A Colorado mum has urged the public to get the COVID jab after her unvaccinated daughter who failed to get the job lost her arms and her legs, while her son who had the jab was unharmed.
Paige Davis, a worker at the UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs in the US state of Colorado, said: “I clean rooms, I clean offices, I’m all around the hospital and you can tell a COVID patient quickly, especially when you’re going through the ICU.”
She said her adult daughter and son, who live in the city of Philadelphia, both contracted COVID-19.
While her vaccinated son recovered quickly, her 30-year-old daughter Candice, a flight attendant for Republic Airways, was hit hard.
Davis said: “Her goal was to get the vaccination, but she just didn’t get to it. So, she wasn’t vaccinated and it took out her heart.”
According to local reports, Candice was hospitalised in Philadelphia on 17th August and at one point was put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to assist her lungs and heart.
However, poor circulation reportedly caused permanent damage to the young woman’s limbs, leaving doctors no choice but to amputate if she was going to live.
Davis said: “She lost one arm below the elbow, the other arm above the elbow, one leg below the knee, and a half a foot on the right.”
She added: “I didn’t think COVID could take limbs.”
The young woman’s condition is improving and her mother shared images of her reading the Bible in her hospital bed.
Davis said: “She hurts, she’s going through it, she beats herself up. She cries more than all of us, but she’s the strongest link between the both of us because of what happened to her.”
The mother also urged citizens to get the COVID jab: “I just wish everybody would get the shot, my thing is what have you got to lose.”
According to reports, Candice will soon be fitted with prosthetic limbs ahead of a long period of physiotherapy and recovery.
Her brother Starr may also need to consider relocating to a more accessible home for them to live in Philadelphia when she leaves hospital.
