A Somerville man whose 34-year-old wife died after an asthma attack last month has written a heartfelt letter to the Cambridge hospital staff who cared for her during her final days.
The letter by Peter DeMarco was posted on the website of The New York Times. In it, he thanked the staff at CHA Cambridge Hospital for treating Laura Levis with “professionalism, and kindness, and dignity.”
“When she needed shots, you apologized that it was going to hurt a little, whether or not she could hear. When you listened to her heart and lungs through your stethoscopes, and her gown began to slip, you pulled it up to respectfully cover her. You spread a blanket, not only when her body temperature needed regulating, but also when the room was just a little cold, and you thought she’d sleep more comfortably that way,” DeMarco wrote.
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He also thanked the staff members for their treatment of Levis’s family during their grief, describing compassion shown by health care and support workers through actions big and small.
“You cared so greatly for her parents, helping them climb into the room’s awkward recliner, fetching them fresh water almost by the hour, and by answering every one of their medical questions with incredible patience,” he wrote.
Levis died Sept. 22, several days after suffering an asthma attack. She was a Staten Island native who graduated from Emerson College in 2004 and formerly worked at The Boston Globe, where she met her husband, according to a death notice. DeMarco, a longtime correspondent for the Globe, and Levis were married in 2014. Most recently, Levis worked for the Harvard Gazette, the newspaper of the Harvard News Office.
Christina Prignano can be reached at christina.prignano@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @cprignano.