Capt. Douglas Linn Hickok, 57, joined the National Guard in New Jersey in part to see his son and daughter every month.
The National Guard Medical Unit member joined in 2009, and though separated from his first wife and living out of state, he took advantage of Guard duty in New Jersey to visit his children.
He was scheduled to meet with the Army on March 21 to discuss how he could also be part of the COVID-19 response.
Instead, he checked into Lehigh Valley Hospital-Pocono near his home in Pennsylvania.
At around 1 a.m. early that Saturday morning, he called his daughter to tell her what was happening.
“He was having trouble breathing and was going to the hospital,” Shandrea Hickok, 26, told the Washington Examiner. She thought the breathing trouble could be the higher elevation of the Pocono Mountains.
He had a fever earlier in the week, but he felt better and went to work on Friday.
“He felt really good the whole week. Thursday, he started getting a fever, but he took some Tylenol, and it went away,” she remembered.
Douglas Hickok was proud of his service in the National Guard, a third-generation member of the military who was born on Norman Air Force Base in Oklahoma. He was a registered Republican, a Trump supporter, and an NRA member who moved to Pennsylvania so he could open carry.
The president’s call to duty inspired Hickok to volunteer for the national COVID response.
“He had told us that the Army was planning on calling him for active duty in the National Guard,” Shandrea Hickok said, noting that it could be balanced with his part-time work as a physician’s assistant at an orthopedic office.
“He was very excited and looking forward to meeting with them to see how he could be of service,” she said. “He was a Republican and strong supporter of Donald Trump — and so, he really wanted to follow the president using these different resources as much as they can to fight this virus.”
“We were very proud of him,” she added.
Shandrea said her dad was in “really great health.” She had recently helped him adopt a plant-based diet and explore natural and alternative methods to strengthen his immune system.
But he traveled a lot, especially in the days before he started to show symptoms.
“He traveled, and, you know, the virus was spreading really rapidly,” she said. “You have to stay at a hotel, you’re around different places, you’re traveling, eating out, and there could have been so many different places he could have caught it.”
When he checked into Lehigh, he had the symptoms of viral pneumonia consistent with COVID.
“He was just doing really well the first couple of days, he was improving a lot, and it turned very suddenly like you hear all the other cases on the news,” she said.
The next call she got from her father was on March 25. She awakened again, this time around 5 a.m.
“Of course, I was worried, and I answered it,” she said.
Shandrea described the call in slow and measured words.
“He sounded, I would say more somber, like, kind of depressed,” she said. “He was in a lot of pain and didn’t think he was gonna make it.”
She also said her father feared going on a ventilator. His work in hospitals had taught him that recovery once he was on a ventilator was bleak.
“He was very, very afraid of going onto a ventilator,” she said.
“When I spoke with him, he wasn’t having a hard time necessarily breathing on the phone, but he just sounded like he was getting worse, and so, it was a very hard phone call,” she said. “It was very, very hard because we are not able to go to the hospital.”
She asked her father, “What was going on?”
“‘I’m in a lot of pain, and I’m having some problems,’” she recalled him saying. “He started just kind of, like, begging me to help, like, to talk with the nurse and to get a nurse.”
Douglas Hickok was anxious, upset, and stressed. His body ached. He had severe stomach pain. And nurse visits were infrequent, because they required extensive protective clothing to be worn and removed for each visit.
“He had just been waiting, and so, that’s why he called me to kind of expedite because the pain was getting pretty bad,” Shandrea Hickok said.
Breathing got more difficult; her father could not draw enough oxygen into his virus-contaminated lungs. A ventilator meant tubes in his lungs, and he would no longer be able to speak to his daughter.
On the call, he communicated his thoughts to her as best he could.
“He said he’s trying, and he doesn’t think he’s gonna make it and that he loves me so much,” she said. “There wasn’t any specific last words, but I could tell from his words. You know, after I got off the phone, I could tell, you know, that he was trying. He was trying to say his last words to me.”
She called the nurses. Then, she heard screams in the background. There was chaos, and it was hard for her to understand what was happening.
“Suddenly, the oxygen just went too low, like, very, very quickly. And when it drops really low rapidly, they have to put you on a ventilator. So, they put him on a ventilator, and so, he went on the life support, and that’s when he just declined after that,” she said.
Douglas Hickock died three days later on Saturday, just one week after his diagnosis.
Shandrea Hickock is hoping to have a military funeral for her father in the next couple of months. She said her father treated many high-level officers when he worked at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Some of them might want to attend the funeral, she thought. And he wished for his ashes to be spread at sea, she said. Her brother, Noah, intends to keep the family’s military tradition and has applied for the Navy.
“He was really looking forward to meet with everybody,” she said of her father’s hope to activate with the Guard and be part of the COVID response.
She doesn’t know if her father’s death could have been prevented. But she now believes that every COVID case should be treated as if the patient is in critical danger.
“Low risk can turn into high risk in a very short amount of time,” she said.
