Father of 5 dies of COVID at 39

LAS VEGAS (KVVU) – A family mourns the loss of a husband and father after his death from COVID-19.

“He was only 39 years old; our babies don’t have fathers now, ”said Jessica DuPreez in tears. “You can’t say, ‘I’m young and that won’t affect me. Because it will.

Just two weeks ago, DuPreez said life is good. She was on vacation in San Diego with her fiance Michael Freedy, known as “Big Mike” at the M Resort where he worked, and their five children aged 17, 10, 7, 6 and 17 months.

” We went to the beach. We didn’t put on sunscreen so everyone got really sunburned, ”she said. “Daddy (Freedy) got really sunburned.”

His sunburn was so bad that he went to the emergency room when he returned to Vegas. A COVID test at the hospital came back positive, but he returned home to try and fight it in isolation.

“Early Tuesday morning, I would say around 3 am he wakes me up in a panic,” DuPreez said. “He’s like, ‘I can’t breathe. I know something is wrong.

She said he couldn’t even stand when he tried, so they went back to the hospital.

He was admitted with pneumonia in both lungs and was eventually transferred to another hospital where she was allowed to see him.

“I kept telling him, ‘You’re going to be fine; you have to go home, ”she said.

A few days later, things got worse and Freedy was transferred to intensive care.

“I was able to call before they greeted him, and he sat down on the phone,” DuPreez said. “And I could hear it. I was like, ‘Please keep fighting. Do not abandon. And he said to me, ‘I’m trying to fight, but they’re going to intubate me and put me underground.’ “

She must come in and see him.

“The machine started to go crazy; her pulse was gone, ”she said. “As five people rushed in, they made a code.”

She watched them give chest compressions for over half an hour.

“Because we were engaged, the doctor comes to me and she says, ‘I need you to call her mother. She’s the closest relative, ”said DuPreez. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not good.’ So they have him on the phone, and they tell him there’s nothing they can do.

Doctors told him they thought Freedy had a blood clot.

“It’s so surreal, because I don’t know what to do,” DuPreez said.

He has not been vaccinated against COVID.

“We wanted to wait just a year after release to see what effects people were having, but there was never any intention of not getting it,” she said.

It’s a decision she says she will always regret. DuPreez has now gotten the hang of it with their eldest child.

“This is one of the last text messages he sent me, it is that he wished he had done it, because even if he stopped the symptoms a little, it could have prevented him from progressing so fast, ”DuPreez said.

The text read: “I should have been vaccinated”.

Now her family is begging others to get vaccinated, save lives, and avoid the unimaginable grief they are going through right now.

“I expected to be 30 years older with him,” said DuPreez. “I didn’t expect him to be gone.”

“He was the best father you could have,” said one of their children.

Delta variant of virus continues to spread rapidly in the United States

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently changed their masking recommendations, now even urging those vaccinated to resume wearing masks indoors in some public spaces.

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