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From a young age, Diana Law shared her father’s interest in helping people.
One day when there was an accident outside Law’s house, she and her father, a doctor, ran out to attend to the victims until help arrived, recalled Glen Culshaw, her husband and best friend since high school. That’s just who Law was, he said.
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Try refreshing your browser, or Colleagues, family members mourn B.C. s first known death of nurse from COVID-19 Back to video
Culshaw recalled that formative memory this week shortly after Law died at 57 from a months-long fight against complications from COVID-19. She is the first-known nurse in B.C., and the second in Canada, to have died from the disease.
Kidney transplant recipient
Culshaw said his wife was inspired by her father John, a physician who she helped as a teenager. She was smart. She should have been a doctor, really, Culshaw said.
He is convinced his wife was exposed to COVID-19 at work.
Law had not been vaccinated at the time she became ill. He said his wife had a kidney transplant in 2013 and also had diabetes, so she was immuno-compromised.
She took anti-rejection drugs as a result of the transplant, and at the time directives were not clear about whether the COVID-19 vaccine was safe for transplant recipients. Health officials have since advised that the vaccines are safe for transplant recipients.
Medical leaders are concerned about increasing pressures on health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic following the suicide of Dr. Karine Dion, a 35-year-old emergency physician in Granby, Que.
Described by her loved ones as an incredible woman, Dion had been practising medicine for a decade and was on her second mental health leave when she died. Dion’s husband, David Daigle, says she was exhausted from the stress of the pandemic.
According to Dr. Caroline Gerin-Lajoie, executive vice-president of physician wellness and medical culture at the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), Dion’s tragic death “reminds us that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take an enormous toll. Our sincere condolences go out to Dr. Karine Dion’s loved ones and colleagues during this incredibly difficult time.”
TORONTO A few months into the pandemic, a registered nurse in a Toronto-area long-term care facility told her son that they were âoverworked and understaffedâ at her job, and that she believed change was needed. He recorded the conversation, but itâs difficult for him to listen back to her voice now â his mother, 57-year-old Maureen Ambersley, died this week after contracting COVID-19. In Canada, some 30 health-care workers have died since the pandemic began. Ambersley, who worked at a care facility owned by Extendicare, told her son, Floyd, in May that working conditions were difficult. COVID-19 had changed the nature of her job âin a way that impacts the whole workforce,â she said in an audio recording provided to CTV News.