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?
When I first saw my dad last week after 3 months, my first emotion was relief. He didn't look and sound near as bad as I feared. I was worried he would look much more emaciated, but his weight loss was less than I feared. His voice sounded stronger than I expected. When I spoke to him over the phone, I had been detecting a weaker voice and that really concerned me given his congestive heart failure problems. Now, I think it may have been that I woke him up from naps when i called.
The first visit was a little awkward. There was a disclosure form to fill out and temperatures taken. Masks and 6 feet distance were required. But what really bothered me was that there were two employees there watching us. That made conversations awkward and uncomfortable. I didn't feel free to try and get his real opinion on the care he was receiving. The second week, they backed off and moved further away, so we could have a somewhat more personal conversation. Thank goodness my dad's hearing is good. I did however, discover that his cataracts got worse. He said he really couldn't see me that well. I am so upset about this. He was all ready to get cataract surgery in March when Covid hit. Now, I don't know if he will ever be able to get that surgery.
So, seeing him was a great sense of relief. It actually was more helpful than all of the hours of tele-psychiatry and anti-anxiety medications I've taken over these last 3 months. Just seeing him had a profound effect. I could suddenly imagine what normality looks like. If Covid had never hit, I just think of all of the problems that could have been avoided. My poor father really suffered in that first month away from us. He gave up on PT and OT fast. They said he talked about wanting to go home constantly. How awful it must have been to be in strange place without seeing his family. In normal times, my mother would be there at his side all the time. If I could have been there, I could have helped explain to him the importance of therapy and explained to the therapists what he's used to doing. The last three months have been the most stressful of my life. This would all have gone so much different. Honestly, after that second visit, I just got angry. Not angry at anyone in particular, just angry in general. Angry that we (and so many other families) had to go through this ordeal in the time of Covid.
I'm so glad it was a relief and especially glad your dad wasn't as bad as you thought he would be other than the cataracts. Just like you, my mom was scheduled for a surgical procedure the very morning that the lockdown went into effect on March 13th and I had to cancel it after spending four months seeing two different specialists, getting x-rays and filling out that ever so fun new patient paperwork twice.
I didn't see anything about your crying as you were concerned about your emotions getting the best of you.
I'm sure that was uncomfortable to have the two employees watching/listening. I never thought about that aspect as I will have my first visit Tuesday. I suppose it was to make sure you kept your distance and there was no hugging etc.
My mom wouldn't do P/T either when she spent three weeks in a rehab facility after being hospitalized with COVID and severe dehydration. After changing hospices last week, they offered P/T again and I said "let's give it another go." She had a session yesterday and she did do it!
I understand your anger. Like you said, not at anyone in particular, just angry about the whole thing that we all had to go through especially ALL the elderly who are in whatever type of care facility they are in. It is truly appalling!
Thank you for the update and I hope your visits will get better each time you go - you and your family take care.
She is very hard of hearing and just got new hearing aids after the NH aide accidentally threw hers away. Since I was required to wear a mask, gloves, and a face shield and sit six feet away, she couldn't understand anything I said. She's also nearly blind, so she can't see someone that far away.
After telling me she could hear sound but could understand me, she just closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. That's her signal that she doesn't want to try anymore.
Our visit lasted less than 10 minutes, and I cried all the way home.
This is barbaric treatment of our seniors. I think every family of her fellow residents would rather be able to visit and hug their loved ones than have them live in a bubble thinking we've all abandoned them. I'd bring my mother home in a heartbeat, but she requires more care than I can provide in my home. My only consolation is that she doesn't remember anything an hour later, so to her everything is mostly OK in her life.
And, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the treatment of our seniors - living in a bubble thinking they've been abandoned. My heart breaks whenever I visualize this happening to them all across the world!
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
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.
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