Dad sends heartbreaking text before death: ‘I should have gotten the damn vaccine’
Michael Freedy, 39, had gone on vacation with fiancée Jessica du Preez and their children, ages 17, 10, 7, 6 and 17 months, in mid-July
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A Las Vegas dad dying of COVID-19 sent his fiancée the heartbreaking text, "I should have gotten the damn vaccine" just before he succumbed, according to new reports.
Michael Freedy, 39, had gone on vacation with fiancée Jessica du Preez and their children, ages 17, 10, 7, 6 and 17 months, in mid-July, KVVU reported.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A short time after their return, Freedy went to the hospital with a painful skin rash.
While there, he ended up testing positive for COVID-19.
He went home to try to ride out the illness in isolation, but his symptoms became more and more severe, the outlet reported.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Early Tuesday morning, I would say around 3, 4 o’clock in the morning, he wakes me up panicking," du Preez told the Fox TV station. "He’s like, ‘I can’t breathe. I know something is wrong.’ "
Freedy couldn’t even manage to stand, so the couple went back to the hospital.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He was admitted with pneumonia in both lungs and moved to another hospital, where du Preez was allowed to see him.
"I just kept telling him, ‘You are going to get through this, you’ve got to come home to us,’ " she said.
Instead, his condition deteriorated, and he was transferred to the ICU.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I was able to call before they took him in, and he sat on the phone," du Preez said. "And I was able to hear him. I was like, ‘Please keep fighting. Don’t give up.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m trying to fight, but they are going to intubate me and put me under.’ "
At one point, Freedy sent du Preez a text from the hospital.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Oh my [expletive] God. This is terrible," he wrote, according to CBS-TV affiliate KLAS. "I should have gotten the damn vaccine."
Freedy died at the hospital Thursday morning with du Preez by his side.
"I was at the hospital visiting Mike and telling him all about our kids’ day and how everyone was pulling for him," du Preez posted on a GoFundMe page. "His numbers crashed and they were not able to bring them back up.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The love of my life, my rock, my everything. The father to my babies, is no longer with us. I don’t know what to do."
Freedy was not vaccinated — though his fiancée said the couple had planned on becoming so eventually.
"We were just holding off, and now to think that if we just had gotten the shot a week before or a month before when one of our jobs had a vaccination thing, he could still be here," she told the station.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We wanted to wait just one year from the release to see what effects people had, but there was never any intention to not get it," she added to KVVU.
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Du Preez, who said she will always regret the decision, is now vaccinated along with the couple’s oldest child.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}She said that even if the vaccine had prevented "a little bit" of her fiance’s symptoms, "it could have stopped the coronavirus from progressing so fast."
"I expected to get 30 more years with him," du Preez said. "I didn’t expect him to be gone."
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