The NH my dad has been staying at since early June has been able to get a plan for supervised indoor 1 hour visits approved by the state. They have been very good with Covid and have not had positive staff or patient cases in 2 months. Visiting starts the end of August.
Indoor visits must be scheduled ahead of time and 2 family members will be allowed to visit. Everyone must wear masks and we must stay 6 feet apart. Furniture in the room will be arranged so that we won't be able to approach my father.
With all these limitations, I am still overjoyed that this will happen. My father is a heart failure and stroke patient. My mom and I cared for him at home for many years until he just became so weak this year that he could no longer walk or stand. A hospital stay in May for afib lead to a recommendation for rehab in the NH. He made no progress in rehab and now is a hoyer patient. The last 3 months have been the hardest in my life. Many nights I would cry myself to sleep worrying about my dad passing away alone in the NH with no family around. I try and call every day but his progressively weaker voice again made me cry. He doesn't seem to fully understand how ill he is and seems to think he will still be able to return home at some point. At this point, we just don't know how we would handle him. My mother is older too and she was struggling when my father could still stand and walk. Now, things would be much more difficult.
Has anyone else been in this situation? How do you contain your emotions when you see your LO for the first time in many months?
Enjoy your reunion!
How wonderful and exciting that you will soon be reunited with your father in a couple of weeks! There are still so many of us who are unable to visit our loved ones who are in facilities or in hospitals.
I sure hope you won't let what seems to be some sort of fear or concern about not being able to contain your emotions, rob you of the full experience you can share. There is nothing wrong with having emotions - it's part of normal, human experiences - I feel bad for those who can't or won't express healthy emotions. Crying tears of joy could be a very helpful thing for your father as well as for you and your mom/family. They purge what is and has been pent up inside and if you've ever noticed afterwards, at some point you usually feel better as if your soul has been cleansed. God keeps track of them too -"You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in Your bottle. You have recorded each one in Your book" Psalm 56:8.
Also, sometimes we think we are going to exhibit a certain emotion and then when the event takes place, we may experience something totally different.
Look at the victory of when you worried about your dad passing away alone in the NH with no family around and it didn't turn out that way. I hadn't seen my mom since February 28th when she ended up in the ER/hospital near death from severe dehydration, COVID and a couple other things. I was afraid she would die alone in an isolated room with hospital staff wearing full gear - their masks were the black, gas masks which even took me aback when I saw it during a Facetime call. She survived and went to a physical therapy/rehab facility for three weeks where she had a window. During many visits, I cried outside the window. When we were going to move her, I told my husband I wanted to be at the facility when the medical transport arrived so at least I could see her outside from a safe distance. It was a happy moment but, I wished I could have hugged her.
So my prayer for you is that you will just take that moment/day all in and let whatever emotion surfaces "just be." I hope you will share with us how it went!
Dea
I think the tears were a release that she wasn’t abandoned.
We also were to have no physical contact but that was inevitable. Mum is fully physically capable and how am I to refuse her need of her daughters hug? (And mine too) the nurses just said we see nothing and turned their backs. We aren’t a huggy family so that was the only contact and we did have our masks.
Literally only hours after my state’s governor announced that nursing homes could receive visitors if certain criteria were met, the NH my 92 year old loved one was at for rehab contacted all family members to let us know that they had a staff member test Covid positive. Thus, the NH no longer satisfied the state’s criteria and visits were delayed for an additional 28 days.
I pray that does not happen to you. God help all the families going through this, especially those LOs staying in a facility.
She spoke to me by name, responded with interest to my nonsensical and overjoyed conversation, demonstrated a sense of humor, complained about being cold.......all typical, normal stuff.
A little bit off topic, but as a suggestion to those in my situation who haven’t seen loved ones since February or March- in the emotion of being reunited, try, if you can, to do a little bit of objective on the spot assessment of changes in behavior.
My LO had been moved a couple times in her MC unit since the virus struck, and ultimately was moved to a different floor while the facility undergoes a complete disinfection.
When she was moved, I began getting reports about her being unusually lethargic, losing her appetite and weight loss, but seeing her only sporadically and pretty unsuccessfully for FaceTime, I had no clear picture about what was happening, and naturally blamed it on the Covid and the fact that we weren’t in and out to see her as we’d always been before.
A little over a week ago, I had a call from her and my WONDERFUL psychiatric visitor, and in discussing LO’s situation I happened to remember that a medication change had been planned in February, and I wondered if it had been carried out. Turns out, it hadn’t.
With her original prescription decreased by half, she’s once again the gal I left in February! So if you do see something that makes you wonder, consider letting someone know.
I wasn’t to concerned about my emotions when she came strutting out the door with her walker, but I was flooded with relief. Every day that I’m able to see her is a gift.
Hoping that all of you who are able to reunite in the future experience each day with your LO as a gift.
You show and tell the person just how much you have missed them and how happy you are that you can now start visiting again
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