Kentucky teen survived leukemia only to die of COVID; official implores people to take precautions
A Kentucky teen survived leukemia, only to die of COVID-19.
Alexa Rose Veit, from an area near Paducah, was just 15 when she became one of the nearly 260,000 people in the U.S. who have succumbed to coronavirus.
In a Facebook post that thanked those observing COVID-19 precautions, Ballard County Emergency Management director Travis Holder recounted the last days of a girl he never knew but whose story “has touched my heart and has kept me awake at night in fear for other Ballard Countians.”
He acknowledged so-called pandemic fatigue.
“The frustration of the American people is at an all-time high, and many are setting back wondering, why? Why are we having to use all of these precautions? Why is everyone wanting to us to wear a mask?” he wrote.
Alexa and others like her are why, he said.
“I want to make sure all of Ballard County knows the sacrifices that are being made,” he said, alluding to the drastic increases in COVID-19 cases in that area and Kentucky as a whole. On Tuesday, the state had 160,232 confirmed cases and 1,792 deaths, according to the Kentucky department of health.
“I feel that we have all come to the realization that COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” he said. “Our lives have been altered, our ways of doing things have been shifted and with the Governor’s restrictions today they have been altered slightly more.”
Gov. Andy Beshear last week issued a slew of restrictions that are in effect from last Friday to Dec. 13 and beyond. The executive orders forbid indoor restaurant dining, caps private social gatherings at eight people from a maximum of two households, reduces capacity at gyms and other indoor recreation facilities to 33% and made all schooling remote for the time being.
Parents and private schools sued Beshear on Tuesday over the limits, claiming some aspects of his two executive orders were unconstitutional, reported the Louisville Courier Journal.
Meanwhile, the community at Ballard Memorial High School, where Alexa was a freshman, was in mourning.
“Our hearts are heavy today,” the school wrote on its Facebook page. “We will miss her special kind of mischief, her infectious smile, and the laugh that never failed to light up a room.”
Alexa, born with special needs in February 2005, was known among loved ones as a “social butterfly with zero filter and an infectious smile that could brighten any day,” Holder wrote.
She sang in the school choir and was active in her church youth group. In July 2019, she was diagnosed with leukemia at age 14, Holder recounted.
“Although Alexa was drained from the treatments that she had to undergo and the long stays in the hospital, her smile, laugh and determination never left,” he wrote. “Alexa fought a hard and enduring fight, and against some odds that were thrown at her achieved victory! On August 27, 2019 Alexa was considered to be in remission from the leukemia.”
But she would have only a year of regained health ahead of her. Alexa was diagnosed with COVID late last month. So were her grandparents, who were hospitalized – as was Alexa’s mother, who ended up on a ventilator.
At first Alexa’s symptoms were mild, Holder wrote, but that gradually deteriorated into pneumonia, and she was flown to Nashville for care from the doctors who had helped see her through cancer. Her mother was released from the hospital and rushed to her daughter’s side — just in time to say goodbye.
“I am telling you this because we have got to come to the realization that this is real,” Holder wrote. “We must start taking the precautions seriously. There is not anything that we can do to get rid of COVID-19, but it is our duty as citizens to do everything that we can to reduce the spread to our fellow man.”
Alexa, he noted, was the second COVID-19 death in Ballard County and the first of a school-age child in Kentucky. He urged people to wear masks out of respect.
“Our world is a little less bright today without Alexa in it,” Ballard Memorial wrote, “and she will be missed always.”
