Covid 19-Correction Officer Greg F. Clark, Jr Re

My husband was a corrections officer at the Cuyahoga County Correctional Facility. He's worked there since 1998. My husband had been gravely affected by the unorganized, stressful, and unsanitary work environment of the downtown correctional facility.  We did what we could to limit the affects of the stress and to cope with working in the corrections field. However, the pandemic brought an increase in the amount of stress.

My husband had great trepidation about having to be moved back to the downtown Cleveland correctional location as opposed to working in his specialty post at Bedford Heights location. My husband said talking about Bedford Heights jail; "This is an organized, cleaner, and low stress work environment. They treat us with respect and dignity. Everyone at Bedford has high work moral."

Once the covid 19 virus start spreading, the county began to release large numbers of inmates. My husband came home each day with very high anxiety about not knowing how the county was going to handle the pandemic. There was rumors of Bedford jails closing.

My husband was called to work downtown only 3 hours before his shift started. He wasn't given enough time to prepare mentally, emotionally, or economically for working the downtown location which is very different than the Bedford Heights location. He wasn't even able to clear his locker at Bedford, let alone get a medical note letting his superiors know he has underlined health conditions that puts him at high risk to contract the covid 19 virus.  He wasn't given enough time before his shift to notify his supervisor that he cannot work in the downtown location where covid 19 was confirmed in a high number of inmates. 

Once downtown, he wasn't told where positively tested covid inmates were being housed or where they had been moved throughout the jail. On that day, my husband's supervisor didn't have an assignment for my husband to work.

My husband came home within 7 days with symptoms of what we thought may have been seasonal allergies. On May 12th, my husband got tested for the virus and the results came back positive. Soon, he was barely able to walk to the bathroom without coughing and losing his breath.

We had no choice but to call the ambulance.  On May 21, 2020,  when he was admitted into the hospital, that was the last time I saw my husband in person.  My husband suffered lung failure, kidney failure, and heart failure. He fought for his life. The virus had attacked his middle right lobe of his lung, however, we still held onto faith throughout the surgeries. Greg being hooked up to the ventilator and ECMO machines for an extended time became his death sentence. Greg was on the machines so long and had not recovered as I, the family, the surgeon and medical team had hoped. My husband lost his fight on July 7th at 12 midnight. Doctors said he would not survive and gave me a couple of options:
1.)  Stay with him and wait for his heart to stop on its own. 2.) At the right moment request for the doctors to unplug the machines.  3.) Walk away and let the hospital call me when Greg passes.

Due to the great discomfort my husband was in and the advice of the team, I decided to call his dad and step mom and get our daughters there to see him for the last time asap. I told doctors to slowly unplug the machines. His heart and breathing was abnormally slow. And my husband passed within minutes. He was on total life support and could not sustain breathing on his own. My husband had internal bleeding caused by the virus. He had deteriorated from the inside out, beyond repair, and there was no returning from that.

Greg is the primary bread winner of our family. And Greg was the primary administrator of our home, as well. Our family is suffering greatly from this horrendous tragedy of economic and medical disparity.  If my husband, my children's father and many others' friend mentor and pastor never went into work that week, he would still be alive.  As we try to collect ourselves, our family is still taking an emotional and financial hit from all of this. We need your help, as we have a daughter preparing to go away to college, a granddaughter we are taking care of, and another school age daughter. We need prayers but we also need your financial support. Thank you in advance and God bless you and your family.