Michele and Cynthia Racanati were two 47-year old twins who were very close. Not only did the sisters live together, but they worked in the same Iowa hospital as frontline medical workers.
The pair, who both worked at MercyOne Medical Center in Oelwein, took precautions against COVID-19, but after months of restrictions, they let their guard down with devastating results, reports CBS 2 Iowa.
Cynthia, who worked as a Medical Assistant in Urgent Care, came down with COVID-19 symptoms first.
“It was really mild cold symptoms,” she shared. “I had a headache and my eyes just felt very fatigued and tired.”
Not long after, their brother began to exhibit symptoms, followed by Michele, who worked as a Medical Assistant in the hospital’s clinics.
Michele’s symptoms worsened, and while Cynthia was able to return to work, Michele stayed home to recover. “She was actually texting me, so I didn’t realize how bad she was doing ‘til I got home, and she kept on saying how hard it was to breathe.”
Cynthia took Michele to the emergency room in Oelwein, but, hours after her arrival, her condition worsened and Michele was transferred to another hospital, where the mother of three suffered brain death.
“They believe that she had a stroke,” Cynthia said. “A blood clot broke off from her heart, and went up through her carotid artery and stopped the flow of blood and oxygen to the entire left side of her brain.”
Her son “made the difficult decision that she would have wanted, which was to be taken off of life support and she passed within ten minutes,” shared Cynthia.
Cynthia said that both sisters “were doing a lot of things in the month of October,” and that Michele told her “that if she’d go back and do it over again, she wouldn’t have gone to birthday parties and the Halloween celebrations and things that we had done.”
She wants her twin sister’s death to be a reminder to others of the dangers of COVID-19. “It’s taking healthy people. It’s affecting everybody. And that’s the main word that we want to get out there is for people to continue to practice social distancing. To wear your mask.”
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