Annette Korzick in her room a month before the lockdown.
My mom is in a nursing home, and while there have been many stories about the countless number of brave medical personnel, maintenance workers, kitchen staff working this nightmare, living it, dying it, there have not been many about the way it impacts a family — or in my case, a family member. Me.
Many, many people are going through what I am going through, some of us alone.
My mom, Annette Korzick, is one of the people who, so far, have not contracted this virus. But the toll of her being confined to a room for five weeks has already sent her downhill pretty far it sounds. She has Alzheimers, so any downhill slide will never come back.
Prisoners are seeing more time out of their cells than these poor people are seeing out of their rooms.
My mom’s room is one of the larger ones, thank God. But most are about eight feet wide by ten feet deep. The size of a jail cell. No bathrooms. Three shared baths on her floor.
The nursing homes will be on lockdown until at the least Sept. 9. In the best-case scenario, if she does not get this, I feel that she will be almost gone in other ways.
I was one who would visit there, at minimum, five days a week, and most times seven days, sometimes even more than once in a day.
Now, during the pandemic, when it’s not safe to allow visitors into the home, I’m getting only scripted business-like answers from people who were like family, and in the past always spoke openly.
My mother was always continent. No bathroom problems. Now in five weeks I was told she is “sometimes in pull-ups because she has had a few accidents, but is mostly going on her own.”
Grace Hospital Nurse Annette Korzick (eyes open above in operating room; and below), 1951.
I love my mother more than anything. To go through this as a son is ripping my heart out.
I took care of her at home, as long as I was able, about ten years. On March 23, 2017, she entered the nursing facility.
Now I do not sleep at night. I can only think of a poor 90-year old woman sitting in a small room almost 24/7 with meals passed into the room, then retrieved, with door alarms on doors so they cannot walk out without someone knowing it.
How afraid someone with Alzheimers must be, to be in that situation without understanding why.
It puts me through my own personal hell to think of these things, and not even be able to see her. Strong emotions go with hearing that your loved one has to live like this, and with Alzheimer’s no less, and not understanding why it is so.
This is absolute hell on the families of loved ones in a facility. Emotionally, it is wrecking me to have the people in the rooms that much. It may be what they have to do to try to contain. I’m not disputing that. But a total of five months of that for someone whose mind is almost gone … well, it would almost seem less “cruel” for her to not survive this thing.
What an awful conclusion to draw. But it is one that has been what a lot of us in this situation are thinking.
As family, we are in a no-win situation. For the ones whose minds are far along being gone, there is no win-win in this. They die, and it’s awful. They live, and it may be worse.
This is not meant to be an attack on a nursing home. (My gratitude goes out to the staff of The Mary Wade Home, particularly the staff of The Boardman Residence, who are too numerous to mention by name, for the care they have given my mother.) Rather it is a story of one family member’s journey through this hell called Coronavirus.
Previous Pandemic Diaries:
- ICU Nurse Pivots To “New Territory”
- Covid Claims “Big E”
- Ray Of Hope Slips Through ICU Glass Doors
- The View From Inside The ER
- Doc Glimpses Coming Covid-19 “Storm”
- Day 20: I’m A Fighter, Not A Quitter
- Cops Roll With “Change Of Conditions”
- The Distance Between Us Diminishes
- Seniors Stuck In Stop & Shop Jam
- Burial In The Age Of Covid-19
I am so sorry for your family's current experience. Thank you for being brave to share this with the world, and your mother and family will be in my thoughts.