Patty Segeda’s 74-year-old father Glenn Perkins was diagnosed as being positive for the coronavirus. He has an underlying respiratory ailment and has been on a ventilator at St. Luke’s Hospital-Warren in Phillipsburg since March 20 — the last time she stood at his bedside and saw him.

“We called the grandchildren one by one. You know, we primarily said our goodbyes in the event he didn’t recover,” Patty said.

Patty says doctors have treated her dad with a combination of medicines and his condition has improved to stable. But now he has pneumonia and a syndrome that prevents enough oxygen from reaching his lungs and blood.

“I feel in my heart that they don’t have a course of treatment. That’s our fear. Our fear is now that you fought the virus, how are you treating what else is wrong with him,” she said.

She knows COVID-19 care has overwhelmed the hospital and that complicates trying to get answers.

“It’s difficult, very difficult,” she added. “The communication from the hospital, its updates are few and far between.”

But when the phone does ring, she says her heart sinks.

“You hold your breath. You start to analyze their voice. Is their voice, are they saying hello to you, or asking you, with fear? And are they talking to you with happiness. You don’t know what you’re going to get,” she said.

Patty says for the last 11 days she has had to advocate for him from home. The visiting restrictions are understandable, but make it hard on families to care for and comfort loved ones alone in a sterile hospital room.

“And you’re not there to help them and explain things to them and whisper to them that things are going to be OK,” she said. “It’s taken from you. People need to understand that when a loved one may become so sick that they need to go to the hospital that you leave your loved one at the door.”

Patty is a wife and mother of two teenagers. She’s self-quarantined after demanding and getting to see her father before the hospital put him on a ventilator.

“It’s not required, but because I have a loved one fighting for his life, it’s not a risk we’re willing to take,” she said.

Patty says she has one sister who just tested positive for COVID-19 and a niece awaiting test results. The family is on edge as a disease has knocked the active, horseshoe-playing patriarch off his feet, robbing it of creating more precious memories.

She describes her dad as sedated, but aware and able to recognize touch as he spends his eleventh day attached to a ventilator and detached from his family.

“I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have said that before I hang up the phone. I say, ‘please, just keep fighting for him. Don’t give up on him,'” Patty said.