I could call; I could bring belongings or gifts to the front door; I could schedule a window visit – but I didn’t know when I’d see David again.  By October of 2020, we all knew that long-term care residents were extremely vulnerable to COVID and that many died alone, cared for by overstretched healthcare staff.  Even if David avoided COVID, we were relying on care in a facility I knew nothing about, at a time that was likely to be its worst. 

When I called the next day, David told me that the physical therapist was working with him to rebuild his strength.  He sounded more energetic and hopeful than he’d sounded in months — since the gym had closed and he’d stopped working with his trainer.  The physical therapists called me regularly to report on David’s gains in both strength and mobility.  I learned that the activity director was organizing games and doorway exercise classes for residents in all wings.  The social worker scheduled a care conference so that I could hear from the dietician, the activity staff, the physical therapist, and the care coordinator.  I learned much that was useful (including the fact that someone had inserted an indwelling catheter when David was in the hospital – so that was that).  I couldn’t know what life was like in the new place, but it sounded as if residents weren’t spending all of their waking hours staring at the tv.

The time in the rehab wing eased the transition, but soon David moved to the locked memory care wing.  We couldn’t use our electronic device because he was sharing a room, and there were no single rooms available.  Residents who tested positive for COVID needed single rooms, the social worker explained, so the wait might be long.  Meanwhile, PT started and stopped and started and stopped; each time David returned to his baseline, PT ended.  When he lost strength or mobility, or when he fell, PT started up again.  David was restless.  The staff worked at creating a full schedule of activities and exercises while keeping residents at least six feet apart, and David joined more activities than I’d expected.  But he was ill at ease in his shared room.  His roommate slept much of the time, but David felt both lonely and crowded out.

And the phone system rarely worked.  The facility had installed a new system, and phones dropped calls or appeared to be ringing but went unanswered.  The unanswered call looped back to the initial message.  Forwarded calls almost always dropped.  Staff members, already run ragged, had to answer a call and then carry the phone across the building to give it to the person that the caller was trying to reach.  Even that didn’t work.  David’s room was in a WiFi dead zone, and the phone system depended on WiFi — so calls dropped when the phones reached his threshold.  I called and sent messages about the problem, but the answer was yes, yes, we know, the new phone system isn’t working very well.  Of course the situation was harder for the staff than for me, but I couldn’t visit David and was desperate to speak with him.

The phone system recorded-message feature did work; it sent weekly, sometimes twice-weekly reports of staff and resident COVID cases.  As October gave way to November, November to December, FDA emergency approval of the first vaccines seemed likely.  Getting COVID seemed inevitable, but maybe David would get the vaccine before he got COVID.  Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in people with LBD — maybe the vaccine would ward off COVID-19 pneumonia.  

In December, when we got the call telling us that David had tested positive for COVID, Fiona and I held hands long-distance and waited.  We tried to prepare ourselves for the news we expected.  Instead: he hasn’t yet developed symptoms, the nurse said.  More days passed.  He hasn’t developed any symptoms, the nurse said.  At last he could return from the COVID isolation area to his room in memory care.  He hadn’t developed symptoms.  We knew there might be lung damage — researchers had described “ground glass opacities” in the lungs of people who’d had asymptomatic COVID – but he hadn’t developed pneumonia.  And now the nursing home was offering vaccinations to the residents.