learned Michael was dying, they rushed to the hospital and arrived just in time. This time, they parked near the emergency room because they knew Michael was a few floors above it.
Tara O'Brien didn’t witness the hours the doctors spent trying to keep Michael alive, but when doctors realized he wasn't going to make it, the nurses brought her in the room. “Mike was his own kind of guy. He liked to do his own thing,” he says. “He was always one that would lend an ear to people.”
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