A CHIEF doctor said he broke the rules to let a daughter and son say goodbye to their mother, who was dying from coronavirus.
Dr. Ronald Simon wrote in an emotional post that amid the tragedy coronavirus has brought across the world, that watching the family say goodbye gave him hope.
The Brooklyn, New York doctor said "even though I may not have saved a life, at least I left that family with a little more sense of peace."
A woman was dying of "severe COVID pneumonia" at the hospital," Simon of Maimonides Medical Center wrote in a Facebook post.
Despite hospital worker's desperate efforts to keep her alive, the doctor said he knew the woman could die at any moment.
To give her and her family some peace, Simon said he broke the rules to let them say goodbye.
"For me, dying alone is more frightening than dying itself," Simon wrote.
"Although our unit has a no visitation policy to protect the patients and staff from others, and others from the patients we decided that we needed to make an exception here," he said.
Simon added that the woman had two older children that the hospital reached out to, so they would be able to say goodbye.
He said when the daughter arrived, they gave her protective equipment to keep her safe from the virus.
Simon said he told her she could hold her mother's hand and talk to her.
"She turned to me with a look of astonishment and relief and said 'She can hear me? I need to tell her I love her,'" Simon wrote.
"With those words she walked into the room and made peace with her dying mother."
The doctor said a few minutes later, the son said goodbye to his mother – and moments after, she died.
"I was sad about her passing but she was just one of many," Simon wrote.
"What made my day was that with her passing, her children would never lament that they never had the chance to tell their mom that they loved her before she passed."
Many families have been forced to say goodbye to their loved ones over video calls – as they are unable to in person due to the virus.
In New York, more than 203,000 people have been diagnosed with the virus, making it the nation's epicenter.
Across the state, a staggering 10,000 people have died from COVID-19.
New York City alone has seen nearly 8,000 death – nearly a third of all those across the nation.
Morgues have begun to overflow amid the high death toll due to the virus – making officials consider storing bodies at former cemetery-turned park, Fort Totten.
Last week, Hart Island began to serve as a temporary mass burial site, as prisoners dug trenches on the Long Island Sound strip.
Despite the tragedy sweeping across the nation, Simon said moments like when the family said goodbye give him strength to keep doing his work to save as many lives as possible.
"There are still moments that give me hope and allow me to heal and go back to work day after day in this crisis," Simon wrote.
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