The care home – revisited


I went to visit Auntie Jean last week for the first time in six months. And like everything else these days it was a stressful and unsatisfactory palaver.

 

This was my fourth trip to see her since the start of the pandemic. My first took place in August, with Auntie Jean in her room and me on the garden steps outside (for socially-distancing purposes). This meant I was silhouetted against the sun and she couldn’t for the life of her work out who I was, nor why I was shouting in at her through her French windows. 

 

The two subsequent visits were both in the garden proper. I was kitted out in full PPE and Auntie Jean and I sat at opposite ends of a long table. Unsurprisingly my aunt’s sight, hearing and cognitive powers aren’t the best at 103 and she was rather disgruntled at being wheeled outside in the cold and forced to attend some sort of Mad Hatter’s tea party with a masked “stranger”.

 

Auntie Jean moved into the home five years ago and wasn’t particularly excited about the prospect. But her care home experience was made bearable by the smiley staff, and by the regular visits from my brother and I. But now she is surrounded by unfamiliar masked people who are constantly spinning her some yarn about a deadly disease that’s keeping her family away. And to make matters worse, these masked strangers seem intent on putting things up her nose, down her throat and into her arm. So it’s not surprising that she’s firmly convinced they’re all trying to kill her.

 

Last week’s visit was different to the previous three – but also depressingly similar. After being give a lateral flow COVID test I was allowed to sit next to Auntie Jean on a conservatory sofa. And I could hold her hand for the first time in a year. However, I was wearing full PPE and every time Auntie Jean made contact with my rubber-gloved hand, she let out a yelp in horror. “What’s that?” she cried.  “I have gloves on!” I shouted. “I can’t hear you!” she said. “I HAVE GLOVES ON!” I shouted. “You have a blood clot?” “No, I have gloves on!” “Who has a blood clot? Is it me?” This went on for some time with no real resolution. She was also unconvinced as to whether or not I was the “real Ann” and when I told her: “I don’t lie to you, Auntie Jean!” she replied: “I’m sorry you don’t like me”. 

 

Luckily as far as she’s concerned, I’m not her only visitor. She told me that her parents had been to see her recently and she‘d had a long chat with her Dad. “But between you and me Andy, he wasn’t looking well,” she confided. Since he would be 140 by now I suspect that was an understatement.

 

The visit wasn’t a great success, but I’ll return when I can in the hope that it’s doing her good on some level. And despite all the confusion, I know that somewhere inside remains the spirit of the indomitable lady who has been bombed, machine-gunned, tossed in the air by a car and has lived through a world war, a divorce and the death of her only son. So she’s hardly going to be beaten by a pesky pandemic.

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