Doctor’s orders: Hug your granddaughter. And make sure you have plenty of tissues.
A grandmother in New York was given a prescription by her doctor to hug her granddaughter after she received her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, WWNY reported.
Evelyn Shaw’s granddaughter, Ateret Frank, arranged the moment with the doctor. The prescription read, “You are allowed to hug your granddaughter,” and was sealed in an envelope, the television station reported.
The tender embrace, Evelyn’s first in a year, was recorded and the video was posted on Twitter by her daughter, Jessica Shaw.
First hug she’s had in a year. Thank you to all the scientists and doctors who made this happen! pic.twitter.com/puvJlJpDoy
— Jessica Shaw (@JessicaShaw) March 9, 2021
“First hug she’s had in a year,” the post read. “Thank you to all the scientists and doctors who made this happen!”
“She read the note and she burst out crying,” Laura Shaw Frank, one of Evelyn Shaw’s daughters, told The Washington Post. “She felt safe. Finally.”
Evelyn Shaw told CNN that her granddaughter and Jessica Shaw came to her apartment to “give me a little gift.”
“When I read that note, something happened to me,” Evelyn Shaw told the network in a Zoom interview, adding that she was not going let her granddaughter into her hospital. “I was stuck in COVID-land, and having this prescription from my doctor gave me the courage to let her in.
“And there we were, standing in my apartment, just hugging and hugging, and crying and crying,” Evelyn Shaw said. “It was an out-of-body experience, it was blissful, it was wonderful, and it is something I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”
Jessica Shaw said she was moved by the doctor’s gesture.
“To be able to say, this is medicinal for you too, this is important,” Jessica Shaw told the Post. “The mental health and the toll this has taken is also my job to address. It’s also my way of encouraging you and pushing you out of this nest of isolation she’s been in for the last year and saying, ‘You can do this, I know you and I am telling you that not only is this safe for you, this is important for you; I am prescribing this.’”
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