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On January 17, 2017, 26-year-old Vadim Kondratyuks set out from Truckee, California on a delivery route to Rochester, New York. He’d made this trip before several times; it was a standard route he took on his job as a truck driver.
A couple days later, Kondratyuks began to experience a toothache. He tried to push the thought aside, but ultimately the pain came to be too much.
He was forced to stop at a dentist’s office in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for help. There, the dentist treated the infection and cleaned it before prescribing him antibiotics to help clear it.
Without further ado, Kondratyuks was back on his way to Rochester. For a few days, the pain seemed to subside, and so Kondratyuks believed he would be able to complete the trip without any problem.
Kondratyuks made it to Rochester, New York safely, but there, he ended up calling his older brother, Miroslav, for help. The pain from his tooth had returned, and he didn’t think he was strong enough to withstand the pain and drive all the way back home by himself.
On the way home, Kondratyuks had his brother call his wife, Nataliya.
Nataliya, 22 years old, was back in Truckee with the couple’s two children: two-year-old Vanessa and 11-month-old Maya.
This was the first time Nataliya heard anything about her husband’s toothache, so to receive that initial call from her husband’s brother already, she was sent into a panic. Kondratyuks’ brother kept telling Nataliya over the phone, “He will be OK.”
The brothers made their way back to Truckee, but once again, the pain got worse. Kondratyuks needed to get to the hospital, and fast.
In Park City, Utah, the Kondratyuks stopped at the hospital where doctors were sad to report that the tooth infection had already begun to spread through the young truck driver’s body. The infection was making its way through Kondratyuks’ blood and lungs.
Vadim was placed on an oxygen tank and immediately transported to a larger hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Nataliya was contacted once more. Once she heard an update about her husband’s health, she rushed out of Truckee to be by her husband’s side. The doctor didn’t think Vadim had much time left.
Vadim was admitted to the Salt Lake City hospital on Friday, January 27, 2017.
With his wife by his side, the young man passed away on the morning of Monday, January 30, 2017.
Everyone is in shock, but no one more than Nataliya. The couple had been married for four years, ever since Nataliya was just 18 years old.
“Nobody thought that from a tooth something so big can happen and go everywhere,” Nataliya mourned. “It was unbelievable.”
Even though all the events have already passed, she’s still stuck on the image of her now-late husband lying prone in the hospital bed. “I couldn’t believe that was him lying there. It was hard to look at,” she confessed through tears.
She has no clue how her daughters will fare with the sudden loss of their father. “He was just so sweet with them, the way he played with them,” she remembered. “The kids really loved him.”
Then, she finally turns to her own emotions. “I’m really going to miss him because he was so good and never did I think this would happened,” she said before wiping away a tear.
The Kondratyuk family has since set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to support the family through this incredibly difficult time. The funds will go toward transporting Vadim’s body from Utah back to California for his funeral and burial, as well as supporting stay-at-home mother Nataliya and her daughters.
Vadim will be remembered as a “very humble and calm person. A wonderful father, husband, brother, son, and friend. He would always put others before himself and was known to be the peacemaker. He had a very close and special relationship with his two daughters and he loved spending time with his family.”
Please donate to support the family if you can. Our hearts go out to them during this time.
In the wake of Vadim’s death, dentists are also mourning that over 100 million Americans do not regularly see their dentist each year. Although teeth seem like such a small part of our bodies, untreated infections can lead to far more drastic consequences.
