‘First, I regret to inform you that …’
The emails from my dad’s nursing home are never good as COVID-19 marches through his long-term-care facility
Every day or two an email arrives in my inbox, an update from the long-termcare home where my dad has been residing since just before Christmas.
And every day, as I click the link, I flinch slightly.
With 80 per cent of COVID deaths taking place in nursing and retirement homes, the news is never good: how many residents have been diagnosed, tested and, in the worst cases, passed away.
“Dear families and Power of Attorneys,”
it begins. “First, I regret to inform you that …”
It’s at this point, inevitably, that my blood runs cold.
Regret to inform me what? That my dad is dead? That he has COVID-19? That the person he shares a bathroom with has it? So far we’ve been lucky. At 88, the former seniors games swimmer remains in great physical shape and is outwardly the same guy I’ve known since my brain flickered to awareness a somewhere between “The Monkees” and “The Mod Squad.”
But inside, I can tell he’s confused, worried, unsure.
Alzheimer’s is like that. Where once clarity ruled, now exists a muddle.
But if, like my dad, you retain an interest in the outside world, even if the details are fuzzy, you know something is going on. Something big.
“I feel like I’m a prisoner,” he told me after a nurse called to say she apprehended him on an elevator, against pandemic protocol, attempting to head out for a walk. “We live in a democracy, not a communist country. I’m not gonna stay here forever!” He’s like me — feisty, determined. Stay inside? He wants to go out, breathe fresh air, to feel that surge of independence that has always defined him.
Idon’t have the heart to tell him it’s no longer an option, especially now, that there are bigger issues on the table — life and death issues.
Instead, I do what I always do: deflect, divert, distract.
“I was born free!” notes the former architect, continuing his dissertation.
“Born Free,” I respond. “That’s the movie about the lion cubs.”
This gets a laugh. And before long we’re reminiscing about a long dead client who would show up at his office, demanding blueprints for building projects in a panic-tinged rasp my dad would hilariously mimic every night at dinner.
“Murray Aiken wants his plans by Tuesday!” I tell him and we both laugh, lost for the moment in the haze of a half-remembered anecdote.
But the longer this crisis goes on, the more nervous I become.
My dad’s building has two wings. The north side is in chaos, with escalating
COVID rates and residents dropping like flies.
It’s nothing short of a miracle that my dad’s side remains virus-free and that proper testing has been done to confirm none of the staff have it either.
But with an invisible contagion that stalks seniors like the invisible monster in TV’s “Stranger Things,” how long can that last?
“I live with the constant fear of this horrid illness entering their facility,” confides Margaret Schneider, a Wilfrid Laurier University kinesiology prof whose parents reside in a Waterloo retirement home, her dad with dementia.
“With the number of staff entering and leaving every day to care for residents, how long can they realistically keep this illness at bay? They did have a COVID scare within the past couple of weeks and it was my worst nightmare realized.
“I sat in a state of numb shock in front of my email while a flood of tears and grief washed over me. My children and husband stood by, watching, feeling helpless to make any of this pain go away.”
And if something does happen, what then? We can’t get in. We already know that. At best we’ll get a form email: “Sadly, our worst fears are becoming reality … I wish I had better news to share this morning … I want to extend our condolences to the grieving family.”
You can’t blame the seniors homes, doing their best to deal with a situation beyond their control.
Their front-line workers are heroes who deserve nothing but gratitude and respect.
But the situation for families and loved ones has become, frankly, intolerable.
“For me, as a daughter, I feel an overwhelming weight every time I connect via telephone with my parents,” notes Schneider, who says they’re all living “the worst version of (the movie) ‘Groundhog Day.’
“I shudder to think ‘What was their night like? Did they get any sleep? Was my mom up all night, risking a devastating fall, while trying to manage my dad’s wandering and confusion?’ There’s so much support that cannot come from a personal support worker or nurse.” My dad is a bit different. Easygoing by nature, except on longago car trips when he’d try to strangle his misbehaving kids with one arm on the steering wheel, his sunny disposition has maintained itself four years into his diagnosis.
“It doesn’t really affect us here,” he tells me during a moment of clarity, when his composure has returned. “We can’t go anywhere anyway.”
“Besides,” I joke, eliciting another laugh. “No one ever came to visit you before the pandemic!”
When we do show up on the street below his window to find him waving like Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” its good to see he hasn’t lost his giddy sense of showmanship.
But that’s because, insulated from alarming emails and nightly newscasts about seniors homes in crisis, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
“When will I next see my parents?” worries Schneider. “When will I be able to give them a hug or offer reassurances — beyond the telephone — to say everything is going to be OK and that I’m doing everything in my power to keep them safe?
“This disease has rendered me powerless to provide any measure of comfort and safety, and for this I am truly devastated.”
This pandemic, for many, is an economic catastrophe that has kneecapped society and restricted personal freedoms.
But for those whose movements were already restricted, cut off from family, trapped in buildings that act as pandemic lightning rods, an entirely different drama is playing out.
My dad, indignant moments aside, is in good spirits, happy to joke around, oblivious to the silent stalker lurking outside his door.
But if I listen closely, I can hear a clock ticking as the dreaded virus pauses, takes a deep breath and searches for its next victim.