Patty Trejo wanted some way to let her husband, Joe Trejo, know that she’s with him even as he breathes through a ventilator.
So she turned to music. Trejo hired a mariachi band to serenade him outside Providence St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton. And on Monday, Feb. 15, inside his room in the hospital’s intensive care unit, their song “La Mano de Dios” (The Hand of God) was streamed live via a cell phone.
Joe Trejo, in a medically induced coma as he struggles with COVID-19, heard the song, she said. Patty is sure of it. She was fortunate that hospital staff allowed her to be with her husband in that moment, the first time she had seen him in person since she took him to the hospital a month ago.
“I know people say ‘They can’t hear you,’” Patty said Tuesday. “But I know he did.”
Clutching a white rosary in her right hand, she said she prayed even harder when she was by his side. “And he opened his eyes, moved his head and coughed,” she said.
She placed the rosary in his hand, as well as his cross, which she has been wearing.
“I put my arms around him and kissed his hands. I know he felt it.”
Until last Friday, Patty had not been public about her husband’s illness. But she chose to post it on a son’s Facebook page because she said she needs more “prayer warriors.”
The response from friends, co-workers, far-away family members and even strangers has been heartwarming, she said. Patty, 54, works as a teacher’s aide in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. Joe, 53, works as a locksmith for the Anaheim Union High School District.
“I never felt so much support and love from family and coworkers and friends,” she said.
“He’s going to get through this.”
Relentless virus
The Trejo family has been hard hit by the virus this year.
Patty, Joe and two of their three adult children, who live with the couple in Anaheim, all contracted the virus. One of her sons was seriously ill and Patty feared he would die. Her father, meanwhile, also got COVID-19 and died on Feb. 4. A day later, Joe was placed on a ventilator.
“There were times I said, ‘I can’t help anybody. I can’t move.’”
Patty and her youngest son, Chris, 18, became sick in the first days of the new year. A week later, her son Matt, 19, was so sick he was vomiting blood. Around the same time, Joe had a dry hacking cough.
On Jan. 15, Patty dropped off Joe at St. Jude. Meanwhile, her son Matt “wasn’t looking good.” Checking an oximeter, she saw that his oxygen saturation level was dangerously low. But when she drove Matt that night to another hospital, closer to their Anaheim home, she saw paramedics with patients on gurneys waiting in line.
Patty took her son back home, continued with medications, steam baths and nebulizations, none of which were easy because he has autism and would scream at times. So, still feeling sick herself, she sat next to him in the steamy bathroom, hoping it would help ease the phlegm in his chest. “As long as I sang to him or played a movie, he could stand it for about 20 minutes at a time.”
At the beginning, her husband could still talk on the phone, though he was having trouble breathing. And from his hospital bed, he offered encouragement: “He would tell me, ‘You can do this.’”
By late January, Patty and her son Chris felt better. A week later, so did her son Matt. But Joe, who was still hospitalized, developed pneumonia. And on Feb. 5, he was sedated and intubated because he couldn’t breathe on his own.
“Hand of God”
Patty and Joe have been a couple for more than 38 years, 35 of those married. They met at a concert at the old Billy Barty’s roller skating rink in Fullerton. He later told her, “The first time I met you, I fell in love with you.”
Music has always been a part of their life. They enjoy concerts and some family members like to sing together. Joe is particularly fond of Motown and mariachi music.
“He would sing to me.”
During the first three weeks of Joe’s hospital stay, the family – all members of St. Anthony Mary Claret parish in Anaheim – prayed with him over the phone. And they played music for him.
So with her husband still in intensive care, Patty chose to bring a little live music to his life. She chose a song that he loves, “The Hand of God,” a Spanish-language song that also was special to Joe’s parents. She hired the mariachi group Trío Palenque, which played it a couple of times along with other favorites outside the hospital.
The couple’s three sons, Chris, Matt and Joseph, were outside St. Jude while their mother was allowed to briefly be with her husband. A hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday that’s allowed in some situations.
Patty said she’s grateful to the hospital staff and to the growing number of people who are seeking her husband’s recovery.
“I want to thank everyone who is praying for him.”
The prayers, she said, have given her hope.