Mark
This morning’s Q thread kibbitzing (Q-bitzing?) has put me in such a good mood that I’m ready to tell the rest of my COVID story. I left y’all hanging after I got my 88-year-old mother down here to Arizona from Vancouver.
To review, my father had his “best birthday ever” February 14th a year ago. We gathered all his family together at my cousin’s house in Vancouver and had a great time. COVID was “in the air” at the time, but I got up there and back in the nick of time. I had been visiting every month or two — there was a $100 3-hour non-stop between Phoenix and Vancouver, so it was pretty easy. But with the COVID shutdowns I didn’t get up there again until the first of June.
His care home had called and said he had been taken to the hospital with (non-COVID) pneumonia. I flew up immediately to keep an eye on him in the hospital, as it’s our family’s strong belief that no one should be left alone in the hospital. I expected some questioning at the border, but I still had a Canadian passport so I expected to be let in. I didn’t know that Canada had just instituted a mandatory 14-day self-isolation policy. After two weeks in a local hotel, I was allowed to see my father — once. I spent about a half an hour with him. He clearly recognized me and he squeezed my hand, but he was unable to speak. I told the nurse I would come back to see him later in the afternoon. When I came back, they said they couldn’t let me in to see him again, that day or any day. A week later he was unconscious in hospice — at the care home he left — and less than a week after that he was gone.
I was able to take my mother, herself in advanced dementia, to see him before he died, and then again after he died. I stayed around long enough to celebrate my birthday with my mom, and headed home.
I view my dad as collateral damage to the COVID pandemic. He was healthy, his mind was still there, and he was determined to live to 100. Despite my calls to check up on him, with no one there in the hospital and somewhat delirious himself, he was treated as a terminal case rather as someone who would get better. He had an unmanaged heart attack, suffered brain damage, and truly became a terminal case.
My mother was now stranded in a care home in Vancouver, without her husband of 67 years and allowed no visitors. We resolved to bring her down to Arizona. A new and suitable care home was going up within a mile of our house, and was supposed to open in November. We put down a deposit, but they were delayed. We found another care home with an open spot and put down another deposit. On the first of December I went up to Vancouver again and spent another two weeks in self-isolation in a hotel room. I spent a week packing up my mom and on December 22, her 88th birthday, I brought her home to Arizona. Everything went surprisingly smoothly, despite her dementia and many wheel chair transfers (because of COVID there’s no longer a non-stop between Vancouver and Arizona).
She settled into her new care home, a former 10-bedroom family ranch home that had been converted. (The current owner got a very good deal on it during the 2008 real estate downturn.) It was a beautiful place, in Mexican style, completely unlike the institutional care home she occupied in Vancouver. They have murals on the walls, an atrium with colorful birds, a back yard with goats and chickens, garden boxes in the front, acres of desert, and loving and competent caregivers. The weather was phenomenal, even for Arizona. Compared to her previous situation it was heaven. I was able to visit her every day and she was actually happy. Mission accomplished.
Three weeks later my niece — who had spent many summers with her grandparents in northern Canada — came to visit from Texas. The day she arrived, however, her grandma was somewhat lethargic. Grandma was happy to see her granddaughter, but was less communicative than usual. The next day, Grandma was even more lethargic. The following day, a Saturday, she had a fever so I made my first-ever call to Teladoc. The doctor was unwilling to make any kind of recommendation over Zoom and suggested we take her to the ER. We called an ambulance and because of the hospital no-visit policy, that was the last time I saw my mother.
We were soon told she had COVID, both by quick test and by PCR. I asked the doctor whether she could be given hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. He said they were not allowed to prescribe it. He also said she was not a candidate for remdesivir, for a reason I now forget. Wednesday, the doctor said she was OK and might get out of the hospital by Saturday. Thursday I got the call that she had passed. The disease had finally got to her lungs and that was it. We were blessed to have three good weeks together, but apparently it was her time.
My niece went back to Texas, not knowing whether she also had COVID. (She was tested in Texas, and didn’t.) Because I had been physically very close to my mother, even feeding her, holding her hand, and kissing her on the forehead, I had some concern about my own COVID status. I had immediately begun the ivermectin treatment when I heard about Mom’s COVID. The day after she passed I got tested. The result was negative.
Because my mother had no applicable insurance, we were a little concerned about the impending hospital bills. On a previous visit my father spent three days in Phoenix hospital and rang up a bill for $25K. For my mother, however, we only received a modest bill from the attending doctor. Apparently one of the massive COVID relief bills included a provision whereby all the hospital expenses of COVID patients would be paid by the federal government.
That’s my year-long COVID story. Perhaps the title should be, “How I Became an Orphan”.