An ambulance worker sent a heartbreaking text to his family right before being rushed to intensive care due to coronavirus.
Jack Frost, an emergency medical technician (EMT) with East England Ambulance Service, had been working on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic prior to developing coronavirus symptoms.
The 63-year-old told his family he loved them via text moments before he was taken to intensive care.
Jack was following all protocol, wearing PPE and even moving out of the family home into a Cambridge Travelodge with funding help from EEAST so that he did not potentially bring the deadly virus home.
However, he began to feel under the weather, putting it down to the stress and long hours associated with his job.
But things quickly took a turn for the worse.
His daughter Alex, 25, said: “He thought he was just getting a bit under the weather because he was working so much - the shifts are long and he was doing so much overtime to keep up with the demand.
"He was just feeling a bit under the weather and then he had a couple of days off and it really hit him, he was feeling really unwell.
"He thought he was run down, he started with a fever and the Trust told him to self-isolate.
"I think he got about two days into his isolation, if that.
"From him starting to feel unwell, to him being taken to hospital was three or four days, it was so fast."
Alex explained how the family started to believe he was getting better before a terrifying text revealed his condition had worsened.
She said: “All of a sudden we all got a text from him saying I love you, and that was it, he got taken into intensive care and we haven't heard from him since, he was put straight into a coma.”
Jack has a diverse career history, having worked for the MET police before becoming a Royal Engineers diver for the Army, and has been an EMT for the ambulance service for the past ten years.
Alex said: "He's got one of those personalities you can't really describe, he's just really infectious.
"He's one of those people that would do anything for anyone, he's really funny and always cracking a joke, even when things are really bad he's the person who keeps a level head and raises positivity.
"He's always the positive influence so it's been a bit difficult not having him to reassure everyone at the minute. It's usually his job."
During his work on the frontline, Jack had told his family of the challenges.
Alex said: "He was saying to my siblings and me that it was crazy how many people are calling ambulances that don't actually need them, but obviously they have to do their job and respond to the call."
Having hardly ever visited the doctor, Jack is described as fit and healthy which has promoted his family to share the message of the importance of staying at home during lockdown.
Their message is that coronavirus does not discriminate.
Jack is currently being cared for at Addenbrooke's Hospital, on a Neuroscience Critical Care Unit which has been opened up as a critical COVID-19 ward.
"It's been horrible," Alex said about not being able to see him.
"We know why we can't, my mum has had pneumonia before and we went to visit every day and he went to see her every day and she feels guilty that she now can't do the same for him.
"She's vulnerable so he had moved out prior to the restrictions being put into place into a Travelodge in central Cambridge to reduce the risk of bringing anything home."
Alex usually splits her time between Nottingham, during the week for work, and the family home in Cambridge, while her sister lives at home in Cambridge with dad Jack and mum Karen, 57.
Her younger brother is currently studying to become a paramedic in Hatfield, and has been unable to return home from University due to the lockdown.
Alex also has two older brothers, one in Southampton and another in the Isle of Man, which has now closed its borders.
"We're all pretty split up," she said, "and my dad's brothers live in Wales, but we talk every day and everything.
"People say oh well you've all got each other, but it's difficult when you can't really be there for each other."
Support for Jack and his family has been flooding in.
Alex described receiving an “outpouring of love” including from some of Jack’s old colleagues in the police and the army.
She said: "There's so many people saying how close they feel to him and the impact he's had on their lives and everything, and I'm just like that's probably more people than I've ever met in my life.
"Nobody's got a bad word to say about him, I think a lot of people are shocked it's happened to him."
Alex is now trying to support NHS staff with an online fundraiser.
She said: “They're doing so much, for not just my family but for so many people that are relying on them.
"We really want to spread my dad's message, because before this he was really trying to get people to stay at home, and say it won't discriminate because my dad was healthy before this.
"We just want to spread what he was trying to say and the impact of people's actions.
"There are people doing 14 hour shifts, with a 15 minute tea break, in critical care.
"If by raising this money we can get everyone on the ward a hot meal and a half hour break that would be amazing."
