When you have either had family in care homes or have at any time visited care homes, perhaps in connection with work, I don’t think it’s something you ever forget. My mother and stepfather were in residential care in their final years, later receiving care that really would have been more appropriate in a nursing home. When I was working for the British Red Cross, I visited a few of them, including a massive one in North Somerset. I experienced numerous emotions. I would in one moment be humbled by the love and care dispensed by the staff and then feel sadness and despair when, for example, I came across someone with advanced dementia. If my mum and stepdad were alive today and in a care home, I can only imagine how I’d feel.
I thought about this earlier today when I drove past a nursing home and observed paramedics carefully carrying someone into an ambulance. I got to thinking. Thanks to a coronavirus. we are close to going back to a situation whereby people will no longer be able to visit people in care homes or, having spoken to someone who works in the NHS and knows about these things, hospitals.
The last six months must have been hell on earth for both care home residents and their families. The only contact many have had with loved ones has been via phone calls or video calls. People ravaged with dementia, already cocooned, imprisoned even, in an alien world cannot understand any of this. The best way I can try to understand what people are going through is for me to remember how things were with my relatives and imagine the current scenario with them in it.
My stepfather suffered from Parkinsons, which degenerated into dementia. His final years were awful, as he forgot who I was and had just the occasional fleeting, flickering moment when he knew who he was. In the early stages, he would come alive when we chatted about the past and we played some of the music he so loved. What if coronavirus had come along then? He would have seen no one but care staff every day. There were no video calls back then, so it would have been phone calls which, I suspect, have led nowhere other than to additional distress. This is where thousands of people have been this year.
A person falling ill in a care home tomorrow might be in a public ward with no one to speak to but professional carers. They might never see their relatives again, their relatives could well be feeling horrendously guilty that they could not even call by the say hello. And that was exactly what I thought today as I drove by that care home.
Nothing can prepare you for the experience of visiting a care home. In some ways, they could be joyous occasions as residents might be singing or watching TV together. On another day, someone might have to be removed having had a bladder or bowel incident they could neither predict nor tell anyone about. And before you ask, you never forget the smell of a care home. It’s everything they tell you it’s going to be.
Those of us who have survived or avoided the virus so far are very fortunate. Those of us who do not have family members in care homes even more so. I never knew what might happen to my relatives from one day to the next, but if I got a call, as I often did, I could drive there. When my stepfather was dying, I got the call and drove down to ensure he did not die alone. People today might not get the opportunity to do that due to COVID-19. To me, that just isn’t right.
It’s the being away from a loved one that is a killer. You can’t be with that person, you can’t talk to them; instead you wait for a call to hear they’ve died. Then, you have to arrange a scaled-down, socially-distant funeral. My head was spinning when I arranged the funerals for my mum and later my stepdad and I had no problems gaining access to them in their latter days. Christ alone knows how families are feeling today. They will be the worst of times. And, as we said earlier, the guilt some will feel will be unbearable.
By their very nature, ambulances are frequent visitors to care homes. Apart from care home staff, they are pretty well the only visitors. For the families of care home residents, this must be hell. And every time I pass a care home with an ambulance outside, I can only feel sympathy and sadness.
