{"id":26235,"date":"2020-03-26T19:49:24","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T23:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26235"},"modified":"2020-04-03T17:07:34","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T21:07:34","slug":"residents-share-concerns-anxiety-over-loved-ones-in-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/residents-share-concerns-anxiety-over-loved-ones-in-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Residents share concerns, anxiety over loved ones in lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ron Wallace, founder of The Auroran, celebrated his\nbirthday this past Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A resident of Chartwell Aurora \u2013 formerly Resthaven \u2013 for\nthe last five years, his birthday is normally an occasion of celebration and\nlove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time around, however, it was a significantly quieter\naffair as Chartwell Aurora was, along with other nursing and retirement homes\nacross the country, locked down to outside visitors due to the COVID-19 crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRon has been here five years this week and Saturday is\nhis birthday \u2013 it makes me a little sad because sometimes I will go in and read\nhim all the Facebook messages wishing him a Happy Birthday, and I won\u2019t be able\nto do that for him,\u201d  his wife, Patricia,\ntold The Auroran on Thursday, noting that although her husband can\u2019t\ncommunicate verbally, he is very aware of what is going on around him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that in itself is a concern, one shared by Patricia\nand countless other families in this same situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI called specifically to ask, \u2018Does he know what\u2019s going\non? Has anyone taken the time to go around to residents and say this is what is\nhappening in the world?\u2019 I don\u2019t know that Ron could understand the severity of\nthe situation, but he does understand. All of a sudden, his surroundings are\nchanging as far as the people around him and I worried whether he was feeling\nabandoned. It\u2019s a worry and it gets me right in the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe nurse in the unit told me that they had been making\nevery effort [to do so] and apparently I wasn\u2019t the only family member to ask\nthat very question, to explain as much as they can to the residents who could\nunderstand what is going on in the world right now and why their family members\naren\u2019t coming \u2013 and why there are no other visitors or visiting volunteers,\nwhich is a big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is hard, she says, but she is reassured that residents\nare safe and receiving good care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a feeling shared by Aurora resident Peter Styrmo\nwhose wife, Diane, has lived in a nursing home in Whitchurch-Stouffville since\n2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diane also has a limited ability to communicate, but\nPeter is there like clockwork every day as soon as programs end around 3.30\np.m. \u2013 or, at least he was until the lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe girl I married disappeared about 10 years ago,\u201d says\nPeter, noting the lockdown has left him with mixed feelings. \u201cYou don\u2019t know\nwhether you\u2019re relieved, whether you\u2019re feeling guilty about not being there,\nbut the people who are there are very capable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have been there every day for the last six years and I\nknow them all. If there is anything amiss, they call right away. You can only\ndo what you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patricia says she shares the sentiment that there is some\nrelief in the lockdown in that it has provided some clarity in emotions. She\nhas wanted to go in to visit Ron but this desire has been tempered by the worry\nabout bringing something into the residence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs soon as they say, \u2018You can\u2019t go,\u2019 you think, \u2018Okay,\nthis is the best for them and it is a bit of a relief that way,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, in addition to their worry about not being able to\nvisit their spouses, both Peter and Patricia show their appreciation for the\nfrontline workers providing care inside. Over the past five or six years, both\nagree that the support staff at their partners\u2019 respective residences have\nbecome a second family and they remain very much in their thoughts at this\ndifficult time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCare in nursing homes is never perfect, it is never\ngoing to be, but the way our health care funding is, which is darn good\ncompared to a lot of others, is still not perfect,\u201d says Patricia. \u201cWe have to\nhave patience. The staff send me and all family members regular emails and\nupdates. It is not daily, but they have more important things to do than keep\nus updated on a regular basis, so I knew\u2026when they were restricting visitors,\nand then not even 24 hours later they locked down to visitors. That\u2019s when it\nbecame even more concerning because it wasn\u2019t just no visitors, it was also no\nvolunteers and long-term care homes, like a lot of places, really depend on\ntheir volunteer population to pick up the slack for the non-medical, non-PSW\nthings. That meant, to me, how is the staff doing? As Peter said, they are my\nsecond family in there and we are all part of the extended family in long-term\ncare. You know them very well, you know their dogs, their children, and all of\nthat, so when I spoke to them (on Wednesday) they are definitely overworked but\ndoing their best with what they\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know we\u2019re all remembering doctors and nurses and hospital staff. Don\u2019t forget about the people who are the PSWs and the other workers in long term care because they kind of fly below the radar in all of this. Those people who are working double and triple shifts have families too. If one of those is your neighbour where you can throw something in the mail box of support and something like that, don\u2019t forget them either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ron Wallace, founder of The Auroran, celebrated his birthday this past Saturday. A resident of Chartwell Aurora \u2013 formerly Resthaven \u2013 for the last five years, his birthday is normally an occasion of celebration and love. This time around, however, it was a significantly quieter affair as Chartwell Aurora was, along with other nursing and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/2020-03-26-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6P9","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 21:18:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}