Monete Hicks’ son Byron and daughter Mychaela of Lauderhill had health problems but were well and “basically confined to their home,” he said. They then made a trip to Orlando just before he got sick, Hicks said.
Byron, 20, had trouble breathing when he woke up on a Saturday in late June. Paramedics took him to the hospital, but around noon, “I lost my baby,” Hicks said in an interview with Brianna Keilar of CNN.
Mychaela, 23, started feeling unwell the following Tuesday and insisted that her mother take her to the hospital, she said.
“‘Mom, just get in the car, let’s go,'” Hicks said, her daughter insisted, even though she didn’t like hospitals.
“He came in with a headache, a fever,” said Hicks. It went from not breathing, it got worse “He lost a kidney, his liver began to fail. And it just went one after another, one after another.”
Her children “are my heart and will always be my heart,” Hicks said.
Byron was a player who loved his games and his family, said his cousin, Darisha Scott. It was “a lot of fun, just the family fool.”
Mychaela “was the light of the family, her smile could light up a room,” Scott said.
Hicks and Scott are urging other people to take the virus seriously.
“All I can say is, take this, take this (virus) very seriously, because it’s real, it’s out there,” Hicks said.
“It is not a joke. It is not a game, it is not something the government … invented,” Scott said.
Wear a mask, wash your hands, keep your distance and “don’t go out unless you really do, especially here in Florida,” he said.
“No one should feel the pain, my aunt should not feel this pain.”
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