How NY State Failed Their Elderly During COVID-19

I’m angry. I’m not going to lie. I have hit that point in my grief. But I’m also happy to hear that the murmurs of unrest are starting to rise. People are moving past clutching their rolls of toilet paper as they hang on every word NY Governor Andrew Cuomo tells them. The panic and fear are starting to melt away as the sun is slowly finally starting to shine again on New York City. Yes, we are slowly starting to open up, and we can debate on how much longer that will take, I don’t have the answer to that. There is one thing I do know — there will be a lot less elderly to worry about during any additional waves in New York, thanks to our state government and Andrew Cuomo. 

No one is ever ready to write about death. I literally did my taxes to avoid writing this article. But there is only so long I can be quiet. My father-in-law, Sol Newman, was a survivor, and I don’t say that lightly. Sol grew up in the Holocaust camps. As a young Polish Jew during WW2, he witnessed horrors one can’t even imagine.

Yes, Sol was 94 and had Parkinson's, but you will just have to believe me that I 100% felt like he would outlive us all. Sol Newman was a survivor. I don’t think people understand what that means. Like, it was in his DNA. It didn’t matter what the world threw at him — nazis, multiple death camps, death marches, and cattle trains with 3% survivors, the murder of all his Polish relatives save a sister in the camps, starvation, torture, being a refugee, the Army, being an immigrant, anti-Semitic coworkers in America trying to injure/kill him, broken bones, broken hearts, the early passing of his wife to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (a human variant of Mad Cows Disease), the list is endless. Yet, this man would smile at you, and you would feel like everything would be ok. His laugh was infectious, and his eyes spoke only of love, well, at least, to the people he loved.  

The plan was for Sol to live with us till the end, but unfortunately, he woke up in the middle of the night, about a month before COVID hit NYC, got up to go for a small walk and fell. He broke his hip. The surgery was a complete success, but he needed to go to a rehab center (which are often based within nursing homes) to work with a physical therapist (PT) five to six times a week, something we could never offer him at home. We were already leery with these centers, as we had had negative experiences in the past, but there was no way that we and Sol’s aides could handle him on our own, nor had the skills or equipment to give him the PT he needed, until he had recovered enough to return home. Without this physical therapy, Sol would never walk again, and we were determined to give him the best quality of life he could have for as long as possible. 

The first month was normal. Sol was working with the PT, and slowly getting better. He wasn’t happy to be there, but we were able to visit almost daily.

Then COVID hit. The nursing homes locked their doors. This made sense. Here are the most fragile at risk people. Let’s make sure as few people are getting to them as possible. It broke our hearts that we could no longer visit, but the last thing we wanted was for him to be infected. It was made quickly clear to us that the home was too busy to aid us in communicating with him during this time, and it was shockingly difficult to reach his doctors or nurses, but still we assumed this must be better than him possibly being exposed. Sol was forced to be alone during the last weeks of his life, and we were left feeling powerless to help as we were shut out “for his protection”.

After many weeks, and what felt like forever, the nursing home finally set up a system so that we could Skype with him. He was distant and difficult to communicate with. He had already been neglected for over a month, but we told ourselves, it is ok. Once it is safe, we can take him home and shower him with all the love in the world. He will understand then, even if now he barely responded to us trying to desperately tell him how much we loved him and why we couldn’t see him.

What we didn’t realize at the time was that NY State and Andrew Cuomo had decided that nursing homes would be required to take in excess recovering COVID patients. Yes, you read that right. NY State and Andrew Cuomo decided that it was a GOOD idea to take incredibly infectious people with a disease that especially kills off the elderly and put them in the same building with our fragile elderly population. Do you want to know why there are so many deaths in New York City (also Italy, since they decided to do the same thing)?? In my humble opinion, it is because they were murdered.

At no point did the nursing home alert us when they started receiving COVID patients, nor when their original patients started getting sick (we were not the only ones who were not informed). Only later did I google our center, and found an article about how this home and others were so overrun with the virus that dead patients were being left in their bed for lack of space. For all I know, Sol had a dead body as a roommate. I felt sick as the panic overtook us.

The nursing home did not tell us when he came down with a cough, even with us calling in for updates. We only found out because his Managed Long Term Care (MLTC) social worker, not the social worker who was assigned to him at the nursing home, casually mentioned it when she was following up on his continued stay/release plan. WHAT?? This is COVID times! A cough can be death.

Instead, it was all about the paperwork. Shortly after my husband got off the call with the MLTC social worker, Sol’s social worker from the nursing home called to inform us that she had sent an email of forms to be signed, transitioning him to be a long term patient there, which is a standard practice for nursing homes to implement after three months. At no point in time did she bring up the cough. My husband was forced to ask. She quickly responded: “Yes, he has a cough, but no fever”.* “For how long?” “About a week.”* “What has been done?” “We have ordered a chest X-Ray.”* “When will this happen?” “I don’t know.”*

We immediately called his nurse, who we miraculously got through to that morning, and she confirmed what his social worker said, noting that his appetite has been good and that he seemed fine. This was confirmed again when my husband’s brother called later that day. 

The very next day we got the call from his floor/nursing home doctor. This is a doctor that no matter how hard we tried, she would never follow up with us. “Your father is unresponsive, hasn’t eaten today, and in my professional opinion, he probably has the virus.”* WHAT??? “Right now we have him on the highest level of oxygen we can offer here. He is comfortable.”*   

My husband quickly asked what the next steps were, wrongfully assuming a hospital would be her next thought. But she only repeats: “he is comfortable, let him be.”* “I want him to go to a hospital”, my husband clarifies, “Right now! His hospital is Methodist, please call the ambulance and get him there immediately.”

The doctor responded once again that he was comfortable, making it seem that that was going to be a bit of a bother. The doctor went on to say, “I can ask the ambulance if they will come, but even if/when they do, they will take him to the nearest hospital, not the one you want. Even if Governor Cuomo or President Trump themselves would call and tell them where to take him, they still wouldn’t listen. And the hospital can just send him right back to us, this happened to someone we sent just yesterday”.*

She went on to tell us that if we gave her the permission to move him to hospice at the nursing home, accepting that he would pass there, then she would allow us to come see him. She tells us that if he goes to the hospital, we will most likely never see him again. This is our one chance.

But Sol is a fighter, and we couldn’t give up on him, even if it meant there was a chance we wouldn’t be able to hold his hand again. Us fighting for him to live was the only way we could see him having the best end of his days. If he refused to give up in the camps we were not about ready to give up on him now.

It was clear his doctor wasn’t going to help, so my husband called Methodist Hospital. Of course they were happy to take him and fight for him with us. Next he called Hatzolah, which is a Jewish volunteer rescue team, and within a matter of minutes they sent an ambulance to get to Sol and take him to Methodist. 

When the first man from Hatzolah arrived to assess the situation before the ambulance arrived, he called us to tell us that when it came time to take Sol home, he said he wouldn't bring him back to the nursing home. “They’re having a problem here now.”* The first honest words of the day.

Sol was quickly taken to Methodist, which he got into without delay. Our fears were confirmed — the next day we got his results, and he tested positive for COVID. However, he showed promise! He was eating well, alert, and not coughing as much! We got to FaceTime him, and we had hope. He was a survivor! Sadly, like many COVID patients, he turned on a dime. We are grateful he survived a little over a week longer than if he had been left at the nursing home. The doctor was right, we were not able to see him again in person, but I genuinely feel he was grateful that we did try that one last fight. Yes, I wanted to squeeze his hand one more time, and maybe he would have been stronger if we were able to have been there physically with him, but Sol should have never been put in this position to begin with.

I 100% believe that if Sol was living with us this wouldn’t have happened. I believe that if NY State and Andrew Cuomo had not forbidden medically stable COVID patients to be tested to see if they were still highly infectious before forcing them into nursing homes, then Sol would have survived. I believe we were all sheltering in place to save these people while our government was allowing them to unnecessarily die behind closed doors. Sol is a survivor, but he couldn’t survive the cruelty that NY State and Andrew Cuomo forced on the nursing homes, as well as how the homes conducted themselves, I believe. Nursing homes, sadly, need to be kept in check through visiting your loved ones regularly, regular governmental inspections, and the fear of lawsuits if necessary. These were all removed.


Yes, we will get another wave of COVID, but it “won't be as bad this time”. Why? Because we already did the worst thing we could possibly do during a pandemic, we sacrificed the most high at risk. Of the 23k+ people who have died of COVID in NY State, 5,300 were in nursing homes, that is ~23%. And what did it get us? Nothing. We could have protected those people, like my family thought we were. Our numbers would have been much lower. Maybe we would even be able to open up faster. I hope we wake up from this experience more aware of the power a small group of people hold over our nation, and we work together to make sure we as a country, and as a world, do better…



 
Articles, zIssue 23, Editor's Pick, Most PopularKira Buccacovid-19, nursing homes, stay home, Shelter-in-place, health, health care, New York City, elderly, coronavirus, Jewish, GovernmentComment