Delayed Coronavirus Result Puts Grieving Brick Family In Limbo

BRICK, NJ — All Joe Cranga wants is to lay his wife to rest. Jen Pascarella and Patty Nucci, his daughters, want to be there when he does to say goodbye to their mother. To do so, they need an answer to one question: Did Sue Cranga test positive for the new coronavirus?

Six days after the 76-year-old Brick Township woman died in the emergency room at Ocean Medical Center, after Joe rushed her there because she started vomiting blood, they can’t get an answer.

"I just want to bury Sue," Joe, 76, said Wednesday evening. "It’s bad enough I can’t have a viewing or Mass. I’m at wit’s end. I need an answer."

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This is one of the complications of the coronavirus: delays in funeral services, loved ones finding out a loved one has died with no opportunity for a last farewell, family members unable to lean on each other for support because of exposure, and a lack of closure that can intensify grief.

"We've been dealing with so much red tape," Jen said Wednesday night. Joe won’t let Jen and Patty come to the house to be with him for support, because he does not know whether he was exposed to the virus that has made more than 6,800 people in New Jersey ill as of Thursday, including 33 in Brick, and he does not want to take a chance. Because of that, there’s a feeling of being in limbo.

"I keep wanting to pick up the phone and talk to her, ask her how she’s feeling," Jen said.

"It still hasn't hit me that she is not here anymore," Patty said.

"I just want an answer," Joe said.

OUT OF NOWHERE

Sue Cranga had been feeling well a week ago. She was recovering from surgery on her leg and doing all right, Joe said.

On Friday, however, she started to run a fever, 100 degrees. “She took some Tylenol and went to sleep,” he said. On Saturday, she had a fever again, 100 degrees. Joe was downstairs feeding the dogs when she called out to him to bring her a bucket because she felt nauseous.

When he got to her, she vomited blood, he said.

"I told her I was going to call 911, but she said, just take me, it’s faster," Joe said. "By the time you call and they send an ambulance, we can be there," she told him.

Sue had had bad pneumonia two years ago, and nearly died of it. As he bent over to help put her shoes on, he said, "I could hear the liquid bubbling in her chest." He helped her into the car, and halfway through the 7-minute drive to Ocean Medical Center, "she suddenly slumped over," Joe said.

At the emergency room the staff jumped into action. While Joe called his daughters, one of the nurses did chest compressions on Sue in the front seat of the car.

"One of the nurses took my phone and said, 'Is this your daughter?' " he said. "When I said yes, she said to Patty, 'You’d better get here quick.' " Neither Patty, who lives in Bloomfield, nor Jen, who lives on Long Island, were able to make it in time. "Sue died within an hour," Joe said.

He praised the doctors and nurses who responded when they arrived, and said he knows they did everything they could to help his wife of 51 years.

Because Sue had a fever of 100, the hospital tested her for the coronavirus, but the delay in getting a result means they cannot move forward with the burial. Sue’s body is still at Ocean Medical Center. It cannot be released to O’Brien Funeral Home, which is handling the arrangements, until the test result comes back because there are procedures set out by the state Department of Health for handling bodies in cases of infectious disease.

"There’s all separate procedures and certain paperwork they have to complete when there’s an infectious disease involved," said Kevin O’Brien, the funeral director at O’Brien Funeral Home. "That paperwork has to follow the deceased wherever they go, to the funeral home and to the cemetery too."

He said the Cranga family isn’t the only one facing the predicament of waiting for the release of a loved one’s body, adding the situation is complicated for everyone involved — the hospitals included.

"It’s such unprecedented times," O'Brien said. Health care workers are seeing firsthand what the virus can do to a person’s body. "You and I haven’t seen it, but they do." O’Brien said that has led to an abundance of caution for all involved.

A spokesperson for Ocean Medical Center deferred comment on procedures and testing time frames to the state Department of Health.

The New Jersey chief medical examiner's office has set guidance that when hospitals are awaiting coronavirus test results on someone who has died, "if there is an established diagnosis (e.g. pneumonia), the case can be released and the treating physician should list the cause of death as 'Pending COVID-19 testing,' with a natural manner of death," said Donna Leusner, a spokeswoman for the state health department. The death certificate would need to be amended once test results are received.

The turnaround time for testing by commercial labs has generally been three to five days; they are generally testing hundreds if not thousands of tests at once, Leusner said. Testing turnaround by hospitals varies, she said. The state gives tests involving health care workers and first responders higher priority for processing, but said how hospitals handle their testing is up to each hospital.

What confounds Joe is the fact that he cannot get the test result, which will let him know whether he may have been exposed. On Thursday morning he called again. One person told him he would have to get the result from Sue’s doctor.

"She died in the emergency room. I have no idea who the doctor was," he said. Another person told him to try calling back on Friday. "I guess we’ll have the burial on Monday," Joe said.

The delay means Joe is essentially isolated for another day. Friends have dropped off food on his doorstep, and his daughters have been calling to check on him and have Facetimed with all of the grandchildren. It’s not the same as being able to hug your kids and grandkids and mourn in person.

"They told me two to three days for results," he said. "I'm frustrated."

O’Brien said the Cranga family isn’t the only one in a waiting pattern. There are others whose loved ones have not been released, because they are waiting for results.

"It’s terrible for people who have suffered a loss, but having this really compounds it,” O’Brien said.

SOMEONE YOU COULD ALWAYS TALK TO

Joe and Sue Cranga did almost everything together. Whether it was taking their dogs, Emilia and Molly, for an outing or going to Bloomfield where Patty, 50, and her family live, or Long Island, where Jen, 48, and her family are, to watch their grandchildren’s activities, they were together.

"She came to everything — soccer games, singing performances, tap recitals," Jen said. Even when she wasn’t feeling well Sue would get to their events. That included seeing Elizabeth and Gabbi, two of Patty’s daughters, perform in their high school musical in late February, while she was still recovering from surgery.

"Come hell or high water she was going to be there," Jen said.

"She witnessed so many milestones in their lives," Patty said. Sue has six grandchildren: Sarah, 22, Maddie, 19, and Ralphie, 17, are Jen’s children; twins Liz and Mary, 17, and Gabbi, 16, are Patty’s daughters.

"All six grandkids each had their own link to her, their own attachment that makes losing her that much harder," Patty said.

"She was the grandma who loved shopping, especially Nordstrom shopping," Jen said. Sue was the grandmother who would come out and stay with the kids, "and take them for fast food and let them stay up late — all the things grandmas were supposed to do."

She would buy all the grandchildren their Christmas outfits each year, and she bought their communion outfits as well. And sometimes, she went a little overboard in the process, Jen said.

"My middle daughter was obsessed with baby dolls," Jen said, so when her first communion came around, she wanted a doll that looked like a real baby. Sue found one on eBay. This was back when eBay was just ramping up, Jen said. But Sue was determined to meet the request, and got an account and bid on the perfect doll, winning with a bid of what she thought was $300.

"It was euros," Jen said with a laugh. "She bid $300 in euros, so it was actually about $600," far more than Sue had intended. Jen said she told her to let it go but her mother said, "I can't tell her no."

"My parents never had a lot, but they always tried to do what they could for us," she said.

Sue had been a teacher at a Catholic school in Old Bridge before the girls were born, but left teaching to raise her daughters. She was the mom who came to all of Jen and Patty’s events, the mom all their friends knew, and became that mom everyone turned to for advice.

After Jen posted on Facebook about Sue’s death, one of her high school friends reached out, and told her of a tough time she had been through. "One day I thought, 'I know Mrs. Cranga could help me,' " the friend told Jen. "I always remembered that the door was always open."

"(Sue) liked to say 20 minutes and a cup of tea could fix anything," Jen said.

The response from friends far and wide — Joe’s friends, Jen’s friends, Patty’s friends — has been overwhelming, Jen said.

"The fact that people were so devastated, I realized how much she was loved, not just by us," she said.

A WAKE … AND AN ISOLATED WAIT

It has been that outpouring of support and love that has been a lifeline for Joe, a connection while he self-quarantines out of an abundance of caution.

"The comments on Facebook have been a virtual wake," Jen said. "For him it’s hard. He’s alone."

Being alone with only the dogs, Emilia and Molly, who Sue treated like royalty — Patty said she'd call home an her mom would be cooking for them, and they had their own pet car seats — has been difficult because Joe and Sue did everything together, their daughters said.

They weren’t the kind of couple who said lots of warm fuzzy things to each other, but they loved each other fiercely.

"I used to refer to her and my dad as the Costanzas from 'Seinfeld,' " Patty said. "I would call and mom would answer and I would hear her yelling to my dad, 'Patty's on the phone' then him responding, 'WHAT? I can't hear you.' Yes, Dad has hearing aids but this was their way of communicating before the hearing aids came into play." After he got them, "he would keep them turned low so he couldn't hear her."

"But they loved each other, that was always evident. In their every-day retired life schedules, doctors’ appointments, lunch dates, whatever it was, they were together and facing whatever came at them each day," she said.

"They were best friends. They were inseparable," Jen said.

Jen said the social distancing had been hard on her mother. She spoke with her mother on Friday, and Sue lamented not being able to spend time in person with her daughters and her grandchildren. They had Facetimed, and Sue was delighted as each of the grandchildren showed up and joined the group.

"I feel like with this damn virus I’m never going to get to see anyone again," she told Jen. In retrospect, it's a remark that gives Jen pause.

"There was something different about that call," she said. Her mother was complimenting the doctors who had been treating her, and praising how Joe had been caring for her during the recovery.

"It wasn’t really her way. She was a little hardened by life," Jen said. The fever was concerning, but there was no other indicators that something was seriously wrong.

When Sue recovered from the pneumonia two years ago, Jen said, the days since then had felt like they were granted bonus time. As shocking as her sudden death has been, Jen said she believes her mother would not have wanted to linger on life support.

"I feel like these were her terms," Jen said. She’s grateful too, that she was spared the hell that other families are facing, of loved ones on a ventilator and unable to visit them and bring them comfort.

"I wouldn’t have been able to deal with that," she said.

She struggles with the idea of her father being forced to stand alone at his wife’s burial, if Sue was in fact positive for the coronavirus.

"To think that I can't stand near him and put my arm around him if he breaks down is really hard," Jen said. If the test comes back negative, at least she and Patty and their husbands can be with their father for the burial. The grandchildren cannot be at the cemetery for the burial because it is limited to 10 people. They plan for a fuller memorial once the statewide ban on gatherings is lifted, and the risks of the virus spreading go down.

All they want to know is one thing: Was Sue positive for the coronavirus?

Maybe Friday they will get an answer at last.

"I just want an answer," Joe said. "I just want to bury Sue."

Note: This has been updated with comment from the state Department of Health.

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