Daughter Describes Father’s Decline in Locked-Down Nursing Home

Today I spoke to my dad on the phone. He answered incoherently and told me he was laying in his bed looking at the roof, waiting to die. His nurse tells me he has stopped eating and lost all faith. He is currently in a secure dementia unit, in lockdown because covid has entered the facility. Since he has been in the unit his mental health has declined because he is currently not allowed to see family. I’ve been waiting on the phone all day today because the lines are full of people worrying about their parents.

As a single parent myself, with little children, and lacking family support, I couldn’t look after my father as he wanders regularly and is not mobile. During the covid outbreak at the home, an existing UTI infection flared up and he had to go into hospital. He waited in the ED, in excruciating pain for hours. The staff at the ED did their best but that night, he got very sick. Luckily the antibiotics got him back on track by the morning. We will go through all this again. This is all supposedly to keep our elderly safe? Instead, they are waiting in emergency wards getting sicker, laying there alone with no one they love around them. With nurses stretched to their limits trying to do the best job possible.

They wake up every morning and forget where they are, then some stranger comes in with a cup of tea, kitted out in a plastic overcoat and plastic mask. The virus has gone through this country two or three times now, for some people, yet we are still keeping our elderly away from the people they love and putting them in a place of serious depression. While you sip on your latte with your mates, without a mask in a crowded restaurant, my dad, and many others like him are laying in their beds, surrounded by strangers, lonely and wanting to die.

When they go into hospital, they are neglected because the nursing staff just can’t keep up. Meanwhile, there are nurses waiting at home, without a job who would happily work but can’t because they have made the decision not to vaccinate. If my dad is dying in a hospital, I couldn’t care less if the nurse is vaccinated, I just want her to help him and take the stress off the other nurses and doctors. The exact same virus is circulating in other countries but if my dad was still in the UK, I’d be able to sit with him and hold his hand.

If you have some compassion for my dad and the many like him, please share this, please write to your local MP about your experiences, please take a stand. It might not be affecting you right now, but one day it could be you laying in that home, bewildered, dying alone without your family. Will it matter then? End the healthcare mandates. They are causing more damage than good.