Carol Francis, whose mother is in a long-term-care home where dozens of residents have died.
She doesn’t have dementia. She’s still a very vibrant woman. But since this isolation, when I talk to her, her mental state isn’t very good ... she’s really changed over these seven weeks. It’s the loneliness. I can hear it in her voice. And I can’t even hug her on Mother’s Day.
On Mother’s Day, if she had her wish, there would be flowers and cookies and country and western music playing and grandchildren hugs. If wishes were horses … If COVID-19 wasn’t galloping through her mum’s Mississauga nursing home.
So, hopefully, a bouquet passed through gatekeepers at the locked-down Camilla Care Community long-term-care home on Sunday. Hopefully a transistor radio or a tape of her mother’s favourite singers: Tammy Wynette, Hank Snow, Patsy Cline.
“Can you imagine, sitting in a room for seven weeks, no TV, no anything, just staring out the window?” says Carol Francis.
Save for a wave through the window and an I-LOVE-YOU sign held aloft in mid-March, Francis hasn’t seen her mother in all that time.
Hasn’t seen Rose Faulkner at all since she was transferred to a third-floor isolation unit after one of three roommates on her ward tested positive for the virus.
It will hurt especially on Mother’s Day, for Francis and countless others whose parents and grandparents reside in Ontario’s long-term-care facilities, at least 174 of which have been struck by COVID-19 outbreaks and where 80 per cent of the province’s deaths have occurred. Some homes won’t even permit flowers to be delivered because everything incoming needs to be sanitized. “My mom has been there since December,” says Francis. “I put her there. I put her there. The guilt is tremendous for me. But she needed it; she couldn’t live on her own anymore, God love her. Not being able to walk, not being able to see her friends at Tim Horton’s. Not being able to get her nails done. Not being able to get her hair done.
“She doesn’t have dementia. She’s still a very vibrant woman. But since this isolation, when I talk to her, her mental state isn’t very good. Mom doesn’t ever complain. Give her a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a piece of cake and she’s happy. But she’s really changed over these seven weeks. It’s the loneliness. I can hear it in her voice.
“And I can’t even hug her on Mother’s Day.”
For more than a week, she didn’t hear that voice at all, unable to reach her mother on her cell, getting no response either from the home where the main phone line was always busy or nobody answered. As it turned out, her mother’s cell hadn’t been charged. No one noticed it wasn’t plugged in. Only when a nurse managed to connect mother and daughter on Skype were they able to lay eyes on each other again. The relief was overwhelming for both.
“I’d felt so helpless. Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she in pain? I didn’t know, because I wasn’t able to communicate with anyone. And, of course, I wasn’t able to get in there. It was seven days of total stress. “When we had that Skype meeting, it took all the selfcontrol in my body not to let her see me cry. She understands what’s going on, but she doesn’t realize the severity of what’s happening in the home.
“When I hung up, though, I cried like a baby because she was okay, she was alive.”
Fifty other residents are not. They’ve succumbed to COVID-19 over the past couple of months. Sixty-two residents at the 236-bed facility have tested positive, a sharp increase from 21 positive cases that had been reported on May 1. Thirty-six employees are recovering in isolation. One personal support worker has died.
“We continue to actively re-test residents, which is essential in quickly identifying anyone who becomes COVID-19-positive, despite the fact these residents may have tested with negative results previously,” Natalie Gokchenian, a spokesperson for Sienna Senior Living, which owns and operates Camilla Care, told the Star in an email.
Francis was informed at the start of the outbreak that her mother had tested negative. But she’s had scarce updates from the facility or Sienna. According to their website, Sienna has 37 seniors’ residences in its portfolio. Eighteen of those have had COVID outbreaks, including Altamont Care Community, which had reported 46 fatalities as of Thursday.
Camilla declared an outbreak on March 30.
Through persistence, Francis was able to reach a home inspector with the Ministry of Long-term Care. “She told me that I would be contacted if my mom’s second test came back positive.
“Does she have COVID today? I don’t know. I got confirmation from a nurse two weeks ago that there’s a COVID case in her room. I asked, so what are you doing about this? She indicated to me that they were treating all residents as if they have COVID. What does that even mean? Are they sealing them off in an incubation of death? Is she going to die, is that what you’re telling me?
“I’m assuming no news is good news.”
Sienna said this in its statement: “Thanks to the hard word of our team and health partners, we are now seeing positive progress in the fight against COVID-19. There are now 49 residents and 11 team members who have recovered from COVID-19 at Camilla.”
This is Rose: A woman of independence with a network of friends and things she enjoyed doing, bustling about the Mississauga neighbourhood where she’d lived in her own house — it is right on Camilla Avenue, near the nursing home — for the past quartercentury. Age 94, now, but never any health problems until a fall last June, which resulted in a severe gash to the leg and subsequent coma. Months were spent in hospital rehab as the family reluctantly realized Mom’s mobility issues ruled out returning to her house.
“She went from a lifestyle of freedom to a wheelchair and someone having to change her diaper,” says Francis, sadly. “And then COVID came.” We talk about the crisis in Ontario’s long-term-care homes overwhelmed by the coronavirus: 175 outbreaks as of Friday, according to the ministry’s website, but 234 cited by Public Health Ontario’s daily epidemiologic summary; 2,782 confirmed cases among residents, 1,150 confirmed deaths.
The daily minutiae of living this way, frail and dependent, worn down, is the harsh reality few wish to face. There but for the grace of God …
Francis has heard from another resident’s family that their mother hadn’t had a sponge bath in three weeks. Francis was so desperate to see her mom that she volunteered to work in the Camilla kitchen, an offer that was declined, although she did drop off personal protective equipment last weekend. She figures that’s why management eased the rules that had previously prevented her from bringing anything from outside — it was a radio — to her mother.
It was on the website of her local MP that Francis discovered a post from one of the kitchen workers, pleading for families to understand why many had not gone in to work; they feared infection as COVID-19 ran rampant at Camilla.
“This poor woman said she had become infected and she has a three-year-old daughter at home. To me, there was not enough PPE and it just spread throughout the whole place, even on my mother’s unit and she’d been segregated for weeks.”
Gokchenian told the Star all public health directives have been followed and the facility has adequate supplies. “Our focus is on caring, serving and protecting residents as well as communicating with families at this very stressful time … There has been no interruption to services provided to residents to residents, either food or bathing as a result of COVID-19. Our team is truly doing the work of heroes.”
She also expressed gratitude to Trillium Health Partners, which has provided additional support and expertise.
Francis has no complaint with the nurses and support workers. “Most of them have worked there for ages. Honestly, I’m worried about their mental state. Can you imagine, going in there every day, 43 people that you’ve taken care of for years have died.” This was Thursday, before the numbers had been updated. “And you may walk out of there bringing the disease to your family.
“The word ‘hero’ doesn’t cut it,” she said.
What Francis cannot fathom, what’s frustrated her no end, is the lack of communication with management and the wild discrepancy in figures for the home’s contagion. Until informed by the media recently, she was under the impression “only” 16 residents had died. That was on Peel Region’s website. Sienna has disclosed no mortality numbers on its website.
On the same day, April 19, that Sienna disclosed there were 50 active cases at Camilla, the Peel website reported 143 cases at the facility.
Told this week by a reporter there had been 43 deaths, “I went ballistic.”
“We’re lost,” says Francis who, with two others who have mothers at Camilla, has begun a Families of Camilla Care Facebook page. “We were getting automated messages, but nothing since April 19. Just tell us the truth and we’ll deal with it!”
To the home inspector she finally got on the line, Francis said: “I’m not getting off this phone until someone explains to me what the (hell) is going on.”
Francis said she’s been informed by a nurse Mississauga Hospital is no longer taking any patients from Camilla and staff at the home need to “keep everyone comfortable.”
“I am just beside myself,” says Francis, worried and exasperated.
Rose Faulkner’s own mother passed away at Camilla long ago. She, too, was 94. “I’m trying to prevent that statistic from repeating itself.”