Name: Memorial Hospital doctor known for his generosity dies after battle with COVID
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Memorial Hospital doctor known for his generosity dies after battle with COVID

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Joseph DitsSouth Bend TribuneSOUTH BEND — Dr. Peter L. Yu was doing what he’s done for three decades at Memorial Hospital on Oct. 22, making rounds to see patients, when he fainted.Taken to the emergency room, the initial test for COVID-19 came back negative as he was admitted to the care of his colleagues.On the next day, a second test came back positive. But Yu, a passionate and generous doctor with a jolly nature, told an old classmate from medical school in the Philippines on the phone, “I’ll be out of here soon.”His condition wavered. Pneumonia took grip. So did kidney failure from his diabetes and hypertension. He seemed to improve, then suddenly declined again, recalled his niece, Paulyn David in Munster, Ind.On Oct. 31, Yu died — his car still parked at work, never having left the complex. He was 63.“Dr. Yu was a wonderful physician who continually stepped up to help our community and cared deeply about his patients,” said Dr. Dale Patterson, Memorial’s vice president of medical affairs. “He will be greatly missed. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and all who knew him.”Among the heartaches, David said, is that a priest couldn’t visit her devoutly Catholic uncle to give him the last rites, thanks to the pandemic.The key cause of death listed on his death certificate was a brain hemorrhage, though COVID-19 was listed as a contributing factor along with an artery blockage in his lungs and the kidney failure.Kidney failure kept doctors from giving Yu remdesivir, the antiviral medication often used with COVID-19, David said.She said family members, who mostly live in northwest Indiana, can’t tell how or where Yu contracted the coronavirus.He apparently had been seeing several patients. His housekeeper tested negative for the virus. But the housekeeper’s brother recently quarantined himself after testing positive, David said; he’d seen Yu three to five days a week to help with maintenance and to drive him when it was dark.Doctors and other medical staff in hospitals face a daily risk of COVID-19, but there hasn’t been a significant amount of virus transmitted in local acute hospitals, said the county’s deputy health officer, Dr. Mark Fox.Locally and nationally, he added, the risk to staff is greater in cafeterias and break rooms where they are unmasked, rather than in direct care with patients where precautions are taken.Offhand, he said he isn’t aware of another local doctor who’s died as a result of COVID-19, though other health care professionals have gotten “quite sick” from it.It comes at a time when hospitals and their staffs have been pushed to their limits by the rise of COVID-19.On the week Yu fainted, Patterson told the Indianapolis Star: “We have more COVID-positive patients than we have had here at any time. We’re feeling very stretched right now with our ability to do more. If the number of patients goes up, it’s going to be very difficult to find enough room for everybody.”Yu was a doctor of physical medicine and rehabilitation. Aside from Memorial, he was a consulting doctor at four local nursing homes. He’d also owned rehab medicine clinics in South Bend and Merrillville.To lose a doctor like Yu is significant, Fox said, especially as Yu worked in a specialty that’s in short supply.“There aren’t enough providers to begin with,” Fox said. “It kind of compounds the tragedy.”'A big heart'Yu was single, living in Granger, where his parents stayed with him until they died in the 1990s.Born in the Philippines, he moved with his parents to Japan for almost 10 years before returning to the Philippines — in time to finish high school and enroll in and graduate from medical school at the University of Santo Tomas in 1979 at just 22 years old.He was the youngest in his graduating class, a group that he stayed close to over the past four decades, said classmate and close friend, Dr. Greg Tan, who is a cardiologist in Kalamazoo.In fact, Tan said that, along with serving as president of the medical school’s alumni association, Yu had insisted classmates call him “bunso,” a term of endearment that means “the youngest” in the Filipinos’ close, family-oriented culture.Each night for nine days after Yu’s death, Tan said, alumni are gathering online to pray for Yu, a Filipino tradition where they pray a rosary, plus a series of other prayers and each saying something about him. They will regroup for “40th day prayer,” too.It hasn’t been something they’ve done for every alum’s death, Tan said, adding, “That tells you something.”Yu was also a regular at the noon Sunday Mass at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Granger, where he dressed in a suit and tie, deeply faithful but also proud to serve as a lector, reading the Bible selections, the Rev. Bill Schooler said.“He would never brag about anything,” Schooler said, noting that he became pastor there 20 years ago when Yu was already a parishioner. “He was very humble about his ministry. He never brought attention to himself.”“He had a big heart for people going through hard times and for the poor,” Tan said.In 2008, when one of their classmates in California was going through a divorce, Yu let her stay in his house, Tan said, “so she could get back on her feet.”Yu had settled in the South Bend area right after completing his residency at the University of Alabama. He would become a leader on several Filipino boards, including a local Filipino-American society.He would serve as president of the Philippine American Physiatrist Association and the Indiana Philippine Medical Association. When he died, he was president of the foundation for his medical school’s alumni association.And he’d go on medical mission trips to the Philippines.Although busy, David said, “There was always a kid in him.”Family and friends cringed — and laughed — at his passion for singing with a karaoke machine since, she said, “he sang off key.” Laughing at the memory, Tan said Yu also loved to dance to disco and rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s.For several years, David said, he’d hosted his northwest Indiana relatives for Thanksgiving — which is why they were thinking of an online service for the week of Thanksgiving. But they may wait as late as spring to bury his ashes, which will mean placing them in an indoor mausoleum at St. Joseph Cemetery.Knowing several people may want to pay respects, David said, “Our family is so scared; we don’t want to be exposed” to the coronavirus.She credits the colleagues who took care of him in his last days.“I believe they took all the (right) steps for him,” David said. “My uncle died in the hospital he worked at. They treated him like family.”

Joseph DitsSouth Bend TribuneSOUTH BEND — Dr. Peter L. Yu was doing what he’s done for three decades at Memorial Hospital on Oct. 22, making rounds to see patients, when he fainted.Taken to the emergency room, the initial test for COVID-19 came back negative as he was admitted to the care of his colleagues.On the next day, a second test came back positive. But Yu, a passionate and generous doctor with a jolly nature, told an old classmate from medical school in the Philippines on the phone, “I’ll be out of here soon.”His condition wavered. Pneumonia took grip. So did kidney failure from his...

Memorial Hospital doctor known for his generosity dies after battle with COVID

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