It was good to be with Mom; she was worn out from all of the stress and the constant phone calls. I was able to alleviate some of her stress by putting friends on my daily e-mail update list. I had no idea that Mom was calling 4 - 8 people each time she got an update on Dad. This was wearing her out! So she got their e-mails and I put them onto my list. This freed her up to call or not call people without worrying that they were missing an update. We also tried to spend time working on the computer so Mom could read her e-mails, paying the bills (Dad had always done that!), and pulling weeds in the garden. Mom was determined that Dad would have a garden to come home to when he was finally healthy!
Being there with her also enabled me to understand first-hand what she was going through. I knew that I was stressed about getting the updates on Dad from Mom’s phone calls, but I had no idea how stressful it was for Mom to be the point person and only one authorized to get the updates.
One of the hard things about the virus is that we never saw the nurses who took care of Dad and we only saw the doctors those two times on the video calls with their masks on. So we never really established relationships with them where we could get to know them a little bit and have them get to know us. I think that hospital situations are so much better when you feel a connection with the caregivers who are looking after your loved one. But we never had that. There were a few nurses who we were able to talk to at this point that we got to know as in “Oh, she’s the one who seems to give lots of information.” Or “Oh, she’s the one that’s always cheerful.” But in many ways, they were just voices on the other end of the phone. And I'm sure that made things very hard on the nurses, too.
The nurses also had to get used to calling patients' families. Instead of just talking to the family during visiting hours while checking on their patient, now they had to take the time to call and give updates.
But knowing this didn't make it easier when we called to see how Dad was doing that day only to be told, “Oh, the nurse is with someone, she’ll call you back.” And then we had to wait for the next 2 hours for a phone call to see if Dad had improved at all that day. At least with me there, Mom could take a nap in the afternoon without worrying about the phone call being missed or waking her up.
Often the reports were nothing more than, “He’s doing OK. His blood pressure is… and his white blood cell count is…” Neither of us had any medical experience, so much of the report often meant nothing to us. We did, however, know enough about the ventilator settings to know that we wanted the numbers to go down because that meant Dad was needing the ventilator less and less to help him breathe.
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