Coronavirus restrictions kept North Carolina family from visiting dying daughter

Doctors found she had blood clots in her brain.

“We need to see her. We need to be with her,” said Janet Tatum, her mother.

The family was frantic to get to her, but no one could go to New York -- the hot zone for COVID-19.

Her parents had to make the heartbreaking decision to take her off a ventilator from hundreds of miles away. They only got to see her through FaceTime -- and played her favorite song.

"By the time the song was over, she was gone," Janet Tatum said.

Shelly Tatum was an organ donor who relished the chance to help others. Doctors harvested her kidneys.

“We were excited about the fact that a part of her may be helping somebody live on,” said her father, Leigh Tatum.

But COVID-19 got in the way of that hope.

Shelly’s parents said even though she tested negative for the virus three times in the hospital, no one trusted organs from a person who recently visited China and died in New York.

They also couldn’t get their daughter cremated shortly after her death because of the hundreds of COVID-19 positive patients dying around her every day.

"They had 97 bodies waiting," Janet Tatum said.

Shelly Tatum was eventually cremated, but her ashes may not come home for another two to three weeks as her parents continue waiting.

"A hole that’s there and right now, there is nothing that’s going to fill that hole,” Leigh Tatum said.