‘It just ravaged his lungs’: Conway, SC, family shares details of coronavirus death
A nurse held a phone to Robert McCord’s ear from inside a Conway Medical Center isolation room. It was the only way his family could say goodbye to the 83-year-old.
Macular degeneration took his eyesight earlier in his life. On Wednesday morning, coronavirus took everything else.
“The first thing I told him was, ‘Daddy you’re going to have your eyesight back,’” Nancy Hopkins said. Loss of eyesight bothered McCord, and his daughter told him he would regain it in heaven.
McCord’s family could only use a phone to say goodbye to McCord as he was removed from life-support. He entered the hospital two weeks earlier with a fever and labored breathing. Almost immediately, he was put on a ventilator and was unresponsive.
Doctors at the South Carolina hospital tried for two weeks to treat McCord’s coronavirus but were unsuccessful.
“It came, and it just ravaged his lungs in a matter of days …” Hopkins said, “… a matter of days.”
A reserved man
Robert McCord grew up in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area and left a piece of his heart there, Hopkins said.
“He didn’t call ‘em the Carolina Panthers, he called ‘em the Charlotte Panthers,” Hopkins said. “He was proud of his heritage, I suppose.”
In the 1950s, fresh out of high school, McCord moved to the North Myrtle Beach area and spent a half-century working in the livestock trade. More importantly, he spent a half-century married to Louise McCord, who died a dozen years ago.
The McCords had two daughters and a son, with Hopkins as the middle child. There were also the seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren that McCord loved.
Hopkins lives in the Conway, South Carolina, area, and her dad lived in his apartment a few minutes away.
Dad was a reserved man who sat back and watched others, Hopkins said. He passed his devotion to God to his children and Hopkins said he was a regular at Trinity United Methodist Church in Conway.
“I’m gonna say, and I’m not exaggerating, he had perfect attendance at church for about 70 years,” Hopkins said.
McCord was a storyteller who loved Tagalong Girl Scouts cookies, Hopkins said. She recently bought him a dozen of the red-box cookies, though they will go uneaten.
McCord lived by himself in his later life, and Hopkins would visit daily. The two would often head out for a bite to eat. Every Saturday morning, dad and daughter were at McCord’s favorite place, The Trestle Bakery in downtown Conway.
“That was his thing,” Hopkins said. “He looked forward to it. He loved the grits.”
Fever and difficulty breathing
Hopkins heard about COVID-19 in January and February and never gave it much attention. Then several Trinity members fell ill.
On March 16, she went to visit McCord at his apartment. Her dad had some labored breathing and a running nose, which Hopkins considered a mild cold. She suggested going to a doctor because of difficulty breathing, but McCord declined.
“I said, ‘I’m just going to watch it for a little bit because the one thing I had heard about the coronavirus was breathing issues,’ ” Hopkins said.
People in Horry County had just started visiting the doctor’s office because of coronavirus, and Hopkins said she didn’t want to go for something minor where they could catch a disease from someone else.
The next day, Hopkins brought him food, and her dad seemed a bit better.
That Wednesday, Hopkins called him twice, and he seemed OK. She went to his apartment around 6 p.m. and noticed the windows were open. It was unusual because it was not a particularly hot day. She doesn’t know how her dad opened the door, but when he did, he was not well.
“He was in respiratory distress, he was sweating profusely,” Hopkins said. “I could just look at him, and I knew it was serious.”
Hopkins called 911 as her dad gasped for breath. She tried to give him comfort as they waited for emergency crews.
“I said, ‘Daddy, I’m going to be with you every step of the way’ because that’s just what I would have done. I’ve always done that for either of my parents.”
EMS crews arrived wearing protective gear. They took McCord on a stretcher to the ambulance, but his family couldn’t ride with him.
That was the last time anyone other than a doctor or nurse saw McCord.
EMS took the 83-year-old to Conway Medical Center as Hopkins followed. By the time McCord arrived, he was already on a breathing machine. Hopkins wasn’t allowed in the hospital because of isolation procedures.
She waited in the parking lot for three hours when staff called to tell her they were admitting McCord to the critical care unit and putting him on a ventilator.
“My dad was always the type that never wanted to be in the hospital by himself,” Hopkins said.
Doctors moved McCord to isolation and sedated him, which gave Hopkins some comfort as she knew her dad didn’t know he was alone.
It took six days for the backed-up lab to confirm McCord had coronavirus, which the doctors suspected.
“I knew he was going to have a positive results,” Hopkins said.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control then called Hopkins with a few questions. Hopkins at that time also had a headache of her own and fatigue. Hopkins had self-isolated since her dad went to the hospital, but she blew off her symptoms as stress and seasonal allergies.
DHEC officials suggested she get tested, and it came back positive. That put her entire family on isolation starting this week — though her husband and two children have not shown symptoms.
“I was shocked. I was like ‘I do not have it. I have no coughing, nothing going on with my breathing,’” Hopkins said.
For weeks doctors tried to help McCord. They gave him two antibiotics, but it didn’t do anything, Hopkins said.
“His lungs were so filled with infection that those antibiotics couldn’t get rid of it,” Hopkins said. “That caused some heart irregularities.”
Doctors brought McCord out of sedation a couple of times, but saw no improvement. After two weeks, his family decided to honor his wishes and remove him from life support.
“They did everything they could to try and get something from him that meant he wasn’t just on life support,” Hopkins said.
Wednesday morning, Hopkins again spoke to doctors and assured them they wanted to discontinue the ventilator. Nurse Kelly — as Hopkins knew her — called and was concerned McCord was by himself.
“If you like, I will let you say goodbye to your Dad and I will set the phone up to his ear,” Hopkins recalled the nurse telling her. That was about 11:20 a.m., and Hopkins was the last of the family to speak to her dad.
“She told me, ‘I just want you to know that I could tell his breathing changed a little bit whenever he heard your voice,’ ” Hopkins said. “That was comforting.
“I couldn’t be there to hold his hand. I couldn’t be there to rub him. But, I could at least hear him.”
Doctors removed McCord’s ventilator and called Hopkins two hours later to say her dad died. He was not alone as medical personnel were in the room when he passed away peacefully. He was the first death at Conway Medical Center from coronavirus, the fifth in Horry County and now one of 31 people in South Carolina to die from the virus.
Hopkins was quick to praise the medical staff at the hospital for their compassion for her dad.
“I can never thank that nurse enough for what she did,” Hopkins said of that final phone call with her dad. “That was just something she came up with on a whim. It was tough because I only had 30 minutes, 20, to think about what I wanted to say. How do you sum up all the thanks you want to say to a parent for what’s he’s done in just a few minutes?
“That was very meaningful.”
A message for the community
Hopkins had no clue that when McCord went into the ambulance two weeks ago, that would be the last time she would see him. Looking back, she admitted there was a little guilt about what happened. She didn’t have a choice, though.
“I did everything I could up to the last two weeks,” Hopkins said. “I checked in on him every day. Multiple times some days. I kind of second-guessed myself, why didn’t I make him go to the doctor on Monday? But, under the circumstances, this new epidemic that we are just learning about. Do you go to the doctor when you have a runny nose?”
They will never know how they contracted the virus, or who gave it to them, Hopkins said.
Hopkins is a teacher and said her dad’s condition weighed on her mind while she was in isolation at home. She admitted she was a little distracted with her students as they participated in virtual school.
McCord’s death wasn’t a surprise, despite the fact they had little time to prepare. Hopkins said she didn’t expect him to make it through the first night, let alone two weeks.
“My dad and I spent a lot of time together,” Hopkins said. “I’m thankful I was available to spend that time with him.” It was then Hopkins cracked a bit of a joke, “I got to find other people in my family to go out and eat with me now.”
Funeral arrangements are pending, as there is some confusion about when they can hold the ceremony given the isolation periods that come with coronavirus.
Hopkins implored the community to take the symptoms seriously and pay attention to social distancing orders.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Hopkins said. “Just stay home. We’ve been told what to do. It’s what we need to do. Don’t go anywhere unless you have to.”
McCord spoke of the global pandemic and discussed how the disease has spread, even to Conway, South Carolina. Some people can easily fight off the symptoms, Hopkins said. Others, such as her dad, are not that lucky.
“If my dad didn’t catch the coronavirus,” Hopkins said, “who knows how long he would have had? I don’t know. That wasn’t part of his plan.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 10:59 AM with the headline "‘It just ravaged his lungs’: Conway, SC, family shares details of coronavirus death."
