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Old 05-27-2020, 04:52 PM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Needville and Shiner, TX
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Earl
‘Luke’-

Sorry to hear of your mother’s passing. Condolences to you and your family. And under these current circumstances, I’m sure that had to make a difficult situation even more trying.

God’s blessings and peace to you and yours.

Earl


Thanks... I appreciate it!

Actually, the pandemic mess was a blessing in disguise... Well, I hate to use the word "blessing" but actually if there was a bright spot out of this entire mess, it was that it happened and mom's passing coincided... It would have been EXTREMELY difficult had Betty and Keira and my sister and BIL and their kids still been working full time "on the job" IN SCHOOL. As it was, the lockdowns really started in earnest in our area about the middle of spring break, the week before Mom fell and hit her head the following Monday. We had gone up to Shiner the weekend spring break started and Mom actually went to a craft show with Betty and Keira while I was working on the farm, so they had a nice enjoyable time between them. The schools decided to close for a couple weeks more before Spring Break was over, we were already pretty much self-isolating at that point because we realized that basically WE (Betty, Keira, and I) were going to be the main "point of contact" between Mom and the outside world during the whole mess-- my brother and sister in law were (and have been, still are) working at the county barn, and lo and behold a couple guys and their families went on a cruise over spring break and he didn't tell anybody about it until halfway through the day, including after their "all hands on deck" meeting in closed quarters, SO, my brother and SIL went into self-imposed "quarantine" from other family members due to that. Mom had SEVERE COPD and a lot of other health issues, and so we figured "we were gonna be it" for the duration, and we were being doubly careful because we KNEW that *if* she got it, it would be a virtual death-sentence. We WOULD have taken her to church the Sunday as spring break ended, the roughly 25-45 member church she attended in Yoakum was still (and did throughout the entire duration of the lockdowns) having Sunday worship services, but at that point we told her "it's not a good idea for you to go this Sunday, being inside a closed building (even with the congregation "social distancing" by spreading out apart from each other in the building) and so we didn't take her... I was planning to go get her groceries and other shopping list items like Tuesday or Wednesday. When she fell and we thought she'd get out of the hospital in a day or two, we basically put ourselves in "self isolation" and didn't go to the store or anything any more than necessary, and took a lot of precautions like face masks and gloves or not touching things any more than necessary, and using hand sanitizer, when most of the surrounding area in Lavaca and Dewitt counties were still very much "business as usual" and we were the stand-outs... Fort Bend County, where Needville is, got up around 2000 cases, whereas Lavaca county only had SIX, being halfway between Houston and San Antonio... so it wasn't rocket science to figure out where to spend MOST of our time... when Mom was "in limbo" in the hospital having good and bad days, thinking she'd get out "in a day or two" only to find out later it'd be "maybe the end of the week", we did travel back and forth between Mom's house on the Shiner farm and our house on the Needville farm, but basically we ONLY stopped for gas at Buccee's in Wharton and didn't go in there; I gloved up and pumped gas and operated the pump with the right hand and opened the gas cap and vehicle doors with the left hand, and sanitized up afterwards... We pretty much stayed home while in Fort Bend County, the only exception being Betty made a couple grocery runs and to get our prescriptions... Otherwise we did as much as possible in Shiner. We knew once she DID get out of the hospital, we'd have to stay with her at least a couple weeks while she recuperated and got back on her feet. Sadly it didn't work out that way.

When she fell, we got up there a couple hours aftewards (it's a 90 minute plus drive, and we had to grab stuff for an "overnight bag") and they weren't letting but ONE family member into the hospital, which we felt Betty was the healthiest and best able to understand all the medical stuff, so she went in. After the gloves and mask and all the procedures and checks to get in, she found out what was going on and brought a report back to us in the van and my uncle (mom's brother) and his wife who'd driven out from Victoria an hour south... He's on dialysis every other day and they eat out nearly every meal, and Victoria is a larger but less prosperous shall we say area, so I really didn't want him to visit Mom and possibly bring her the coronavirus unintentionally. Little did we know it would be THREE WEEKS before she got out of the hospital...

Mom didn't like being in the hospital, but it was particularly bad with this pandemic stuff... the very next day, Tuesday, Betty drove over 10 miles to the hospital in Yoakum and went through the visitor screening procedure-- she was the last one they let in to the hospital, and they told her once she left that day (either earlier in the day or at the conclusion of visiting hours) she wouldn't be allowed back in. SO, basically mom was in there 3 weeks with NO VISITORS ALLOWED. That made it doubly worse, despite the necessity of it. All the staff was in masks at all times, so basically you never saw a human face... just a mask with eyes, and touched by gloved hands. They DID call us to come in for "training" on how to help her transition into a wheelchair or to the potty and stuff, which was basically just a way of getting us into the hospital to motivate her to cooperate and work on her therapy and lift her spirits. She was MORE than ready to come home, but unfortunately she started going downhill within just a few days, and it became apparent by mid-week that she was going to have to go back into the hospital... I felt at that point we could be looking at an end-of-life situation, and I felt the risk was minimal to have the family come in and visit her, so I called my brother and SIL, sister and BIL and their 2 boys, and my uncle and his wife and daughter and granddaughter came to visit her before she went back to the hospital and thus back into "isolation". She was in the hospital another week or so and it was apparent that basically they'd done all they could medically for her, antibiotics weren't working, her heart would stabilize for a bit then go wonky again, etc. The choice then was either 1) skilled nursing (nursing home) or 2) home on hospice. Nursing homes are in the same lockdowns as hospitals, ie NO VISITORS, and she was already refusing to take her meds, eat, or do anything with the hospital staff, she was SO upset at the situation by that point. With antibiotics not working on her infections, I knew it was a matter of time before she went septic or got a fatal infection, and skilled nursing wouldn't be able to do much to prevent it, particularly since nursing homes and hospitals are quite prone to having the bad drug resistant staph and other infectious organisms... SO, she could go into a nursing home and AGAIN not be allowed any visitors, or come home and have her family around her, so that's what we chose... She lasted about a week at home, but she got to say goodbye to everyone and everyone got to say goodbye to her, she even talked via phone with her favorite cousin in Hemphill up in deep East Texas, and her other cousin between Lufkin and Dallas...

SO, given the crummy situation this pandemic and lockdowns have put us ALL in, this was just about as good of a situation as it could be given how things worked out... When mom was at home, Betty, Keira, and I were taking it in shifts-- Betty has stayed on "school schedule" and would get up about 5:00-5:30, and go to bed around 11-11:30 at night. I'm more of a "night owl" and would go to bed about 2:30 normally, I stayed up til about 3-4 to help her as needed before I hit the sack to get up around 11-noon, and during the interim between when I went to bed and Betty got up, Keira was up on her computer or phone chatting with friends or doing school work or watching memes and Tik-Toks, and if Mom needed something, she would come get either me or Betty to help her, depending on who's time it was closer to (mine or Betty's).

That would have been IMPOSSIBLE if Betty and Keira were back in school during her illness and deterioration... I couldn't have taken care of her by myself without them. SO, actually the pandemic lockdowns ended up helping us out... it was about the best that could be expected given the situation.

Later! OL J R
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