Tooth infection suddenly kills Sacramento truck driver, 26
What started as a toothache led to this dad’s heartbreaking death.
BY SAMMY CAIOLA
[caption id="attachment_1220" align="alignright" width="300"]
Nataliya Kondratyuk 22, with her two daughters Maya Kondratyuk 11 months, left, and Vanessa Kondratyuk 2, at a relative’s home in Antelope on Tuesday, January 31, 2017. Nataliya’s husband Vadim Kondratyuk, 26, died recently of complications from a dental infection. Randall Benton[/caption]
Vadim Anatoliyevich Kondratyuk was just 26 and had two young children. He was driving a truck route from Truckee to New York last Tuesday when he started to feel pain in the lower left side of his mouth, said his wife, Nataliya Kondratyuk. He pulled over in Oklahoma to see a dentist, who diagnosed an infection and prescribed antibiotics.
The pain subsided at first but then worsened, and Vadim Kondratyuk called his wife several times while driving to complain about the tooth. He made his delivery in New York, but his mouth was uncomfortably swollen and he couldn’t make the long drive home alone. His brother flew to New York to escort him back to Antelope where Nataliya, 22, was anxiously waiting with their 2-year-old and their 11-month-old.
On the way, Kondratyuk’s breathing became labored and he grew pale, Nataliya said. His brother rushed him to a Utah hospital, where he was placed on oxygen and then flown to a larger facility in Salt Lake City. Doctors there prescribed stronger antibiotics and put him on dialysis, but the tooth infection had spread to his blood and lungs, she said. She flew to his bedside and was able to say goodbye before he died on Monday morning.
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