woman regrets vaccine apprehension after husband, mother-in-law die of COVID-19

By Natasha Williams

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    LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (WLKY) — After the death of her husband and mother-in-law to COVID-19, a Shelbyville woman is left to wonder “what if?”

“It will always be in the back of my mind. If I had got the shot, would she still be alive and so would my husband,” Tammy Clark said.

Clark is heartbroken.

The wife, mother and grandmother is left to wonder if she is the reason her mother-in-law and her husband of 41 years contracted COVID-19 and died.

“I know I brought it home because there is no other way she could have got it, and my husband, and what is sad is I was planning on getting the shot the next week, and it was too late,” Clark said through tears.

Clark, who works for Kroger, was offered the vaccine but was afraid to get it. It’s a decision she now regrets.

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“People say you get sick, you get blood clots, all kinds of craziness. When people put that stuff in your head and you get to thinking about it and think, ‘Maybe I don’t need the shot,’ well yeah, you do,” she said.

Just five days after losing her 80-year-old mother-in-law to COVID-19, Tammy and her husband, 61-year-old Carl, were both hospitalized.

Carl was put on a ventilator immediately and died within hours. Tammy, who was also put on a ventilator, was in the ICU for 30 days but survived.

“We never got to see each other. That’s what hurts. I didn’t get to tell him how I loved him,” Clark said.

Clark is now telling anyone who will listen to get the vaccine.

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“I even sent pictures of me, you know, being on the vent and everything, but they said, ‘I am afraid,’ I said, ‘What is there to be afraid of?’ I said I was afraid too, and look where I was at, I almost died,” she said.

The thought of that leads her to an even scarier thought.

“I would have left my children, my grandkids. I don’t know what my kids would have done if I passed away. I mean the day they were burying their grandmother, they get the call that their daddy passed away right as the funeral was getting ready to start,” Clark said.

Clark said after so much loss, she will now be getting the vaccine as soon as doctors clear her after her battle with COVID-19.

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