Ofelia Rousseva thought she just had the flu before she died of COVID-19 on March 19, becoming the second person in Allegheny County to die of the disease.
Even though the flu conditions were enough that Mrs. Rousseva, 78, slept for most of two days before she died in her son’s home in Greenfield — she had been visiting from her home in Bulgaria since November — she told her son she did not want to go to the hospital.
“She didn’t have insurance. She thought she might not be able to pay the bills,” her son, Ludmil Velev, said Wednesday from his hospital bed at UPMC Presbyterian, where he has been treated for COVID-19 since Monday. “And being a foreigner, she was worried even more.”
Mr. Velev said he told his mother — a famed women’s choir director in her hometown in Sofia, Bulgaria — that she should go to the hospital.
“She was refusing to go,” said Mr. Velev, 43, a Lyft and Uber driver who has difficulty breathing now. “She thought it was regular flu and that it would get better by itself.”
That was partly because Mr. Velev’s daughter, Isabella, 4, got sick first about two weeks ago “but she went through it fast” and was fine in a couple days. Then his wife, Carmen Blanco, got sick just briefly and was fine in a day.
Both he and his mother started getting sick at about the same time around March 12. That was about the time that Mr. Velev said he stopped taking rides for Uber and Lyft, the ride-hailing companies he works for.
By Monday, March 16, his mother “was really bad.” He thinks now that his mother “misled” him — that she was worse off than she was telling him, when she said she just needed to rest and she’d be better.
By Wednesday, March 18, his mother said she was feeling a little better. “And she looked relatively fine for being sick.”
Mr. Velev said he never suspected his mother or anyone in the family had COVID-19 because “my daughter got better so fast.”
The mild impact of COVID-19 on many children has been one of the distinctive traits of the disease that researchers continue to try to understand. But the disease also has been notoriously severe on people over 60.
By Thursday morning, March 19, Mrs. Rousseva woke up feeling worse and asked for help getting downstairs.
Mr. Velev said his wife helped her downstairs and his wife called him to come check on his mother because she was incoherent. By the time he got to her, she was mumbling her words and then became unresponsive.
He said he called 911. The operator spent about eight minutes with him on the phone until he convinced the operator that his mother was truly ill. Then it was another 25 minutes before an ambulance arrived, he said.
By that time, his mother’s heart had stopped as he cradled her in his arms. Mr. Velev said he started doing CPR on her until the medics arrived dressed in hazmat suits.
“They did everything they could for 40 minutes,” he said. “But she was gone.”
Mr. Velev said he did not know that his mother had COVID-19 until she was tested after she died. He was told this past weekend. The official cause of death was acute respiratory distress syndrome due to COVID-19 virus infection.
His mother was a lifelong musician, a singer and famed as the founder, director and conductor of the ARFA Ladies Chamber Choir, which was well-known in Bulgaria through its participation in international festivals, international choir competitions and recordings.
Mrs. Rousseva was well-known enough that family in Bulgaria told Mr. Velev that local television stations had memorial stories about her after she died.
She spoke five languages, including Russian, French, German and English. And she liked to use her language ability to get to know people wherever she traveled around the world, often with her choir.
“Her favorite thing to do was to walk around wherever she was and meet people, and learn about different places and different cultures,” Mr. Velev said.
She passed on her love of music to her son.
He first came to Pittsburgh in 2001 to attend Duquesne University’s School of Music, where he met his wife, Carmen. They married in 2007, and both became American citizens — she’s from Venezuela — in 2015. After graduating, Mr. Velev played oboe for the Altoona Symphony Orchestra.
After his daughter was born four years ago, Mr. Velev began driving for Uber and Lyft to make better money for his family. He lost his father, Svetoslav, four years ago to cancer.
His mother had planned to return home to Bulgaria in May.
Mr. Velev said he had asked his mother in the past if she wanted to apply for a green card, so that she could come and live with him.
“She was very attached to her homeland, her choir and her friends” and had rejected the idea in the past. Mr. Velev said he hoped she would reconsider in a couple of years.
Though the Allegheny County’s news release about her death said that his mother had “other health issues that may have delayed recognition of COVID-19,” Mr. Velev said she was “in great health.”
“I thought she had another 10 or 15 years,” he said.
Losing his mother has been made harder by the fact that, because of his own illness, there won’t be any funeral or memorial service any time soon.
His mother did request in her will that she be cremated, Mr. Velev said, so he will have her ashes and he plans on a memorial sometime in the future.
A family friend in Pittsburgh set up a Go Fund Me online page to raise money to help Mr. Velev with expenses, and to help his family generally now that he is ill, too.
The campaign’s original goal was $2,500. It had already raised about $4,700 by Wednesday afternoon.
Not having a funeral is a fact of life in this crisis, Mr. Velev said.
“I really miss her,” he said, “and a ceremony will not bring her back, so, at least she will not suffer anymore and we will say goodbye this way.”
Sean D. Hamill: shamill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2579 or Twitter: @SeanDHamill
First Published: March 25, 2020, 10:58 p.m.
