Coronavirus took her husband, but widow in prominent Hilton Head family offering hope
The coronavirus tossed Flonnie West’s life into a sudden dive on March 15, but a month later she lifted her arm with new hope.
She lifted her arm in a bus parked outside a Columbia hospital. She lifted it to donate plasma, which she hopes will save four lives threatened by COVID-19.
“That’s my little bandwagon right now,” she said Wednesday from her home in Camden.
She’s promoting plasma donation so others may avoid her grief.
Her journey began when her husband said he didn’t feel well and had a little cough. Within a week, he entered a hospital desperately ill. She would not see him face-to-face again.
“That Sunday morning (March 15) is when it all collapsed,” she said. “He couldn’t breathe or anything.”
Jack West, her husband of 33 years, died 10 days later due to the coronavirus. He was an otherwise healthy 71-year-old outdoorsman and well-known legislative lobbyist in Columbia.
Jack West was from one of Hilton Head Island’s most prominent families. His late parents, former Gov. John C. West and Lois West, were community leaders for two decades after the governor finished his tour of duty as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Jack West’s ashes were buried Tuesday on personal property near Camden, at the foot of his favorite deer stand that he called “The Hilton.”
Flonnie, her three children who Jack considered his own, and his best friend growing up and at The Citadel were there.
One son made a wooden box for the ashes, and the other made a large cross for the grave.
Both spoke at the small gathering.
“Both my boys were just crying their hearts out,” Flonnie said.
They stood in a field off Cleveland School Road, which itself may help a town hit hard by the coronavirus put tragedy in perspective. Jack’s grandfather — the governor’s father — was one of 77 people killed when the Cleveland School burned on May 23, 1923.
Convalescent plasma program
Flonnie West’s perspective changed when her daughter told her about the national convalescent plasma program approved by the Food and Drug Administration and coordinated by the Mayo Clinic.
Flonnie West is eligible to participate because she, too, contracted the virus and recovered.
“I guess I’m like half the world,” she said. “I never had one thing, not one symptom.”
But she noted that her street was a hotspot within the hotspot of historic Camden in Kershaw County.
“I don’t know if I gave it to Jack or not,” she said.
Plasma has been used in pandemics for a century, but it is not a proven healer for COVID-19.
Still, there is hope that the old theory still works: Those who recover can help the sick.
The National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project explains it this way:
“Your immune system may now be producing antibodies to protect you from becoming infected again with coronavirus. If so, your plasma may be rich in these antibodies and be helpful in the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 disease in others. Donated plasma could be used right now, for compassionate treatment, even before we have scientific trials, or as part of a trial to determine definitively if this treatment works.”
Doctors feel positive about anecdotal reports that the plasma is a healing agent.
Prisma hospital
Flonnie West hopes her donation will help four families avoid what she has just gone through.
The hardest part was not being able to be by her husband’s side as doctors tried a number of tactics, none of which worked.
She has nothing but praise for the staff who tended her husband at a Prisma hospital in Columbia.
He was on a ventilator, but had his phone with him. The staff read him text messages from family. They encouraged Flonnie to let him hear her voice. She has read that people who recovered from comas said they heard those voices, even though they could not react.
And she has overcome feelings that a stigma comes with COVID-19.
“It’s like it says in the Bible when people with leprosy shouted ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ and you do feel that way,” she said.
She has not let it stop her. She’s been out and about with a mask.
And then came this new mission when her daughter told her, “Mom, we’ve got a way we can help Jack’s memory.”
About a month after her husband’s death, Flonnie West returned to a Prisma hospital parking lot in Columbia to donate plasma through The Blood Connection.
This Thursday, Flonnie, dressed in a “Kershaw Strong” T-shirt, passed out Krispy Kreme doughnuts to plasma donors in Camden. That too was a little salute. She said her husband could eat them by the dozen.
On Hilton Head, Jack’s sister, Shelton W. Bosley, said, “I’m glad donating her plasma gave her some sense of healing and empowerment during an extremely difficult time.
“I’m very proud of her and hope others will follow her example.”
