‘All I want to do is hold mom’s hand’
Pandemic precautions take toll as loved ones can only watch on
It’s the little things, the simple moments that link one soul to another, that are gone. A touch on the shoulder. Clasped hands. Lips pressed to a cheek.
These were everyday, human connections that Trudy Long knows helped propel her 72year-old mother from one day to the next. They were the bridges that keep them connected, even as Long’s mother grappled with the cruel effects of time.
Those connections were stolen by COVID-19. Contact has been reduced to virtual visits on an ipad. Long’s mother, Jackie Jackson, is one of at least 115 residents of the Oakwood Park Lodge long-term-care home in Niagara Falls to contract the novel coronavirus.
Since Dec. 12, the COVID-19 outbreak has torn through the home, infecting most of the residents in the 153-bed facility and 111 of the staff. One of the worst outbreaks in the region since the start of the pandemic, it has claimed the lives of at least 26 residents.
The pandemic had already made Long’s visits difficult. Restrictions to protect the home from COVID-19 meant the last time she could physically touch her mom was in March, just before the virus wrapped its coils around Niagara.
Like hundreds of other family members of other long-termcare residents, visits were reduced to peering at one another through a window. And now, with lockdowns, an outbreak and a positive diagnosis, a video screen.
“When I could see her, I always touched her. Always hugged her and kissed her. I know those things made her feel better. That made me feel better,” said Long. “She has deteriorated so much since March. I can see it. We had a video call recently and she was having trouble looking at the screen. It is so frustrating that I cannot be there.”
The long separation from her mother is made all the worse by the knowledge an end to the pandemic is coming, but no official word on when Niagara might see the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines, let alone when either of them might have an opportunity to be inoculated.
Long is cautious about the vaccine because she has not reacted well to flu shots in the past. But she said if that is what she has to do to be close to Jackson, she will. Yet all she can do is wait.
Then there is the stinging indifference she hears from customers each day at her job at Tim Hortons. Some people, she said, simply laugh at COVID-19 as though it were a joke.
Public health authorities
warned for months that if the virus spread widely during a second wave, homes like Oakwood Park would be at increased risk. Enough people ignored those warnings that the virus gained ground and eventually hitched a ride into longterm-care homes.
“I just want to yell at them, you know? Say ‘Thanks a lot. Because of you, I cannot see my mother,’ ” said Long. “All I want to do is hold my mom’s hand.”
Equally frustrating for Long is the question of why. Why were homes like Oakwood Park not better prepared? After the first wave devastated long-termcare homes across the province, facilities had months to prepare in the relative quiet of the summer. Why didn’t they fortify their defences, she asked.
Oakwood is only one of 20 health-care facility outbreaks active in Niagara as of Sunday afternoon. According to Niagara Region Public Health, these outbreaks began when someone from outside the facilities, usually a staff person, brought the virus into the homes.
The results are grimly predictable. In the first eight months of the pandemic, from March to October, 64 Niagara residents with COVID-19 died.
From Oct. 5 to Jan. 3, a threemonth span, at least 83 infected people died, most of them residents of long-term-care and retirement homes older than 80.
Long’s mother was an active woman into her 60s, but began to exhibit physical problems. She fell frequently and it became obvious she needed a higher level of care. Jackson resisted the suggestion from her daughter initially, but after one fall too many, she conceded.
At Oakwood, Jackson enjoyed visits with her children. She socialized with her neighbours, and particularly enjoyed bingo nights which Long would join.
Then COVID-19 arrived. Like many long-term-care homes, Oakwood instituted restrictions on visitors and communal activity in the home in a bid to keep the virus at bay. It prevented outbreaks for a time, but cut Jackson off from Long.
Visiting through a pane of glass was heart-wrenching and made Long feel helpless. Her mother lost her glasses and dentures at one point, and she could not go in to the home to help.
“I only know what I can see on the video screen now,” she said. “I have to trust that the staff at Oakwood are looking after her.”