‘I miss my baby.’ Family of Suffolk girl who died of COVID-19 describes heart-wrenching final days

Suffolk — Jeff Sperry balked at the idea of his children riding in a school bus in the middle of a pandemic, so he drove them each day.

His family of six is vigilant. They believe in wearing masks, getting vaccinated and staying home from school when under the weather. His wife, Nicole Sperry, is a third-grade teacher.

When he picked up his daughter last Wednesday, she had a headache. When she came home from school Thursday, she was profoundly altered, drowsy to the point of conking out for a nap. She had a fever, so he kept his children home from school Friday.

By Monday, his daughter was gone.

Teresa Sperry, a 10-year-old girl from Suffolk, died of coronavirus complications at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk. She is thought to be the second child fatality in Hampton Roads.

Anthonette Ward, a Suffolk Public Schools spokeswoman, said the administration dispatched a crisis management team to provide grief counseling to Hillpoint Elementary School students and faculty. Suffolk Public Schools Superintendent John Gordon III sent a letter to parents Tuesday, though it did not refer to Teresa by name or give her cause of death. It did, however, detail methods for preventing the spread of the coronavirus.

The Virginia Department of Health has not confirmed her death as a COVID-19 fatality. There have been 12 juvenile deaths in Virginia, according to health department data as of Wednesday.

On Friday morning, Jeff Sperry called the local CHKD medical office to find out if Teresa could get tested. He was told she needed to have at least five days of symptoms. Their opportunity would be Monday.

By Sunday evening, Teresa was coughing and vomiting, so he took her to Sentara Obici Hospital. They gave her strep and COVID-19 tests.

Nicole still thinks about how brave Teresa was. She twitched her nose like a rabbit after a nurse swabbed it for fluids.

Then they wanted to look at her lungs for signs of pneumonia.

She hangs onto a memory: Teresa was shy about disrobing for the chest X-ray, so Nicole built a dressing room for her out of a patient gown.

Her lungs looked clear, and she was sent home.

That night, every time Teresa started to doze off, she woke up wheezing. Jeff Sperry stayed up with her all night.

On Monday morning, she stopped breathing. Paramedics took her to Obici, then staff requested to transfer her to the children’s hospital. Sperry couldn’t go to either hospital because he had developed COVID-19 symptoms.

Before medics moved Teresa, Nicole said goodbye. She watched the gentle way the health workers cared for their young patient.

“Anytime they needed to give her an IV or give her a shot or whatever, they were like, ‘OK, sweet girl. This is gonna pinch a little bit,’ just like she was awake,” she remembered. “I loved that.”

But at CHKD, they lost her pulse again.

More children were admitted to the hospital for the disease in August and this month than during the pandemic’s January peak of 23. There were 39 in August, and as of Tuesday, there have been 57 in September. The increase has come as a shock to many who thought the public health crisis was coming to an end earlier in the summer.

The more contagious delta variant has driven rapid transmission of the virus. Children are making up an increasing share of new cases, in part because vaccines are not yet allowed for anyone under age 12. But health authorities have said the Pfizer vaccine soon will be expanded to ages 5-11.

Though health experts say children are still likely to be asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms, more than 1,000 juveniles have been hospitalized for the disease statewide. About 40% have been in Hampton Roads.

Nicole stayed at the hospital for hours after Teresa died. The staff asked if she wanted to help clean her.

She couldn’t bear seeing her baby’s face in that condition. So she did.

Just a few weeks earlier, Nicole had given Teresa her first makeup — eye shadows, lip gloss and a little bottle of mascara in a pink and green bottle.

“Every girl’s first mascara has to be this,” she told her daughter. “It’s a rite of passage.”

She called Teresa her little diva, always striking a pose for the camera. It was pretty common for mom’s high heels to disappear. The dog got blamed for missing shoes that were in fact squirreled away in Teresa’s room.

The neighbor called her “Princess Boo-boo.” Teresa liked to go over to her house and try on jewelry — 15 necklaces and 20 bracelets on each arm was her style.

At school she was known as a helper — so much so that the week before her death, her teacher had asked her to walk sick students to the school nurse, Sperry said. If anyone was sent home, it was her job to go back to the classroom to gather their book bags.

Suffolk schools officials did not respond to several requests for comment on the matter, made through spokeswoman Ward on Wednesday.

The family will have to put off a funeral service. They’re quarantining at home. Though fully vaccinated, Sperry tested positive for COVID-19. Their other children’s test results are due Thursday.

They spent most of Wednesday talking to reporters — using their tragedy to urge masks, vaccines and social distancing.

Their daughter was healthy, they said. There’s no telling who will recover and who won’t.

Sperry has diabetes and sleep apnea — making him a high-risk coronavirus patient. When asked how he’s coping with his illness, he shuddered.

“I don’t care,” he said. “I miss my baby.”

Elisha Sauers, 757-839-4754, elisha.sauers@pilotonline.com