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COVID-19: Dublin woman dictated will in WhatsApp message on way to hospital

A Dublin woman who had the coronavirus says she dictated a will in a WhatsApp voice message on th...
Jack Quann
Jack Quann

10.25 27 Apr 2020


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COVID-19: Dublin woman dictate...

COVID-19: Dublin woman dictated will in WhatsApp message on way to hospital

Jack Quann
Jack Quann

10.25 27 Apr 2020


Share this article


A Dublin woman who had the coronavirus says she dictated a will in a WhatsApp voice message on the way to hospital.

Yvonne Kinsella is a journalist and TV producer who has asthma and an autoimmune disease.

Her husband also has asthma.

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She lives at home with her husband, her daughter, the daughter's partner and their two young children - the couple are saving for a house.

The entire family turned out to be positive for the coronavirus.

But she told Pat Kenny: "Thankfully we're now finally on the road to recovery Pat.

"My husband starting feeling a little sick first and he slept on the sofa the night that kind of everything went upside down for me.

"And then I got very, very sick and then unfortunately the whole household were tested and we're all positive."

"They didn't test the babies cause they were too young - but the babies had, and one of them still has it, a COVID cough.

"It's not like any other cough, you can tell straight away what it is".

She took us through her ordeal: "The week of March 23rd is when it all kicked off for me.

"The week before that we had all had some sort of a 'bug', which I now realise the vomiting was actually a build up to what was happening.

"Monday I had indigestion...and I thought this was unusual, but I didn't think much of it - maybe because I was sick the previous week.

"And then by the Wednesday - Wednesday was a tough day.

"On the Wednesday I got this feeling, I couldn't speak and it was like a truck had parked on my chest - that's possibly the only way of describing it.

"That morning I couldn't catch my breath, I couldn't speak - and then it went.

"But by the afternoon my energy had dropped so I went to bed".

She said she was having hot flushes and spells of being freezing cold in the bed along with an "indescribable" headache.

"The pain went through my body, I couldn't actually get out of bed to walk a few feet to the en-suite".

She resisted calling an ambulance on Wednesday.

But she said: "On Thursday night I woke up at about 3 o'clock and I remember lying in the bed going 'I'm dying here'.

"The breathing was very shallow, I hadn't the energy to even turn in the bed".

"I remember thinking 'If I'm going to die tonight I don't want the kids to wake up, I don't want anyone to hear me going.

"I just went down the stairs and I said to my husband 'get me to the hospital now love'.

She then went about writing a will: "I had said to John 'go out to the kitchen' - we had bought wills about two years ago but we never wrote them.

"He gave me a pen and I hadn't even the energy to do anything - so I just signed it and I put the date on it.

"He drove me to the hospital and as we drove I dictated the will into a WhatsApp voice message.

"And I just said to him 'go home and before you go to bed I want you to write it up so it's a viable will'".

She said she did not want her husband to come into the hospital, as it was for coronavirus patients only.

"I walked in and I purposely didn't look back at him cause I was struggling to walk and I couldn't breathe properly - and I thought if I cry, I'll make myself worse."

She said a doctor told her "You may have left it longer than you should have, but you were right to come in".

She was 13 days in hospital, and even made friends with an elderly lady who was also a patient.

She  also promised the lady she would find her daughter, and let her know how she was doing.

"She'd no phone - five weeks in hospital [and] had never spoken to her family."

"I asked could I use my phone to let her make the call, but because of GDPR I wasn't allowed do that.

"So I promised her I'd find her daughter and I'd let her know how great she was doing".

"On Wednesday when I got out she was asleep, so I got into the corridor and I was crying my eyes out and I said to the nurse 'give her a virtual huge for me' and tell her I'm coming down with chocolate to her... when she gets out and I'm going to ring her daughter.

"I was the whole week looking for this daughter and it turned out in the end she had given me the wrong place that the daughter lived."

She instead looked up the lady's surname, which then appeared on RIP.ie.

"I broke down completely, I literally broke", Yvonne said.

However, Yvonne and her daughter got through to the lady's grand-daughter through Facebook.

Listen to her full interview below:

COVID-19: Dublin woman dictated will in WhatsApp message on way to hospital

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

    


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