When he’s not assisting our young patients at Texas Children’s Immunization Clinic, team member Alex Trevino is busy being the glue that holds his close-knit family together after his mother and grandmother died from COVID-19 nearly a year ago.
It’s a responsibility he never expected but doesn’t take lightly – not after surviving his own hospitalization for COVID and pneumonia, and urging his husband, daughter, brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins to protect themselves by getting vaccinated.
“With us, it still hurts. We’re still lost,” said Trevino, a self-described mama’s boy who was the first to step up and receive the vaccine after the deaths. “You might think COVID is a joke, but I experienced it firsthand with my family members and it’s hard to recover from it. You can say you just don’t want the vaccine, but it will save your life.”
The matriarchs of their family, Maria Del Carmen Trevino and Enriqueta Robledo were careful about taking precautions against COVID and never sure how they contracted the virus. Maybe they caught it one day when they traveled to one of their regular doctor appointments, or from a cousin who briefly stopped by their home. But the devastating impacts were swift.
Enriqueta was the first whose symptoms became severe. She never learned her daughter had also been admitted to the hospital, having had just one brief video call with the rest of the family before she took a turn for the worst.
The same day that Enriqueta passed, Maria was placed on a ventilator. This time, there wasn’t a final video chat – only a hastily arranged phone call before her heart gave out and she was gone, just two weeks after the mother she didn’t know she’d lost.
“The whole thing is unreal. You think they’re still here, but they’re not,” Trevino said. “It’s hard for us. It’s like we’re in a bubble. You can’t get a hug from them. I don’t have that person that I used to talk to. Now I’m the one who tries to keep up the family, like my mom did. I’m trying to be the glue that keeps us from losing each other.”
Working in Texas Children’s Immunization Clinic has been a balm for Trevino. He draws strength every day from the memory of his mother and the excitement of seeing children and families so eager to receive the vaccine.
He loves his job and the feeling that he’s making a difference by helping to protect the most vulnerable members of our community as we progress toward the end of the pandemic.
“I want to be able to look beyond this, go back to normal and say that even though we went through it, we came out better,” Trevino said. “We can tell our grandchildren the story of what happened and how the vaccine helped everybody get back to where we used to be.”
All members of Texas Children’s workforce are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and must receive at least one vaccine dose by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, September 21. To schedule your vaccine appointment through Texas Children’s, please click here.