‘Chills, body aches, huge headache.’ Dallas health worker died of COVID in just a week.
Isabelle Papadimitriou came home from her shift as a respiratory therapist at the Baylor Scott & White Institute for Rehabilitation in Dallas like always, through the back gate with the dogs excited to greet her.
But that Sunday, June 28, she told her son that she wasn’t feeling well. The day before she took note of her symptoms in a journal: dizziness, lightheaded, chills, body aches, huge headache, shaking and drowsy and a fever at 100.8 degrees.
“All at once at 10:30 p.m.,” she wrote.
A week later on the Fourth of July she died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. By the time she arrived at the hospital, her lungs were filled with fluid and doctors said that she had suffered brain trauma due to a lack of oxygen.
“My mom was a really strong woman, and we just thought she would make it through, even though she was 64. And I think we’re all in disbelief because it happened really, really fast,” said Fiana Tulip, Papadimitriou’s 39-year-old daughter.
Known for her positivity, her love of reading, her faith and her family, Papadimitriou’s sudden death has left those who knew her reeling. Her son, who she lived with, grieves with feelings of guilt, wondering why the virus took her and not him. Her daughter has begun to write a letter to Papadimitriou every week to keep her spirit alive, and maybe one day she’ll share them with her 10-month-old daughter, Lua, who barely got to know the grandmother that loved her so much. For some of her coworkers, Papadimitriou’s death is a sobering reminder of the ultimate price health care workers on the front lines risk paying.
‘It was about the patient — and her second’
Papadimitriou was the kind of person who always put others first. Even when she was sick with COVID, she didn’t want her friends and family to worry.
In her journal, Papadimitriou wrote she was in constant prayer for her 49-year-old son, Isaac Elizondo, who she lived with, because she feared he too would catch the virus. After initially testing negative, Elizondo later tested positive for COVID-19 the day she died.
Tulip, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and their daughter, Lua, said she hadn’t found out her mom had tested positive until two days after Papadimitriou got the results. Elizondo had sent her a text, despite their mom’s protests. Even then, when Tulip texted, her mother reassured her that she would be OK and would fight it.
“I wish I could feel better, but I am not. Enjoy your trip. I didn’t want you to think of me during your trip, that’s why I hadn’t told you. I love you, and that sweet Princess is my reason to fight this,” Papadimitriou texted Tulip on July 2, referring to her granddaughter Lua as her princess.
Papadimitriou’s selflessness was evident in her work. Compassion was one of her driving forces, and she would often sit and stay with patients, giving them someone to talk to amid their recovery.
“For her it was about the patient — and her second,” Elizondo said.
It was one of the reasons Elizondo said his mom wouldn’t quit when he pleaded with her in March to retire early. She wouldn’t even consider it, he said. Her work was her life, and she insisted she would stay safe as the pandemic began to unfold. Now, Elizondo wonders if he should have pushed harder.
That same care for patients extended to her coworkers.
“She was like another mom to me,” Faith Culver, a nurse who worked with Papadimitriou, said. “I lost my mother a little over a year ago and she was always there for me.”
Jesse Ortez, a nurse who also worked with Papadimitriou, said he will miss the little moments. Whether it was Papadimitriou dancing in the break room, catching up over a quick lunch when they had five minutes to spare or their frequent get-togethers for birthdays, dinners and holidays with what they lovingly referred to as “the Gang.”
She was both motherly — wanting the best out of everybody — and a ray of sunshine for the group, able to joke and be just as silly as everyone else, Ortez said.
“When somebody is that positive in your life, and they’re taken away so quick, you start to realize how life is so fragile,” Ortez said.
Her children have been in awe of the outpouring of love and support for their mother, who took time to cultivate relationships even in small, daily encounters with others.
“You don’t know who you’re touching. You don’t know who you’re affecting, so take time for everyone,” Elizondo said. “We need to learn to forgive. To be good to people. To cherish all relationships.”
A resilient spirit
From the start, Papadimitriou’s life was marked by hardship. Papadimitriou was born in 1956 in Brownsville, to a single mother who had nowhere to leave her baby during the day, said Victoria Borrego, who grew up with Papadimitriou and was like her adopted sister. Papadimitriou’s mother worked for Borrego’s father at the time.
“She started to bring her to work, to the office and my father told her, ‘This is not a way to raise a baby. Do you want me to ask my wife? Maybe she can watch her during the day while you’re at work,’” Borrego recounted her father offering to Papadimitriou’s mother.
Borrego’s family didn’t hesitate to take Papadimitriou under their wing. They called her Obie, a combination of Isabelle and Odette — her baptismal name that was too hard for the kids to pronounce.
“We did everything together,” Borrego said. “She was part of our family.”
Elizondo and Tulip recall that their mother’s childhood — while marked by happy moments — was difficult. Papadimitriou got married, had her first child, Isaac, at 14, and moved to Chicago.
She later returned to Brownsville, got her GED and ended up moving throughout Texas, spending time in Austin and the Dallas Fort-Worth area as she studied to transition from being a bank teller to a respiratory therapist.
Papadimitriou’s third and last divorce in the ‘90s took a toll on her, her kids said. They remember it as a dark time, but that Papadimitriou had been searching to rediscover her happiness. Tulip recalls when she was young, she and Papadimitriou would march around the house chanting, ‘Fight for what you know is right.’” It’s a mantra that embodied Papadimitriou’s sense of resilience.
“She knew that if she let these hard times knock her down so hard that she stayed in this dark place that she wouldn’t be able to get what she wanted,” Tulip said. “So she had to pick herself up and just keep believing and keep praying.”
One of the things that brought her the most joy was her granddaughter.
‘You don’t understand the hospital’s worse’
Papadimitriou loved children, and was known to send children’s books to friends for their own kids. When Tulip had Lua in August 2019, Papadimitriou had a grandchild of her own to dote after.
She gushed about Lua to anyone who would listen. Her coworkers recall her constantly showing them photos of Lua, even if they had already seen them posted to social media. When Papadimitriou visited Lua in New York, she always knew just what to do, and despite the months that separated her visits they instantly bonded each time.
Papadimitriou had a trip scheduled to see Lua in late June. She couldn’t wait, and coworkers said it was something she talked about constantly. But rising cases made the trip too risky. She ended up canceling.
Instead, Papadimitriou went into work to help with the surge. She tested positive for COVID-19 on June 29, the third day she had been experiencing symptoms.
“The days that she was supposed to be in New York ... that’s when she got sick,” Elizondo said. “Nobody knew where it was. But it was in the building.”
A spokesperson for Baylor Scott & White declined to answer questions on whether Papadimitriou was working directly with COVID-19 patients who had active infections.
“Isabelle’s passion and devotion for serving others, and the genuine kindness she expressed to those she encountered will be deeply missed,” said a statement from the Baylor Scott & White Institute for Rehabilitation. “We extend our sincere condolences to her family, whom she spoke of often with immense pride.”
In the days after she had gotten tested, Papadimitriou waved off suggestions to go to the hospital. Borrego recounted Papadimitriou telling her, “’You don’t understand, the hospital’s worse.’”
In her journal, Papadimitriou detailed how the virus begin to take hold.
“July 1. This was not a good day. I had a fever of 102 in the evening. I spend most of my day in bed. I rotate to drain the lungs, side to side and stomach to back. Isaac brings Wendy’s chicken sandwich. I can barely eat it,” Elizondo read from his mother’s journal.
“July 2, 2020. Still not feeling well today. I have lots of coughing this morning. Feel weak.”
That was Papadimitriou’s final entry. As Friday night stretched into Saturday morning, Papadimitriou’s condition plummeted. Elizondo’s phone rang. It was Papadimitriou. She needed him.
“I’m running across the house, running to her room, and it looked like she had had a stroke because she was slurring,” Elizondo said. “She couldn’t talk.”
Elizondo called for an ambulance. They raced to Medical City Las Colinas in Irving, and by the time they reached the hospital Papadimitriou had lost her pulse at least three times, Elizondo said.
Doctors told him that her dilated eyes meant that she had likely suffered brain trauma due to a lack of oxygen. It would be a miracle if she survived, and even then she would likely be in a vegetative state.
Elizondo willed his mom to recover, letting her know how much she was loved and how they needed her. But as he watched the hospital staff try to keep her alive, he realized it was time to let her go.
In the days since he has had to beat back his own fears of what will happen to him now that he’s tested positive for COVID-19. People have dropped off groceries and his neighbors invited him to chat on the curb from a distance. But due to his positive test result, he’s mostly been alone to navigate his grief in a house that holds reminders of Papadimitriou in every room. The nights are hardest, and he leaves the back door open, expecting her to walk through the gate like always.
Tulip didn’t get to say goodbye to her mom the day she died. She and her brother have poured their energy into memorializing their mother, and started a GoFundMe to help cover the costs of her funeral, with the hopes she can return to Brownsville. They plan to donate any extra money to support the families of front line health care workers who died from the virus.
One day when Lua is older, Tulip will tell her about her grandmother, who gave her life to save others. And it’s one of the last things she wished she could have told Papadimitriou.
“She was my mom, I never really thought of her as a front line hero. Here everyday at 7 p.m. we’re clapping for the frontline heroes, I never thought I was clapping for my mom,” Tulip said. “One of the things I so wish I could tell her was that I was proud of her.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 10:15 AM.
