‘I can’t figure out what happened in homes with 20 deaths’
SEAN Cassidy looked on as images from Spain flashed on the television a few weeks ago. They showed glimpses of a nursing home where residents had been abandoned.
The father-of-four lives in Portiuncula nursing home in Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath. He is happy and his home has escaped the worst Covid-19 can reap but there is worry about those less fortunate than him.
“I’ve a friend in Mullingar. That’s the only thing I feel sorry about. He got a bad stroke last Christmas, only 51 years old. He was very bad and spent 16 weeks up in
Dun Laoghaire [the National Rehabilitation Hospital] and he is back down here
[in Westmeath] now. Where he is, there have been six or seven cases.”
They try to speak regularly on the phone but Sean also has health concerns. He was due to have a lung operation but was recently told the procedure will be delayed by the crisis.
He makes no fuss, instead looking to other residents.
“There are people who are worse off than me. These are the people I would be thinking about. The only way I can help them is by helping the ones who can’t help themselves, reassure them the best we can.
“It’s hard, and then you turn around and look at the television and see all these other nursing homes. There was one locked up in another country and everyone went off and left them.”
Sean will turn 73 on Friday. He is in his seventh year in the nursing home he credits with saving his life.
Before moving here, he was 34 stone and a problem drinker. An accident at home in Castlepollard led to his family intervening.
He has not drunk since, lost 10 stone, battled pancreatic cancer and lives a full life.
“At this time of year I get up very early. I’m an early bird. I’d have a wash and shower. Mass is at nine o’clock in the Friary nearby, then I’d have the breakfast.”
Covid-19 has changed his routine. He spends much of his time doing crafts and enjoys building with ice cream sticks. Bingo used to happen a couple of times a week in the home, but now games often take place a couple of times every day.
“Fr Paddy [Brady] lives here too and says mass in the home,” says Sean.
Fr Paddy is on our front page this week, with Sean. When the Sunday Independent visited last Thursday he had a stole over his shoulders and a walking frame in his hands as he went to pray with fellow residents. “If people call for me I will go,” Fr Paddy says. “We say mass here now in the dining room for everyone too, because some people are in wheelchairs or stretchers and need space. We take confession too in a room.”
Sean is a staunch Fianna Fail supporter. His brother, Donie, was a Fianna Fail senator and the local TD between 2002 and 2007.
The Covid-19 crisis has seen Sean perform a U-turn on his opinion of Health Minister Simon Harris.
“Before all of this, I didn’t have much time for the health minister. I thought they should have got rid of him, but as this got worse, I think he has been doing a good job. I am very happy with Mr Harris and the Taoiseach but they listen to Tony [Holohan, the chief medical officer]. Tony, to me, is a genius.
“He said there was no need to close up the nursing homes but [Nursing Homes Ireland CEO Tadhg] Daly had different ideas. The other man came back four or five days later and changed his mind. I think he is still doing well. He has an awful job to do at short notice but I cannot understand what is happening in nursing homes where you hear 20 people have it.
“What went wrong there? I can’t figure that out because if someone coughs hard here or sneezes twice, they’d be on top of you straight away. That might be a bit of an exaggeration but you know what I mean, they are checking we are all right.”