Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:I never thought I would say this, luckily my dad died in 2019.
Same here, unfortunately. If we'd been cut off from him for the last year or two, it would have been terrible. As it was, I was able to spend the last couple of months with him at his bedside. I feel for anyone who is denied that.
well.... E63M3 and berk. i guess people who aren't taking it seriously, as soon as they get they are gonna wish they took it seriously. sorry to hear, Snowdoggie. i hope she doesn't get covid. I am worried about my 90 yo grandpa. he is staying home all the time, so he is definitley taking precautions. praying for you and your mom!!
Thank you everybody. It has been a tough weekend waiting for callbacks and such.
The latest is there are one or maybe two nurses testing positive. Everybody has been tested.
All residents are locked down in private rooms and have been for months. Nurses have to put on protective gear before going into anybody's room and they have been doing that for months. There is a chance the virus didn't get through to the residents or since all residents or separated it could be limited to one, two or a few infections. No procedure is perfect so there is a chance it may have gotten to a few residents. Since the infection rate is so high here in Dallas the labs are overwhelmed so it may be a few days before the tests come back.
I talked to my neighbor yesterday about his father who is also in a nearby nursing home. He said he got the same phone call last weekend. That nursing home has the same procedures in place. After all the testing was done they had three employees and no residents infected. His father was safe. Earlier when homes were being overrun there were no procedures in place. The worst one was when they had a party for the residents and many were infected. With stores and restaurants open, bars opening illegally and even a NASCAR race going on two weeks ago, with lots of people refusing the state order to put on masks, nursing homes employees who go out are getting caught up in their employers testing procedures and this seems to be happening all over town. Keeping my fingers crossed that the bug didn't get through.
Hope things are well.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:Hope things are well.
Thank you. This is appreciated.
Just got an e-mail from the nursing home. Positive tests returned for two employees and one resident who is not my Mother. They have been testing everybody else multiple times a day. Her floor is in contact isolation.
In reply to Snowdoggie :
Contact isolation mean one of those three had contact with that floor? Hope they caught and stopped it early enough.
My father in law's home got hit by it a month back. Also brought in by nurses.
They basically isolated all the units and kept it under control. Luckily it wasn't in the FIL's unit. It sounds like they have kept it out of your mothers unit as well which is outstanding news. Hope they can keep it out.
I am an OT and I work in a skilled-nursing facility.
The impact of COVID-19 is being especially felt by those with dementia. I am seeing it first-hand and it is very sad. The isolation is taking a toll on everyone, but it is especially hard for those with dementia.
I hope your mother is able to stay as healthy as possible. I will share a personal anecdote, in hopes you find in calming. We have a few patients with COVID at our facility. One is a woman who is severely compromised, she has been very ill since October. She contracted the virus when she was sent to the ER for unrelated issues. She has managed the disease with minimal symptoms (elevated temperature), and was no longer testing positive for the virus as of last week. I share this to provide some hope and hopefully some calm in your life.
Just got a notice today that another employee at Mom's nursing home was infected.
On Wednesday I was going to get to see her through the window. I bought her a card and a little stuffed dog. It would have been the first time in months I had even been near her. Wednesday morning they told me not to come because the event had been canceled. Now this. I don't even know what to make of it. They say employees are getting tested four times a day. How do they even do that? Aren't these tests expensive and don't they take time to process?
I love my mother. I have a special relationship with her. Dementia has already taken that away from me in the last three years. Now this. Add the slowdown at work. I feel like Covid is tearing me apart one tiny piece at a time. I took the day off today. All I can do is stare into space and pet the dogs. This will not end well.
Four 1 zero
3 zero 3
3 six zero 4
If you need an ear or to vent.
In reply to Snowdoggie :
I'm sorry to hear that this is still dragging on. I heard a thing on PBS last week about trying to allow visitors just in circumstances like yours. Hopefully this will get better for you guys.
Stampie (FS) said:In reply to Snowdoggie :
I'm sorry to hear that this is still dragging on. I heard a thing on PBS last week about trying to allow visitors just in circumstances like yours. Hopefully this will get better for you guys.
I really hope he can see her, the hospital was relentless when I tried to see my dad.
They do usually relent if it absolutely necessary for mental well being. I recommend leaning into that a lot
Stampie (FS) said:In reply to Snowdoggie :
I'm sorry to hear that this is still dragging on. I heard a thing on PBS last week about trying to allow visitors just in circumstances like yours. Hopefully this will get better for you guys.
Unfortunately, I think it is all too common. I'm dealing with the exact same thing with my Mom, and my Aunt (2 separate facilities). I also see it at the several dozen facilities I interact with professionally.
Care facilities don't know how to move forward. Their entire business model seems to be at risk. They have a responsibility to care for their residents, but no capacity to do it well through this. Their buildings are not built for it, their procedures aren't sufficient, their staff is ill trained for anything of this magnitude, and their liability is through the roof.
It has translated to facilities like this becoming prisons for our elderly, and it's impacting their mental health dramatically.
It's not going away any time soon. This is the tip of the iceberg. Even if we found a cure today, the impact of this will go on for years.
Don't make the mistake of assuming things are ok because you don't hear anything bad. Make every effort you can to be making effective contact with the elderly people in your life.
I’m sorry to see that this industry hasn’t learned anything from the initial wave of infections in care facilities.
We lost my wife’s grandmother a few months ago due to an asymptomatic employee infecting over 30 residents including her. She was 104, but in great shape when we saw her a month earlier.
Definitely say in contact with the staff, communication seems to be their weakest point.
In reply to Snowdoggie :
I was just thinking about you this week and wondering how your mom is doing.
My mom is still the only resident in her facility who caught Covid. They've had several employees test positive, but thankfully, no other residents have caught it. Mom spent a week in the hospital, being treated with remdezivir, and now she's recovered and is back in her room, no longer in isolation. Her dementia is progressing, and I think the virus may have made it worse. The last couple of times we FaceTimed with her, she'd lose track of who we were and would look real hard and ask who we were.
People are stupid, I really hope your mom does not pay the price for somebody else's stupidity. Even here in NJ where we are taking this seriously, they keep having "mansion parties" and house parties where a few hundred people pay to go party for the night sans mask. We could have been over this thing like the rest of the world if people would just pull their heads out of their collective asses
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:Stampie (FS) said:In reply to Snowdoggie :
I'm sorry to hear that this is still dragging on. I heard a thing on PBS last week about trying to allow visitors just in circumstances like yours. Hopefully this will get better for you guys.
Unfortunately, I think it is all too common. I'm dealing with the exact same thing with my Mom, and my Aunt (2 separate facilities). I also see it at the several dozen facilities I interact with professionally.
Care facilities don't know how to move forward. Their entire business model seems to be at risk. They have a responsibility to care for their residents, but no capacity to do it well through this. Their buildings are not built for it, their procedures aren't sufficient, their staff is ill trained for anything of this magnitude, and their liability is through the roof.
It has translated to facilities like this becoming prisons for our elderly, and it's impacting their mental health dramatically.
It's not going away any time soon. This is the tip of the iceberg. Even if we found a cure today, the impact of this will go on for years.
Don't make the mistake of assuming things are ok because you don't hear anything bad. Make every effort you can to be making effective contact with the elderly people in your life.
Some of the facilities are figuring it out. My father in law's home got hit early on. 9 residents and 13 employees over the span of 2 weeks. They locked down hard and it worked. They celebrated 60 days with no additional cases yesterday.
With a little help from some of the residents' families they started video calls quickly to help families and residents with the transition to being locked down. They also recently completed construction of a glass partition down the center of one room where residents can join family and sort of be in the same room. My wife is visiting her father Monday and looking forward to it.
It's not all doom and gloom. Don't be scared to offer them assistance and suggestions to help everyone get through this.
None of these facilities are set up for this scenario. Honestly, they really aren't equipped to deal with patients without some family support. Families dropping by to check on their elderly family members is a huge part of their wellbeing. This also keeps the staff on their toes such that the patient is taken care of properly. Even in a good nursing facility this interaction and oversight is a big deal.
My grandmother's facility in Florida was also locked down.
She's a pretty independent person. Never content to just sit around and watch TV, in fact, that's probably her least favorite time-waster. She also despises gossip and listening to people complain, which right now nursing homes are filled with people doing.
It's a rough time to be old and a rough time to be young (and in school). I'm glad my daughter isn't in school yet, but I worry she may not be able to meet/remember her Great Grandmother before it's too late.
In reply to Toyman01 (Moderately Supportive Dude) :
Didn't intend to be "doom and gloom". Just recognizing some inadequacies that are hard to respond to.
For example, centralized HVAC systems. Care facilities are generally not segregated or filtered in the way hospitals are. This is hard to modify (although I've helped change 2).
For some people, the best answer has been to leave the facilities. The attendance at my mother's place is down by 30%. With the social activities and dining hall gone, its become a very expensive option for housing that doesn't meet a lot of other needs it used to.
The facility my mother is at is very resistant to receiving input. They function with a top-down management model that seems to feel threatened by suggestions. Fortunately, her space is separated a little from the main area, so we are able to see her and ignore some of the lock-down rules.
But yes. Point taken. Thanks for the encouragement.
I actually put Mom in a brand new facility after looking at dozens of nursing homes with Mrs. Snowdoggie, and talking to everybody in the business using every connection I could find. This place was still half empty and smelling brand new when the shutdown started. The social worker was trying to slam dunk her into a very large poorly maintained place that was very profitable for the owners and I suspect there was a kickback involved. That one had over 10 residents infected when this first started. I gave the thumb down to dozens of places. These guys have been on the phone to me a lot.
I hate to say it but in a way her dementia is almost a blessing. She doesn't miss me because she doesn't know who I am. She seems happy during our FaceTime sessions because she has no clue what is going on.
It's Dallas that is getting worse. The infection rate is up to 800 a day and schools are opening up now. So are movie theatres. Yesterday the farmers market near my house was really packing them in and many of them are without masks. More nurses and workers will get infected. It is a matter of testing and keeping the infected ones out. I see more people in my office building now and more without masks who are supposed to be wearing them. Everybody in the building is required to wear them. Some building employees are not. They say we are safe. Yeah. Riiight.
...and now the dog is sick. What else can go wrong.
In reply to Snowdoggie :
Well, berkeley.....
What's wrong with him?
In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :
Old age. He is having trouble walking as of yesterday.
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