FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - A South Florida couple caught COVID, and the husband would not survive. Now his widow is sharing the story of their suffering in the hopes of preventing others from enduring the same.
“But you know something? It’s better than being dead. I can’t talk to my husband anymore,” said Maggie Thomas.
The message is personal for Maggie.
After losing her husband to COVID-19 and battling the virus herself, she’s begging the unvaccinated to roll up their sleeves and get the shot.
“He was the love of my life, 45 years, my soul mate,” Maggie said. “He survived cancer and lost to COVID.”
Not a day goes by that she doesn’t think of her husband Wayne.
The couple met nearly five decades ago on a canoe trip, and it was love at first sight.
“He stands up there, and he’s looking down, and he looked like a god,” Maggie said. “He was so handsome.”
It was July of last year when they had their own run-in with the virus and both ended up in the hospital at the same time.
Maggie would survive. Wayne would not.
Just a day before his passing, the nurses covered her head to toe in PPE and let them share one last moment together.
“And I was able to talk to my husband for about 20 minutes and he was…,” Maggie said before pausing. “He had oxygen and there were so many tubes coming out of him.”
Now it’s the memories of Wayne Maggie has left to hold onto: the photos that outline his entertainment career and old recordings of him performing in front of a crowd.
Now she’s urging everyone who has to be vaccinated to get the shot. If not for themselves, then for their loved ones.
“If I can save one or two people out of this whole ordeal, then I have done my job,” Maggie said.
Maggie said she was hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine at first because of how new it is. She spoke to her son, who she said is a doctor, and he convinced her to get the shot. The fear is if she got infected again, a second time, she wouldn’t make it out alive.
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