Heartbreaking Story of How Covid Affected This Morning Team Member | This Morning

[Music] over the course of the pandemic our health care workers have shown extraordinary bravery by putting their lives at risk to help others and today we're sharing a story which is particularly personal to us here at this morning in may emergency care practitioner and paramedic peter hart tragically passed away on his 52nd birthday after a month-long battle with coronavirus well as a husband and father of three peter has left a huge hole in the lives of his family including his daughter and our colleague lauren well lauren has worked as a production secretary on uh this morning team since october she first joined itv in 2019 very bravely joining us today um and uh um we have such a tight family here um it's heartbreaking to see one of our one of our team go through this and this is a this is a tough story what made you want to tell it out loud i think it's been um a really difficult year for everybody and especially over the last few months for my family especially and i'm sure for many other families um it's really hit home a lot more due to just the second wave of the virus and um i felt that i wanted to honour my dad um by coming on and supporting his colleagues and the rest of the nhs staff and the families that are also currently experiencing what we went through um in may last year um so i felt like it was important to get the message across today and so just tell us what your dad did and what type of man was he what was he like as a dad he was just the most incredible man um i feel so blessed to have had the time that i did with him he absolutely loved his job and the staff at the hospital he you know he spent even his days off going back into the hospital to spend more time with patients and take our pets as therapy dog in nala um just to bring more happiness to people which i think really reflects the kind of man that he was absolutely so he um he was a picture of health and and then he woke up one day feeling like in his words a truck had hit him yeah so um it was obviously in march last year we'd all sort of adjusted to the lock down um and i think like many families i never expected for it to affect us in the way it did um he was you know happy and healthy and there was absolutely nothing wrong with him at all um and then all of a sudden one day he woke up and just couldn't move out of bed you know my dad never took a day off sick in his life so for us to hear how ill he was was you know really difficult at the time he um spent a week at home we were looking after him just hoping that ev with every day that he might improve and we got to the day before easter sunday and he was just so poorly and really struggling to breathe at that time so um and this again speaks to who my dad was but he didn't want to make fuss or call an ambulance or you know he just didn't want to use the facilities no and he i mean as a healthcare professional you know how you know stressful it is at the least so we um we just decided to take him in um and give him some extra support because at the time we didn't think that it would be as serious as it became so i drove my dad in um which was a really surreal experience for me because you know my dad's normally the one looking after me so to be the roles reversed was really tricky um and he you know had he had a wheelchair and i took him into the department and i didn't even think at the time to give him a hug because he was so poorly and his temperature was so high and he just said to me don't worry lauren i'll i'll be okay i'll be home i'll be home soon i'll be on the ward for a few days and i'll i'll be back i'll be back home so um it ended up that two days later after he spent on award we got a phone call from um an icu consultant saying that he was just so poorly that they needed to give him some extra support so they had to sedate him and put him on a ventilator and so was that i mean for you at home kind of thinking here's your dad saying to you don't worry it'll only be a couple of days i'll be back soon to realize how quickly this has progressed and that's the thing about this horrible virus is that it is so unpredictable and it can turn at any moment to hear those words he's on a ventilator must have been really tough it was so difficult and um i have a ten-year-old sister so at the time she was only nine um and as a family having to explain that to her um that her daddy wasn't gonna be able to communicate with us anymore at that time and that we just had to remain positive for him and strong for him and hope that over the next few weeks that his body would start to respond to the treatment they were giving him so at the time she you know she's just a ray of sunshine so she wanted to do everything she could to get her daddy better so and she wrote a lovely um card for him um which we gave to the hospital to put at the end of my dad's bed because she wanted it to be the first thing that he would see when he woke up was her drawing for him um teddy yeah and she put a little teddy there as well for him because obviously as families know at home we're not able to go in and see um my dad or other people aren't able to see their loved ones so the only form of contact we would have is just a phone call a day which could be at any time because obviously they're so you know the staff are working so well you end up so terrified that you're gonna miss a call and and then and everyone if uh who's had this visit their family or their friends you wait for the moment where you turn the corner it's okay i'm gonna be all right or then you get the call and and they're saying that he's gone into cardiac arrest his organs have begun to shut down and he's now on life support and you have to come in and say goodbye because the machine's being turned off yeah um so obviously you know my mum's the most positive woman and she's so strong and she kept us strong that entire time because i should say it was such a roller coaster for us and i'm sure many families are experienced the same thing where one day you might get a call saying everything's fine and he's stable and then the next my mum would have to go in because they said that you know he was at end of life and there was nothing more they could do and we got to a point where his health was just getting worse he went into cardiac arrest on the third week that he was in hospital and they explained to us that obviously that he had multiple organs that were compromised and they said that you know they were dealing with you know treading on eggshells basically to try and keep him going um and then they had my phone obviously the whole time as a point of contact so for me to have you know that worry and fear that i might miss a call was really difficult um but the day before my dad's 52nd birthday um we went to bed that night and we're just hoping that we wouldn't receive a call um and that things would be okay we might be able to drop off a card or something for him and then um the morning about seven o'clock we got a phone call from one of the nurses saying that my dad um wasn't doing very well at all and they were really sorry but there was nothing more that they'd be able to do for him which was really hard to i think you know your body goes into shock at that time um so for my family you know we'd stayed so strong up until that point it was it was really hard to know that that was going to be the last time that we saw my dad oh god so well and also the other side of these things is that um the staff knew him as well i mean everyone is treated equally in hospital obviously but of course amazing staff um but difficult for them because they know him but also because on the bed was the teddy and the picture which is a constant reminder to all of those people who are looking after us that for every person in that bed there is a family there's a story they are a mom or a nan or a dad or a grandad or a brother or a sister there is a family waiting for them to come home completely um i think just from the experience my family went through just the level of admiration i have for what they do on a daily basis i mean it's one thing for what my family experience but for them having to make phone calls like they did for my family to be giving the most incredible medical care at the same havoc time having to offer the level of emotional support for families at home just have there's no words to express really the admiration that my family have and i'm sure i speak for other families across the country as well they're just amazing individuals how um how are you coping as a family because obviously this pandemic is still raging the numbers of death are still going up your brother is still on the front line because he's a doctor himself so he's still going into work every day how are you doing i mean we're we're taking each day and um my dad would be so proud of how my brother's doing at the moment and be very proud of him um doing an incredible job and um i think from a young age both my parents have instilled that resilience in all of us and i know that my dad wouldn't want me to continue with the rest of my life sort of wallowing in that pain that we feel he wanted us to turn it into something positive well this is why you're here because um you said to us downstairs and and at the beginning of this you've said you want to want him to be proud of you which he will be of course he would be you know regardless proud of you proud of your sister part of the family um but you want to use this moment to potentially save a life and you know because you're on our production team the impact that people sitting on that sofa has when they open up and tell something about themselves a story we've saved countless life in this show and that's what you want to do because you want to say to the deniers to the rule breakers um this is something that can touch you if you don't think it yeah i think you know it's so easy to be at home at the moment and watch the tv and just look at statistics and you feel so detached from what's actually going on for families like mine and for the staff that are currently working those hours and i would just want to say to people today that it can affect anybody of any age and you know you my dad was in full health you know so positive such an incredible individual and my way of honoring him is to come on today and just tell people that just to think of the staff that are currently in icu right now doing their best to protect families and if me talking about this just saves one person today or someone at home just needs that reminder of why they're keeping on pushing on through this lockdown then i feel like i would do my dad proud by you've definitely done that yeah um thank you i know that can't have been easy for you and you are an incredibly strong girl because i there's no way i could have done that you're amazing thank you love to the family yeah thank you so much thank you

Channel: This Morning

Views: 277,260

Keywords: this morning, holly willoughby, phillip schofield, this morning funniest, Holly & Phillip funny

Id: Y2MLutDq9p0

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021