My husband is in a memory care community. The community has had extremely limited visiting (on some weeks, not all) during Covid.
Family can sign up, in advance, for one 15-minute visit per week. The visits are held in the open-sided parking garage, where a PVC framework has been built. The resident and visitor have to sit on opposite sides of a plastic curtain, and wear masks - with absolutely no touching or passing of objects.
While I respect the precautions, my husband does not retain that there is a pandemic. He wanders, and is very often insisting that I pick him up and take him home.
I feel that the strangeness of this visitation would upset, rather than comfort, him. I strongly believe he would simply walk out of the garage and look for the car to go home, and therefore the visit would become a major upset.
He has only been in the community since late November, and I have thus far simply “visited” him via zoom - and not in person.
(The director is adamant in her weekly email that they will make no exceptions to the current visitation policy).
The community has had one vaccine clinic, and the second is scheduled. I have been told that they will look at easing restrictions after the second vaccine, but no specifics.
I am concerned that residents and staff have been given the option of whether or not to vaccinate. Since there will likely be residents who are unvaccinated, I fear this will mean a continuation of not allowing visitors in the community.
What are my husband’s, and our family’s, rights to in-community visitation in this unprecedented time?
In my own situation, my LO has had TWO possibly distinct cases of Covid, and much to my chagrin, I’m presently recovering from my own case.
And ALL of us need to be aware that as of yet nobody REALLY KNOWS when or if we are able to declare ourselves free of the responsibility of carrying infection to others, or when we are vulnerable to the exposure of virus carried by someone else.
My position has been that I CANNOT support ANYTHING that could expose my LO to a THIRD infection. But then, I know NOTHING about her quality of life except for an occasional brief phone call from her caregivers.
So having had Covid myself, and knowing that my LO is physically well cared for, and nothing else, my question INEVITABLY circles back to my question when I learned last April that she’d contracted Covid for the first time-
Will I ever see her alive again? Will I ever be able to hug her and tell her I love her and how much I’ve missed her? Will she remember me and speak to me by name as she did all those months ago when I saw her in person for the last time?