Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Rebecca Shadowvan has advocated social distancing and hoped her community could be an example for the rest of the state, whose residents were unhappy with the recommendations to stay at home and wear masks in public.
Shadowvan fell ill in May. At first she only complained of fatigue, but the night she was taken to the hospital, the woman began to choke, ”said her husband David.
For the next four months, she was transported from one local hospital to another, at times placed on a ventilator and in the intensive care unit. Over the course of several weeks, the woman recovered her strength, continuing to work from a hospital bed and sharing what she knew about the virus.
“We thought she was on the road to recovery,” says David Shadowwan, who is also a physician.
But after battling complications from the virus, Shadowen died surrounded by her husband and her two children. She was 62 years old.
Rebecca Shadowvan worked at Bowling Green Medical Center. Even after she fell ill, Rebecca remained on the coronavirus working group, insisting on the need for a local mask ordinance. When she found out about something particularly important, she would send a message to colleagues — sometimes in the middle of the night. She was confident that even the simple wearing of a mask could stop the spread of the disease.
David Shadowen believes that his wife contracted COVID-19 in the same way that he and their daughter Katherine got it: from a home health worker visiting his elderly mother. Shadowen said he and his daughter had mild symptoms.
Rebecca wrote to her husband on the day she was to be transferred to a ventilator: “I'm being hooked up to a ventilator. It's not over yet. »
