By Nic Garcia
08:00 in August 2020 CDT
Dolores Díaz examines many citizens of nursing homes for coronavirus when her husband texted her: she vomited blood.
Parkland Health and Hospital System nurse, who has been helping to lead the Dallas County public screening effort since March, called her stepfather and told her to take her husband to the emergency room. Juan Díaz suffers headaches similar to his fatty liver disease.
When Dolores managed to escape the tests in a nursing home, she ran to the hospital.
By the time she arrived, John was already being released. Doctors sent him home to Grand Prairie with anti-nausea medications for abdominal pain.
Throughout the night, its deteriorated. Dolores took him back to the emergency room, this time to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
He died two days later, on June 27, of liver disease headaches. 53rd.
Juan, who liked to boast that Dolores and his coronavirus paintings appeared in The Dallas Morning News, feared taking the virus house to his 4 children: Isaiah, 10; Israel, 6; Johnny, 3 years old; and Leyla, 17 months.
The loss of Dolores after 12 years of marriage is a reminder that the thousands of physical care in North Texas and across the country on the front line of the global pandemic are doing their job as their own families navigate between life and death.
“All this time, he worried that he would take COVID, that he would die,” Dolores said. “I had to convince him that he was safe, that it was my job. We were caught by surprise.
As a nurse, Dolores is trained to endure, if not separate, the pain that accompanies death. Scientifically, she knows how John died and how his organs stopped working, one after the other. And yet, far from emergencies, you will have to fight as opposed to a new void. She knows that as a nurse, she may not have done anything to save John. As a wife, she wonders if he would be alive today. She wonders: have you paid more attention to him and less to his task of managing the nurses who control the virus?
“He plays sensitive strings differently,” she says. “He showed us how to love and how to be kind. You think you’ll be married forever.”
Originally from Texas, Juan grew up in west Dallas. He painted for a living.
“It’s our Picasso, ” said Dolores.
Juan was a simple guy: He loved his family; he was proud of his egg-shaped beard, which had a streak of gray that framed his mustache and ran down the middle. He was gregarious and shameless — the center of gravity at any party. He was a master in the kitchen and loved to barbecue. His skills — and brisket — were missed exponentially on the Fourth of July.
“I can’t even think of vacation, ” said Dolores.
Dolores met Juan at a sports bar in 2007. They were an unlikely couple. He was a desperate romantic who loved his friends and family. He was never afraid to show affection. She grew up in a space where the word “love” rarely, if ever, used and her parents rarely identified achievements. In the past, Juan had married 4 young men: Natalia Villalta, Emily Villegas, Jacob Díaz and Alexis Diaz. Dolores, who is 12 years younger, sought out her own children.
After a year of dating, Juan proposed to Las Vegas. Shortly after his marriage in 2008, John’s fitness began to worsen and he was diagnosed with fatty liver disease. Diagnosis meant his liver didn’t clean the blood properly. When his liver failed, he caused a source of blood in his veins that turned into internal bleeding.
Although the disease is maximum, it is not unusual among alcoholics, John’s case is due to his obesity. He enjoyed his food, Dolores said.
John joked that he knew he was going to marry a nurse, that he needed him to stay healthy.
Since his diagnosis, John has treated the disease with medication and lived his life as if every day was his last. This included giving Dolores the young men she wanted. I also constantly reminded her, to her wonderful remorse, that one day I would leave her, as soon as possible.
“He told me to remind young people that their father enjoyed them and that they intend to move to college like me so they don’t have to be employed like him,” he said. “He even told me what suit he was looking to be buried in and what photo he was looking for at his funeral.
The photo came here from an attended wedding.
They were a couple without frills. Once, after a rare night for a romantic dinner without the children, they decided to move to the grocery store than to the movies.
“He liked to walk down the aisle, ” said Dolores.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Dolores was in charge of coronavirus testing. Her husband was afraid to take the virus house to her four children, but eventually began to worry less and brag more.
“He was so proud of me, ” he said. “He looked for others to know how proud he was.”
After Dolores’ story made the impression on The News, the family circle needed a new washer and dryer. John asked the sales associate if they would be offered a reduction to physical care workers. After the sales associate stated that the big store did not offer such a reduction, John pulled out his cell phone, discovered the article online and asked if they were making exceptions for notable people.
Pains mortified.
“Why are you so embarrassed?” Dolores remembers John’s words. “Just let her know who you are.”
Dolores had little time to mourn her husband’s death and had to take care of her children.
“I get up every day and every component of me must stay in bed and cry,” she says. “But they love me.
Only Isaiah, the 10-year-old, understands the gravity of the situation, Dolores said. Almost without delay after John’s death, Isaiah asked him about the family’s expenses and how his mother would handle the tension of being a single parent.
“I’m just telling her we’ll be fine, mom’s going to be okay,” she says, telling her that her love will make her survive.
As for the younger ones, she told them that Dad was suffering and that Jesus took him away so that he would not suffer anymore. He’s an angel looking at them now, ” he said.
“I don’t know the right words, ” he said.
She said she and the youth were making plans for a therapist soon.
Dolores intends to return to paintings at Parkland, the only hospital where she has searched for paintings. It will do so when the youth start school in the fall.
“I never came here with the concept of leaving. That’s the career I’ve chosen,” he said. “To see the excessive steps Parkland has taken to take care of my husband, it’s almost like they’re taking care of theirs. Leaving didn’t even cross my mind.”
And he intends to return to the battlefield of the pandemic.
That’s what John would have wanted.
Dolores’ colleagues in Parkland have presented a GoFundMe crusade for their family.
Have you seen this map? Click here.
Nic Garcia. Nic Garcia covers the dallas county government and policy. In the past he worked at the Denver Post covering the Statehouse and two presidential campaigns. He also worked for Chalkbeat, a national nonprofit news organization that covers education. Garcia is a Colorado local who is thrilled to explore the lone star state.
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