“I want to help somebody. I don’t want anyone else to have to lose five family members.”
Their schedules are dictated by doctors’ appointments, physical therapy sessions and bouts of exhaustion. After weeks on ventilators, two siblings remain too weak to work even as their medical bills mount.
Joe Fusco, 49, lost 55 pounds and spent 30 days on a ventilator. His sister, Maria Reid, 44, cannot shake the memory of the disjointed hallucinations that dogged her during the 19 or 20 days she was unconscious, or the terror of waking up convinced that her 10-year-old daughter was dead. Their help may prove useful well before the predicted second wave hits as states like Florida and Texas confront an alarming surge in new cases.
Their story became an urgent, cautionary tale about the potency of the disease and the importance of staying apart at a time when social distancing was still a novel concept. “When I was leaving the hospital, the doctor said, ‘You don’t realize the debt of gratitude the world owes your family,’ ” said Joe Fusco, the father of three children ages 10 to 18.
With four people already dead, two on ventilators and a sister hospitalized and receiving oxygen, Elizabeth Fusco emerged as a ferocious advocate, even as she feared for her own daughter, Alexandra, who is 12 and was born with a serious health condition, congenital diaphragmatic hernia. “I don’t care if you were giving them rat poison — if you told me that that was going to fix them,” she said, her voice trailing off.
The nurses and the medical staff at CentraState Medical Center, the hospital in Freehold where Grace Fusco and five of her children were treated, served as the family’s eyes, ears and loving hands at a time when visitors were not allowed inside. Dwelling on the past, she said, is a luxury she does not have. “I’ve got to move on,” said Reid, who, along with her husband and daughter, shares a house with Joe’s family. “I’ve got a young daughter.”
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