We’ve had to stop asking my little sister how her day was. It’s too sad. Two months ago, she started working in a care home after she and many of her fellow graduates had their post-university gap years cut short by Covid. In place of the charity project she’d been due to start in Nepal, she’s spent her summer caring for those in need a little closer to home: washing, dressing and feeding over-seventies in a home that’s made up of more than 85 per cent dementia patients.
The stories are upsetting: the residents who don’t recognise their children; the widows waiting for their husbands to come home; the dementia patients believing they’re in a prison. Most days, several of them tell staff they’re just waiting to die.
Then there is Sally, the non-dementia resident whose story I find the saddest of all. The recently widowed 93-year-old came to the home last month after a fall and hoped, alongside the physical care, she would make some friends. She hasn’t — or if she has, they don’t remember her. She asked my sister to replace the bedside photograph of her husband yesterday because it’s making her weep, and says she’s bereft on my sister’s days off. Their five-minute conversation while dressing each morning is the happiest moment of her day.
We ask about Sally every night now, hesitantly because we know we probably don’t want to hear the answer. Has she watched TV? No, because her eyesight isn’t good enough. Can she listen to an audio book? The home doesn’t have any. Has she had any visits? Not this week, because it’s been raining and guests are only allowed in the garden.
Coronavirus is exposing the inequalities in our society, in gender, race and income. Let’s not forget old age
This I find the cruellest part. If Sally hadn’t fallen and was still living at home, she’d be allowed to see friends indoors: she has many and says she misses the conversation. But in the home she feels trapped: she can’t FaceTime because she doesn’t have a phone, and she gets cold outside so visits are short. It’s no longer just residents with dementia who are starting to mistake their four walls for a prison.
Charities are calling for loved ones to be given key-worker status to allow greater testing and visiting access and, mercifully, the Government is finally listening. Last week, Matt Hancock announced indoor care home visits could be just “days away”. We talk of Covid exposing the inequalities in our society: the gender gap; racial disparity; income inequality. Let’s not forget the age gap, too.