I hadn’t expected a pandemic, but I’d tried to prepare for ordinary contingencies.  In case illness or terrible weather kept me at home, I’d set up a system for meds that didn’t depend on knowing the day of the week or the time of day.  Pills were in lettered containers, and we had practiced using them.  In our practice sessions, I called and said, “Open container H.”  (Extended back and forth about the letter.  H? Yes, H.  H, like hat?  Yes, like hat.  Oh, the lid is off?  Great.  Okay, take all of the pills in that container.  Back and forth about taking all of the pills.)  I asked David whether he thought he could take the pills in the mornings and evenings if I called and told him what container to open and waited on the phone while he took the pills, as we’d practiced.  Long silence.  “I’m not sure,” he said at last.

Like every other caregiver for someone in assisted living or a nursing home, I scrambled to figure out how to replace the care I provided.  I asked the administrators about having a nurse or CNA administer David’s medications.  Their system required that residents sign up for two-hour blocks of time at $35/hour.  They were willing to make an exception to the two-hour minimum; instead they would charge for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening.  That would be $70 a day to give David the pills that I had picked up at the pharmacy and organized in containers.  That would be $2100 a month.  No.  But I had to work out a solution; medication mix-ups are both common and dangerous.  The problem was far more complicated and intractable than administering meds, of course: I was David’s lifeline, and I wasn’t allowed in the building.