Why is my friend’s mom being wrongfully subjected to Covidianism at a rehab center in a northwest Chicago suburb?
Jessica Hockett, PhD
My friend Jillian (pseudonym) contacted me yesterday about what’s happening to her mother at a Lutheran rehab facility in northwest suburban Chicago. With her permission, I’m sharing the story to draw attention to what is continuing to happen to elderly Illinois residents in the name of health & safety. Regardless of whether it’s representative of what has always occurred in care homes, it’s grossly unethical and must stop.
On Sunday, my vaccinated 73-year-old mother tripped over a rug in her home, fell, and dislocated her shoulder. She lay on the floor for 24 hours before dragging herself to a phone and calling 911. An ambulance took her to Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington (Illinois), where she spent three days before being transferred to a Lutheran rehab facility in Arlington Heights.
Over the weekend, she developed a fever, cough and fatigue. They tested her for flu, RSV, and covid-19.1 Flu and RSV came back negative, but she was positive for covid and immediately sent to isolation in the “covid unit,” where she has to stay for 10 days! No visitors allowed. No opportunity to re-test and be transferred back to a regular floor. (I assume she wouldn’t have been isolated if the flu or RSV results were positive, but I don’t know for sure.)
The administrative office has been calling me, as her medical power-of-attorney, saying I need to “come in urgently” to sign paperwork for Medicare. There’s no reason for me to do that, because my mother is currently of sound mind and body. “I’m not comfortable doing that,” I told her. “Why can’t my mom sign this paperwork?”
The woman said, “Well, because administration isn’t allowed on the covid floor, and there are very strict numbers as far as how many employees can be in the covid unit at a time.”
I said, “Then I guess you’re going to have to wait til she gets out.”
Mom also hasn’t been getting same level of care in the covid unit. It’s not as well staffed, so they can’t be responsive to her need to go to the bathroom. (She’s in rehab and needs help while she’s healing from the fall.) So they put a diaper on her, which is humiliating for her in her state. The call buttons in this unit don’t even make noise. They turn a light on over the door. When a nurse or aide happens to be walking by and sees your light on, then they come in. No ding, no nothing. My mom was a nurse for her whole professional career. She’s not stupid. She knows how this works.
The facility also said on Friday that they can’t get her more pain medication til Monday. For the “covid,” they’re giving her Tylenol.
What’s so crazy is that if she’d tested positive for RSV or flu, I doubt she’d be isolated like this.
How can they do this to someone who, within the past calendar week, was able-bodied, and active enough to live independently? Why are they still doing this to anyone?
It’s demoralizing, it’s dehumanizing, and a complete fiasco.
- JH: There is no separate flu test in Illinois this season — only a multiplex test that tests for flu, RSV, and covid. ↩︎
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